[geofft]

I think what I'm saying is that what is called "politically incorrect" is a small slice of the things that will cause society to turn hostile. Moreover, in fact, many things that are "politically incorrect" simply won't result in hostility that effectively suppresses work at all (after all, the two quotes I gave earlier were from the most influential newspaper in the world and the president of what had just become the world's only remaining superpower).

That is, I agree with you that public pressure to conform to political norms is bad for scientific research, but I am arguing that a specific focus on avoiding "political correctness" means that you in fact succumb to a lot of other (present-day) political norms, which is the actual thing that is bad for scientific research.

Taking your tobacco-funding example - you are, of course, correct, that tobacco-funded research is extremely biased. Suppose someone says that this research cannot be taken at face value, and Philip Morris accuses that person of anti-tobacco bias, of succumbing to anti-cigarette political correctness, of conforming to political pressures about how terrible Big Tobacco is. Who do you side with? There are two accusations of bias here; how you do determine which one is correct?

The heuristic "Political correctness is bad" is clearly unhelpful in this scenario; it cannot guide you to the correct decision. If you want a more meaningful principle, you have to look deeper at things. Even your phrasing "conform to the political norms for its time" is a more meaningful phrasing - but then an obvious consequence is that opposition to political correctness was the political norm of the early '90s when the president and the Gray Lady were telling people how bad political correctness was.

[Jensson]

> but I am arguing that a specific focus on avoiding "political correctness" means that you in fact succumb to a lot of other (present-day) political norms, which is the actual thing that is bad for scientific research.

Right, this is a really hard topic. I didn't say I had a solution, just saying it is a problem. There will always be a lot of political influence in research topic related to controversial things and people living under that influence will have a hard time identifying it. The racists 70 years ago probably didn't think they were doing anything bad etc. But today we recognize it as bad.

> but I am arguing that a specific focus on avoiding "political correctness" means that you in fact succumb to a lot of other (present-day) political norms, which is the actual thing that is bad for scientific research.

Yeah, you have counter movements and resistances. But if the context is non-stem non-economic researchers at universities then it is pretty much only in one direction. There is no allowance for the other side to do much research in those areas, meaning research in those areas is a one sided politically correct story.

If we let tobacco companies publish research, and other people publish research, then people can look at the two and make their own decisions. But if you basically only let one side research then you will get bad research.