[nostromo]

The right's skepticism is a response to academia becoming two things: 1. monolithically leftist and 2. activist in nature.

Nobody is arguing with basic research. But when a peer reviewed gender studies journal publishes a rewriting of Mein Kampf, I think it's fair to suspect that a lot of non-science masquerading as real science is indeed pouring out of Universities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affilia#Grievance_Studies_affa...

[AlexandrB]

This analysis confuses cause and effect. Science became "leftist" because the right rejected the findings of science in areas like climatology in favour of its own pseudoscientific nonsense. Consider how the Evangelical right decided to even reject bedrock ideas like evolution because it conflicted with ideology.

Complaints about "gender studies" are mostly a red herring. Social sciences are not the same as geology, climatology, or biology and don't inhabit the same departments in most universities.

[traverseda]

But they are still "scientists". If all this peer-review, academic infrastructure, and "science" lets all that crap get published, well who's to say it's keeping the crap out in other fields? Scientists are supposed to be the gatekeepers of truth, and seeing them fail in such an obvious and public way really drags everyone down.

[fromthestart]

>This analysis confuses cause and effect. Science became "leftist" because the right rejected the findings of science in areas like climatology in favour of its own pseudoscientific nonsense.

Academic institutions have leaned left since at least the 60s, back when leftism was an actual counterculture movement. This has nothing to do with climate science.

>Complaints about "gender studies" are mostly a red herring. Social sciences are not the same as geology, climatology, or biology and don't inhabit the same departments in most universities.

Gender studies is fully related to the discussion, because it is an exclusively leftist pursuit, intrinsically linked to modern "liberal" policymaking, and respected institutions tacitly enforce their pseudoscientific, sexist, racist, and classist drivel by allowing them space and funding, while making no such allowances to anything related to right wing politics. Right leaning ideas are effectively forbidden at the majority of so called elite universities in the U.S.

How can you expect scientific departments to be unbiased when their administration and sources of funding are openly and strongly politically leaning and active?

Further, and most importantly, do you really believe that climate science is immune to dogma and the statistical abuses that are responsible for the replication crisis evident in other empirical disciplines? Even asking such a question is career suicide - which unfortunately justifies some degree of right wing scepticism of modern academia due to politicization.

[scarmig]

The majority of academic scientists identified as Republicans, up through the 80s.

The conspiracy you imagine of academic administrators shutting down research that undermines climate change because of gender studies is inane.

[fromthestart]

>The conspiracy you imagine of academic administrators shutting down research that undermines climate change because of gender studies is inane.

You've misrepresented my point. The point is that the existence and condoning of politically slanted departments like those of gender studies is further evidence of a strong liberal bias in academic administration, which will inevitability bleed into management of climate science because of how politicized it has become.

[scarmig]

You've failed to establish how the existence of gender studies departments means we can dismiss the findings of the physical sciences, including climate change. It is still an inane point.

[fromthestart]

>You've failed to establish how the existence of gender studies departments means we can dismiss the findings of the physical sciences

I am not advocating for dismissal, I am merely suggesting that social and political pressure for certain results from the hiring and financial appropriation practices of a politically biased administration can introduce aggregate bias in published results. And on the subject:

>The majority of academic scientists identified as Republicans, up through the 80s

You've failed to establish how even a republican leaning scientific establishment is immune from the whims of administration resulting in, say, only publishing results that support the politically correct positions. It is a fact that the overwhelming majority University administration's lean strongly left - and when science is politicized, there's a strong chance that, again, such administrative bias will affect results in seemingly innocuous ways. Not to mention that most environmental scientists have personal left leaning biases and experience social and professional pressures which also may be reflected in results.

Significance testing, publication of only positive results, and model design are three methods by a which slant may be unintentionally introduced and, again, we know that these problems have lead to the replication crisis explicitly identified in other empirical sciences - why do you think no one is willing to ask the same, legitimate question about climate science, particularly when climatology by nature is not a reproducible discipline?

[ncallaway]

> Nobody is arguing with basic research

This is patently false. Maybe you aren't arguing with basic research, but people absolutely are.

[scarmig]

> Nobody is arguing with basic research

See: basic research on climate change. Republicans don't so much argue with it as dismiss it outright.

[nostromo]

There is indeed a lot of magical thinking going around.

The political left calls GMO crops dangerous and fear mongers without a shred of scientific evidence. Or they spread fear about the pharmaceutical industry -- and how those evil drug researchers are trying to get people addicted to their drugs for profit.

