[tw000001]

>This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are working with the same plans set in March.

As the article somewhat loosely implies, the problem is that all new data becomes suspect when all of our institutions are openly politicized.

You think these biases only exist with respect to COVID? The marginalized right (consider the viceral response you're about to have to reading these next sentences) has been saying the same thing about academia for at least a decade. That goes for climate change and much of modern psychological theory. And no, these aren't extreme far right Nazis/incels as people like to stereotype, these are near center moderates, these are (typically in the minority) doctors, scientists, engineers, this is the so called silent majority that is denied a voice on most modern platforms. And part of the reason that our society is gridlocked is that the majority has decided that this minority is not allowed a voice because in a one dimensional two party system one side falls closer to morally repugnant views, so we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Our institutions are collapsing because actors are no longer operating in good faith. And those in power believe there are morally justified in suppressing opposing views.

Edit: and I'd like to add, another contribution to gridlock is the tendency for black and white thinking that at this point I'm starting to accept is extremely common human nature - there is a world of nuance between criticism and outright denial that is inevitably ignored almost any time someone expresses criticism for, say, climate change resources or the media (explicitly not scientist) derived predictions.

[salmon30salmon]

I had no visceral response to what you said :)

I agree, groupthink is a natural artifact of groups. If there are more liberal people in a group, their groupthink will be more liberal. Couple this with confirmation bias and we have a problem. Couple _that_ with the fact that there are actors, both from a profit motive and for other motives, that are attempting to exacerbate and increase that divide, and we have an even larger problem.

[throwaway894345]

There are a lot of moderate liberals who are willing to admit that the political homogeneity of academia is a serious problem as well. Heterdox academy is a bipartisan coalition of academics devoted to addressing this problem.

The right has also raised awareness about this in the media, and I (moderate liberal) couldn't agree more. We can't begin to really solve these problems and get everyone on board so long as we have openly partisan epistemological institutions--bias is the enemy of truth and we're maximizing it when we should be minimizing it. Those on the left will be quick to accuse the right of being anti-science and there's certainly some truth there, but I'm very suspicious of the idea that the falling political diversity is a function of the right selecting out of these fields rather than explicit or implicit discrimination (and at least within certain fields of academia, preliminary studies indicate a majority of faculty are willing to openly admit that they would discriminate against conservative candidates).

EDIT: I’m definitely not being downvoted out of the same kind of partisan tribalism that TFA is calling out. ◔̯◔