In my field there is a phenomenon called "quant crit" which refers to critical theory that uses quantitative methods. The concept is supposed to provide cover for quantitative researchers to lay low and keep doing their thing, as long as they can say they are informed about quant crit. The problem is that empirical research and critical theory start with very different aims. Empirical research tests causal claims about the world; critical theory makes claims and decries the idea of falsifiability. They are epistemologically incompatible, but no one is willing to say so.
Let's say a scientist studies polar bears. They care about polar bears. This is a mistake? It's going to bias their ability to objectively determine the extent to which that species is endangered by human activity, right?
Seems like a bit of a catch-22. How do you study something you care about, without letting that caring bias you at all? Or should scientists only study things they don't care about?
I love this comment! It gets at perhaps the strongest objection (I can think of) to this essay.
My response: Study what you love. The test is whether you can live with any answer. If you love polar bears and study them, but the polar bear data came back showing populations climbing, you need to publish it even if the answer is inconvenient for your cause. Design also matters. Make sure your design allows for all kinds of answers, not set to only find some answers. In psychology, unfortunately, we're forever setting up studies where only one answer can plausibly come out, then put out a press release when we find exactly what we expected from a study that could not have realistically showed anything else.
But your question is deeper. Let's forget activism for the moment. Just caring about your own pet theory is enough to bias your judgment. Motivated reasoning gets all of us. Which is why the safeguards can't only be the personal responsibility of the scientist. We also need real safeguards like preregistration, adversarial collaboration, replication, critical peer review. But it goes even deeper: we need not only to check researchers' biases with these safeguards, we need a community who have legitimate differences of opinion. A few activists in a field I suppose is survivable but only if there are people with different priors, different views. Unfortunately, this is very different from reality in academia where too many of us have the same political views. This is especially true in the social sciences.
So if we are all iredeemably biased, why did I pick on activism? I picked on them because they are explicitly aiming for one direction (unlike many non-activists biases which are implicit, I think); they are injecting bias when we ought to be safeguarding against bias. Also, activists today tend to come from one political camp, the same camp that dominates academia. So these biases are especially likely to warp inferences, and yeah I dont think that's good!
As John Jost said on your podcast, he did not see the need for including anyone right of centre in social psych because "the truth is to be found to the left of the democratic party"
His concurrent denial of the existence of left wing authoritarianism tells you all you need to know (at least for an old school centre left anti-authoritarian lile myself)
I appreciated this piece; thank you. Based on the previous commenter's example, I wonder how you would contextualize the social sciences vis-à-vis the natural sciences, or clinical psych, or other fields that could be seen as having some meaningful similarities but also methodological differences downstream of intellectual foundations. Many people presumably get into ecology and conservation biology because when they were young, they wanted to "save animals/trees/nature". Similarly, anthropologists who do fieldwork may have gotten into the specialty because they feel that certain ways of life (eg, those of aboriginal peoples) not just worth knowing but also in need of cultural preservation and maybe even advocacy (which they may not do themselves, but which they would presumably inform via their work). Many mental-health clinicians got into the line of work due to their own or loved ones' struggles with mental health. Everyone brings some autobiographical motivation and attachments; what does it mean to set those things aside?
As I say in the essay, there is no such thing as value-free science. We al bring in different passions and ideas. And I think trying to make the world a better place is a worthwhile goal. So let your values and passions drive the questions you ask, but be open to any and all answers. As long as your northstar is the truth, and you commit to it--including by preregistering hypotheses, designing studies that can give real answers, and reporting on the results no matter if they help or hurt your passion/cause/value--I think the field will be ok. But that is not enough; you also need the field to genuinely be open to those answers too.