Then when regular people decide not to trust any drugs at all -- including vaccines -- people wonder how that could have possibly happened, after demonizing the entire field of research for decades.

And on the political right we of course have wilful disinformation about climate change.

[neaden]

Can you name some prominent elected officials on the left who fear monger about vaccines? I assure you that I can provide quite a long list of elected republicans who've said some bananas things about climate change for instance.

[en-us]

Conflating gender studies with climate study is absurd. Pretty telling microcosm here of the validity of the Right's criticism of academia.

[dnissley]

Can you tell me why it's absurd?

I'm not even on the right, but I certainly take issue with a lot of the ideas coming out of gender studies (and similar) departments and how easily they are accepted as truth and how quickly they spread. Many of those ideas, if taken seriously, seem to have the possibility to rearrange society in a pretty awful way. In fact, anecdotally, they already seem to be having a pretty negative effect on our world and their influence seems to be on the rise. Now, I'm not quite as concerned about this as climate change, but it's still a real issue. Do you not see this as a real issue?

[en-us]

I am not saying that criticism of gender studies is absurd, I am saying that conflating climate science with gender studies is absurd.

The validity of the social sciences as "real science" has long been in question, long before the concerns of modern day politics. This problem is inherent to these fields, because instead of studying the objective physical world they study literature, history, politics, art, etc. Many social sciences are more accurately called liberal arts in my opinion, and they co-opted the word "science" to lend themselves credibility.

Then on the other hand you have climate science, which does study the objective physical world. The science around this involves collecting data and building models to describe the physical world instead of speculating about the nature of mankind. It is an apples to oranges comparison.

Just to illustrate, forget about climate science and gender studies because they are politically charged. If the above poster had criticized something like the study of French medieval literature and used that to argue that particle physics is a systemically flawed and biased field, I would also call that comparison absurd.

[username90]

You are mixing up arguments.

The argument is not: Social science is nut trustworthy so no science is trustworthy.

The argument is: Social scientists pushed to be put on the same level as natural scientists, but then they pushed a bunch of politicized bullshit and tarnished the reputation of all scientists in the public's eye.

It doesn't matter what is true or not, people in general are stupid. The masses on the left trust scientists, since they feel that these bullshit pushers are pushing bullshit in the right direction (Not related to climate change). The masses on the right doesn't trust scientists for the same reason. The solution is not to teach people to properly evaluate the validity of different scientific claims, that is impossible, the solution is to build up the trust of scientists in everyone's eyes as much as possible by kicking out all the bullshit. Good arguments actually works, but if you try to feed them 50% bullshit they will refuse to swallow even the good parts since they stopped trusting you.

[en-us]

> Social scientists pushed to be put on the same level as natural scientists, but then they pushed a bunch of politicized bullshit and tarnished the reputation of all scientists in the public's eye.

I largely agree with this, but I think the masses on the right approach it more like the first argument:

> Social science is nut trustworthy so no science is trustworthy.

More accurately, it seems to me that it has become "social science is not trustworthy and I don't agree with the field's mainstream ideas, so I can consider any science I don't agree with to be not trustworthy". So when climate science suggests that climate change is a problem, and the proposed solutions do not agree with right-wing economics, the natural conclusion is for them to reject climate science. This conclusion has been reached by right wing governments across the world, so it certainly seems that those who follow the ideology tend to reach it.

I think it happens both ways with people of all political persuasions, saying "I agree with these conclusions so this science is trustworthy" or "I don't agree with these conclusions so this science is untrustworthy".

[euroPoor]

I’m just waiting for someone to throw in ‘cultural marxism’ in this thread. Sure, you may believe that some departments at university skew left but I still need to see evidence that this is a fact for all universities across the board and that it’s systematically introducing bias into research.

[nostromo]

> I still need to see evidence that this is a fact for all universities across the board

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/11/the-d...

> and that it’s systematically introducing bias into research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_Studies_affair

[euroPoor]

You can keep spamming the same links but it does only so much to solidfy your position.

[kebman]

Dude, relax. Can you post proof to the contrary? If you cannot, then your position is indeed weakened. In any case, those links are in line with my own studies at four colleges and universities in Norway. If you can document something that disproves those links, I'd be quite happy to see them! :)

[euroPoor]

I’m doubting what parent says, why would I need to disprove if they’re going by handwavy articles and personal anecdata?

[traverseda]

I think we've provided some evidence that suggests there at least might be a problem.

