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Friday, February 11, 2011

UVA's Jonathan Haidt on the stifling effects of ideological conformism in social sciences

Engaging PowerPoint that generated some interest within the bastions of the Grey Lady, a salvo from the Times court intellectual HERE, which warranted a targeted response HERE (I love them-thar military metaphors):



Haidt is the proprieter of a fascinating site, been up for some time, called "Your Morals", an ongoing online moral psychology experiment, I've blogged about before. You can do your part for science by taking his surveys. For him, unlike Krugman, conservatives are not some strange tribe, or benighted (I like that word) gorillas in the mist beset by groupthink and "epistemic closure". Well, at the very least, they are not beset by these shortcomings to any greater degree than are their betters, like the haughty Krugman. From Haidt's return fire:

My research, like so much research in social psychology, demonstrates that we
humans are experts at using reasoning to find evidence for whatever conclusions
we want to reach. We are terrible at searching for contradictory evidence.
Science works because our peers are so darn good at finding that contradictory
evidence for us. Social science — at least my corner of it — is broken because
there is nobody to look for contradictory evidence regarding sacralized issues,
particularly those related to race, gender, and class. I urged my colleagues to
increase our ideological diversity not for any moral reason, but because it will
make us better scientists. You do not have that problem in economics where the
majority is liberal but there is a substantial and vocal minority of
libertarians and conservatives. Your field is healthy, mine is not. Do you think I was wrong to call for my professional organization to seek out a modicum of ideological diversity?


Groupthink is anathema to good science? Whodathunkit?

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