I feel like the answer to this Catch-22 is relatively simple, even if people find this kind of thing difficult and/or if there are incentive problems that make this solution hard to implement: (1) study the things you care about, but recognize that you do a palpable and meaningful disservice to both the things you care about (and, potentially, the things you don’t care about) if you do not understand the truth of those things; untrue understandings of reality lead to untrue or misleading diagnoses of problems and useless interventions which misallocate time and resources and have significant opportunity costs or can even backfire and make the thing you care about worse (looking at you, DEI trainings), and (2) if truth is what matters, morally speaking, then you should have *extremely* high epistemological standards for accepting something as true about the things you care about and a lot of intellectual humility about what you already think you know about these subjects; and these standards/ this humility should increase significantly the more emotionally, psychologically, financially and/or axiologically invested you are in a particular subject or finding. To my mind, this simply requires a little self-honesty: Would I be happy or sad to find incontrovertible evidence that Hypothesis X is true? If happy, then any evidence that seemingly supporting Hypothesis X should be viewed with intense caution and suspicion and only accepted if it really does survive intense criticism (and ideally has survived serious, good faith attempts at being falsified), and on the flip side, any evidence challenging Hypothesis X should, of course, be scrutinized but paid more attention to and taken more seriously, even if it appears, at first glance, relatively weak.
I never understood the ferocity of the attacks on the AlShebli et al. paper (lead-authored by a female ECR of colour, for what it's worth). To me the message was not "Women are bad mentors", but rather, "Given that 'who is/was your mentor' is not a secret, this suggests that sexism has not yet been eliminated", which is probably true and certainly seems unlikely to be controversial.
I can understand why progressives disliked the finding, as it implies that rational actors looking for grad school mentors would be wise not to be mentored by women. And that would hurt female mentors, clearly. Also, the explanation for it might have many sources, including sexism (which flatters the progressive narrative), but also less or less effective networking( perhaps a neutral-ish explanation), women playing it safe (perhaps less flattering to the progressive cause) to outright inherent sex differences in math ability (flattering to some conservative narratives). To me, you don't fix a problem by pretending it doesn't exist. So, if people really cared for female mentors, you'd admit the finding and then have a robust exploration for the various possible reasons for it.
One other point worth mentioning: The general public is also a player in this. We voters need to decide which experts to consider trustworthy. Research is always unavoidable uncertain. Novel results are often at the limits of what statistics (or, in the physical sciences, instrumentation) allows us to see. Add to that scholar-activists putting their thumbs on the scales and entire fields (as you wrote, anthropology is the most flagrant case) become useless.
The situation is actually a bit worse than that: "Justice" is the policy preference of one faction, and university faculties are demonstrably far to the left of the median American. So scholar-activists are not only forsaking the truth for ideology, but for an ideology which is actively hostile to the median American. So the median American is doubly justified in distrusting scholar-activists' claims.
You're right to distinguish between views and values guiding towards areas of inquiry, and views and values influencing what you find. There is though a subtler challenge at work too. If a discipline becomes dominated by a particular set of views and values, those are inevitably going to guide the whole discipline to regard some questions and areas of inquiry as inherently more worthy than others -- thereby skewing where the evidence base lands. This is likely to happen even if scholars are scrupulous about correcting for the type of motivated reasoning you describe -- which of course they are not! But these are different problems and challenges.
Thanks for the excellent piece. I'm a retired behavioral neuroscientist who has been concerned for a long time about the issues you raise in the article. Regarding your point about how to handle a finding that is socially/politically contentious, I agree about "admitting the finding" and considering possible explanations. BUT at least as important would be attempting to REPLICATE the finding, since the so-called "replication problem" in many areas of science is a very real phenomenon. If our first instinct is to distrust an "inconvenient" finding, that may not be unreasonable given the existence of this problem (of course the point is that we DON'T distrust findings that confirm our existing biases). In any case, unfortunately there is little motivation either from granting agencies or from journals for researchers to perform and publish basic replications of previously published work. That is a major problem that needs real reform.