Publishing a rigorous scientific paper saying "well look, here's the problem" is going to be difficult, given the issues such a paper would address. It could be career suicide if handled indelicately.

Given that we have weak evidence that there is a problem, the burden of proof is now on you to provide stronger evidence that there isn't a problem, unless we have a strong prior for there not being a problem or something.

Applying higher standards to things you disagree with is a great way to end up biased. If you require a well reviewed research paper showing that there is a problem, you should also require a similar paper showing you there isn't a problem.

At the very least trying to provide a counter viewpoint to the evidence you've already being presented with would be polite.

[traverseda]

I think that "all universities across the board" is a bit of a high standard. Even something as low as 30% would be enough to be a big problem.

I think there's evidence of a fairly significant amount of bias being introduced.

[euroPoor]

Then let’s see the evidence for bias, for bad science being done by mostly leftwing or leftist people.

[traverseda]

I can do both of those things separately.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis offers the best evidence I can offer for bad science being done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_American_ac...

Goes over the issues related to politics, conservatives aren't as under-represented when you include STEM fields, but pay special attention to the disciplinary variance.

>Focusing specifically on social psychology academics, a 2014 study found that "[b]y 2006, however, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans had climbed to more than 11:1.

Also note what fields are facing the most obvious replication crisis.

I expect you'll want to do your own research, but that should get you started.

[euroPoor]

I was not talking about bad science in general. I could say that in general, science seems to be in crisis [1] and pinning it down to people whose political affiliation does not suit your needs is reductive. Also, because there’s some different distributions does not mean leftwing = bad.

Another interpretation could be: the GOP platform is highly anti-science and most scientists wouldn’t want to be associated to such a horrendous organization which doubts scientific consensus regarding an issue that’s threatening the whole of civilization.

[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-science-...

[traverseda]

Right, like I say I can show both of those things separately, but I can't demonstrate that they're correlated.

How would you go about finding that evidence? What would be sufficient evidence that they're correlated for you?

[falcrist]

Academia is neither monolithically leftist, nor is it activist by nature.

You have only to spend 5 minutes in a typical economics class to understand that that field favors neoliberal ideas. If you sit down and have a conversation with an actual leftist (particularly a marxist) professor, you'll hear something that nobody outside of the system seems to discuss. Marxism is very uncommon in most departments.

> Nobody is arguing with basic research.

Are you kidding me?

There are places in the US where powerful organizations and even state legislatures are actively trying to prevent schools from teaching evolution. Look at this development from two years ago: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/316487-new-wave-of-...

At the federal level, we have congresspeople carrying snow into session so they can deny that climate change is occurring. I regularly see arguments online include discussion of how NASA and NOAA are doctoring the evidence. I wonder where they're getting THAT idea from...

So yea. People absolutely ARE arguing with basic research. Large numbers of people. Significant fractions of the population.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affilia#Grievance_Studies_affa...

From your link: Affilia: _"Journal of Women and Social Work is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal that covers social work practice(s) and feminist analysis of gender inequality."_

How is this related to science (much less basic scientific research)? Even if it WERE a scientific journal, an anecdote about being fooled by a hoax doesn't invalidate the scientific research being done today.

[kebman]

I should think that attending any school of economics would give you that idea, but enter just about any faculty of the humanities or the social sciences, and the picture quickly becomes quite different.

[falcrist]

I happened to go back to school fairly recently. I was required to take some humanities and social science classes.

I'd say there's a lot more diversity of opinion in the rest of the departments than there is in econ. I didn't get any sense of political agenda in the history department, and the sociology department seemed to be deliberately avoiding it.

I actually started university under the assumption that professors would be dogmatically pushing their agenda. I was wrong.

[GuiA]

Gender studies is not science so I’m not sure how that fits into the discourse.

Not to mention that it’s not even that good an example to prove anything about academia - it’s a minuscule subfield with little funding in comparison to any other academic discipline. None of the major public universities I attended even had a gender studies department - at best it was a specialty within sociology/anthropology with a dozen grad students or so. The only thing in which gender studies has a disproportionate representation is as the favorite example in the rhetoric of anti-academics.

Please show how physics/biology/math/geology/climate science/etc is “monothically leftist and activist in nature”.

[nostromo]

Gender studies is considered a social science in most universities.

And professors of all majors are almost monolithically left-leaning, compared to the population.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/11/the-d...

[umeshunni]

"social science", "political science" etc are not science. They are liberal arts masquerading as science to claim legitimacy.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-social-s...

[zajio1am]

Aren't gender studies generally considered humanities and not social sciences?