I had a similar experience as an artist. In my MFA program, politics were taking hold. This was in 1981. I fell under criticism and the effect was persuasive. Rather than question and resist, I went with the flow and started producing preachy, political virtue signalling work. It was not great work and I regret my clumsy attempts at mimicking the anti-avant-garde. It is as hard to be rigorous and truthful in the creative disciplines as it is in the soft and hard sciences.
Great article! Reminds me of a paper I read a bit ago (‘On scholactivism in constitutional studies: Skeptical thoughts’ ) that tackled this same subject from a legal/philosophy perspective. Definitely made me rethink some things!
I looked into (and wrote a manuscript) on homosexuality. Studies on gay parents supposedly all say there is "no difference". But all those studies are made by activists, who have very strong incentives.
The flaws in those studies are too numerous to mention, but I think in some future it would be a field for some truth-searcher.
I can summarize it by saying that it's closer to systematic fraud than science.
Just think about it. If every researcher is an activist who wants to prove that gay parents are just as good as straight parents, would you expect their studies to show anything else?
Sadly the critics are also motivated resoners. Take the Institute for Family Studies for example. They also start with moral priors then prooftext them and fail to account for things like selection effects which is likely the entire effect size for trad con priors. Trad con institutions dont adjudicate self interesy tradeoffs as well as they used to for as msny people and the people for whom it does select into them. These scholars were Christians first, scholars later and have personal self interest in propagating institutions that serve their conpetitive self interest. But this doesn't mean we should ignore them Probably the best we can do is just accept motivated reasoning on all sides and just evaluate the arguments.
You are correct. I disregard and distrust any IFS report for that very reason. (edit: I want to point out that the IFS isn't a scientific organization; I don't think anyone sees them as one either.)
There are a few lgbtq researches I think are reasonably trustworthy, such as Walter Schumm. See for example
I almost wonder if motivated reasoning, in the right neutral ecosystem is actually a plus as it goads people to find flaws in arguments. So many trad cons are good at funding oversimplifications on the other side, but then turn ti mush when they get high on their own supply.
I think one cannot escape motivated reasoning and activists and critics are both guilty of this. I suppose as long as there are different views that each contest each other, the truth eventually emerges. But only as long as there is robust research on both sides. Where I think activists/critics differ from those of us who have other conflicts of interest (e.g., wanting your pet theory confirmed), is that activists/critics make their biases explicit, leaning into them, whereas garden-variety scientists try actively to limit their biases, to have them only mininally impact the conclusions they draw...
We lean into this in adversarial justice systems. That is, such systems are built on the idea that having counterbalanced motivated reasoners (ideally with an impartial judge and jury!) is a better way of getting at the truth than trying to ensure all the participants in the system are impartial.
That might be fine when that are real advocates on all sides. But, sadly, psychology is more or less a political mono-culture with very few advocates on the other side. So this system requires viewpoint diversity. It also requires impartial judges. Who might they be?
But even if we had that, I am still not sure it would suffice, to be honest. An example from your old grappling partner, Paul Bloom. Let's say I'm a sexist--I hypothetically believe men are better at math/STEM than women. Should I be paired with a dissenting scholar and we duke it out? Or should I not try to blind myself as much as possible to not let this bias seep into my judgment of quant manuscripts written by women (like a blinded orchestra)? I would suggest both remedies (balancing and blinding) have a place--assuming conditions are right.
I din’t know, IFS is populated by scholars who see rhe IFS as a research institute. I learned to be skeptical of adding “studies” to discipline names from church Bible Study, which is the ideal type of starting with conclusions then prooftexting. Let me know when either Women's Studies or the Institute for Family Studies says “Wow, it turns out this thing i have strong pre-existing moral intuitions (and related self interest incentives) about isn’t true.
Great insight and food for thought. Your accolades of Don Taylor threw me back a few decades (more than 3 but who's counting). I adored him. He also inspired me to continue in social sciences and was one of the most dynamic educators I've ever had. I didn't know he passed, he certainly left an incredible legacy. Baruch dayan emet.
It’s probably psychological research’s biggest flaw and it infests the entire field. Manipulated studies abound, get massive citations, and drive clinical practice and legislation. The gurus of old thus hold sway even when many of us realise they were full of shit, and new ones arise in a continuous stream.
I am worried that psychology will look increasingly like sociology, bringing itself down.
Not that it matters, but I agree with you about the activism and I have seen it in my subfield of psych. It's sad and certainly not why I got into this field. I wonder if the political landscape has made some people recalibrate their interests and decide that the usual topics are just not meaningful enough for them anymore. Maybe they were never *that* interested in pursuing scientific truth? For me, that was always the main driver--I didn't fall into my topic by being a keen student but by questioning and persevering on my own. I find it hard to relate to some of my colleagues now, who are substantially activist in their motivations, it seems.
I love this quote from the Wall Steet Journal: "Whereas those disciplines often use cutting-edge methodologies, sociology seems dusty and theory-laden." It's the theory-laden part I find delicious because many (dusty people) in our field see theory as the answer to our numerous malaises. In contrast, I think we ought to hold off on big-T theorizing and instead try our hand at prediciting a bit more: https://www.speakandregret.michaelinzlicht.com/p/hasty-theories?r=2scefo
Ha ha. Honestly, I think we need a sociological analysis of our field! Because the use of "theory" and "cutting edge methods" doesn't strike me as evidence that we are a harder or more objective science but rather only that we desire to be perceived in that way and we have different status markers. If you use <insert fancy quant method> and have <insert complex and important-sounding theory> you can publish in <insert high status journal>. That's probably too simplistic but you get what I mean! I'm curious about what the dynamics are in your dept re: activism vs truth-seeking?
This is very sad for me to read. I got my M.A. in sociology in 1982 & b/c I wasn't good at statistics & d/n like the politics of college departments, I chose to go into law rather that pursue a Ph.D. in sociology. But my 36 year career as a prosecutor was informed by what I had learned about group interaction, sub cultures & roles in America society. It made me much more understanding in my attitude toward defendants, victims, witnesses & investigators, such as cops, forensic scientists & other experts. I think it made me a better, more open minded prosecutor.
I would never have been able to obtain that degree today b/c I would not have been able to conform.
In my field there is a phenomenon called "quant crit" which refers to critical theory that uses quantitative methods. The concept is supposed to provide cover for quantitative researchers to lay low and keep doing their thing, as long as they can say they are informed about quant crit. The problem is that empirical research and critical theory start with very different aims. Empirical research tests causal claims about the world; critical theory makes claims and decries the idea of falsifiability. They are epistemologically incompatible, but no one is willing to say so.
Critical theory is a bane of science, literature, and pretty much every discipline.
Excellent piece. Could not agree more. Thanks!
Very interesting piece. Well worth pondering.
Let's say a scientist studies polar bears. They care about polar bears. This is a mistake? It's going to bias their ability to objectively determine the extent to which that species is endangered by human activity, right?
Seems like a bit of a catch-22. How do you study something you care about, without letting that caring bias you at all? Or should scientists only study things they don't care about?
I love this comment! It gets at perhaps the strongest objection (I can think of) to this essay.
My response: Study what you love. The test is whether you can live with any answer. If you love polar bears and study them, but the polar bear data came back showing populations climbing, you need to publish it even if the answer is inconvenient for your cause. Design also matters. Make sure your design allows for all kinds of answers, not set to only find some answers. In psychology, unfortunately, we're forever setting up studies where only one answer can plausibly come out, then put out a press release when we find exactly what we expected from a study that could not have realistically showed anything else.
But your question is deeper. Let's forget activism for the moment. Just caring about your own pet theory is enough to bias your judgment. Motivated reasoning gets all of us. Which is why the safeguards can't only be the personal responsibility of the scientist. We also need real safeguards like preregistration, adversarial collaboration, replication, critical peer review. But it goes even deeper: we need not only to check researchers' biases with these safeguards, we need a community who have legitimate differences of opinion. A few activists in a field I suppose is survivable but only if there are people with different priors, different views. Unfortunately, this is very different from reality in academia where too many of us have the same political views. This is especially true in the social sciences.
So if we are all iredeemably biased, why did I pick on activism? I picked on them because they are explicitly aiming for one direction (unlike many non-activists biases which are implicit, I think); they are injecting bias when we ought to be safeguarding against bias. Also, activists today tend to come from one political camp, the same camp that dominates academia. So these biases are especially likely to warp inferences, and yeah I dont think that's good!
As John Jost said on your podcast, he did not see the need for including anyone right of centre in social psych because "the truth is to be found to the left of the democratic party"
His concurrent denial of the existence of left wing authoritarianism tells you all you need to know (at least for an old school centre left anti-authoritarian lile myself)
I appreciated this piece; thank you. Based on the previous commenter's example, I wonder how you would contextualize the social sciences vis-à-vis the natural sciences, or clinical psych, or other fields that could be seen as having some meaningful similarities but also methodological differences downstream of intellectual foundations. Many people presumably get into ecology and conservation biology because when they were young, they wanted to "save animals/trees/nature". Similarly, anthropologists who do fieldwork may have gotten into the specialty because they feel that certain ways of life (eg, those of aboriginal peoples) not just worth knowing but also in need of cultural preservation and maybe even advocacy (which they may not do themselves, but which they would presumably inform via their work). Many mental-health clinicians got into the line of work due to their own or loved ones' struggles with mental health. Everyone brings some autobiographical motivation and attachments; what does it mean to set those things aside?
As I say in the essay, there is no such thing as value-free science. We al bring in different passions and ideas. And I think trying to make the world a better place is a worthwhile goal. So let your values and passions drive the questions you ask, but be open to any and all answers. As long as your northstar is the truth, and you commit to it--including by preregistering hypotheses, designing studies that can give real answers, and reporting on the results no matter if they help or hurt your passion/cause/value--I think the field will be ok. But that is not enough; you also need the field to genuinely be open to those answers too.
I feel like the answer to this Catch-22 is relatively simple, even if people find this kind of thing difficult and/or if there are incentive problems that make this solution hard to implement: (1) study the things you care about, but recognize that you do a palpable and meaningful disservice to both the things you care about (and, potentially, the things you don’t care about) if you do not understand the truth of those things; untrue understandings of reality lead to untrue or misleading diagnoses of problems and useless interventions which misallocate time and resources and have significant opportunity costs or can even backfire and make the thing you care about worse (looking at you, DEI trainings), and (2) if truth is what matters, morally speaking, then you should have *extremely* high epistemological standards for accepting something as true about the things you care about and a lot of intellectual humility about what you already think you know about these subjects; and these standards/ this humility should increase significantly the more emotionally, psychologically, financially and/or axiologically invested you are in a particular subject or finding. To my mind, this simply requires a little self-honesty: Would I be happy or sad to find incontrovertible evidence that Hypothesis X is true? If happy, then any evidence that seemingly supporting Hypothesis X should be viewed with intense caution and suspicion and only accepted if it really does survive intense criticism (and ideally has survived serious, good faith attempts at being falsified), and on the flip side, any evidence challenging Hypothesis X should, of course, be scrutinized but paid more attention to and taken more seriously, even if it appears, at first glance, relatively weak.
I never understood the ferocity of the attacks on the AlShebli et al. paper (lead-authored by a female ECR of colour, for what it's worth). To me the message was not "Women are bad mentors", but rather, "Given that 'who is/was your mentor' is not a secret, this suggests that sexism has not yet been eliminated", which is probably true and certainly seems unlikely to be controversial.
I can understand why progressives disliked the finding, as it implies that rational actors looking for grad school mentors would be wise not to be mentored by women. And that would hurt female mentors, clearly. Also, the explanation for it might have many sources, including sexism (which flatters the progressive narrative), but also less or less effective networking( perhaps a neutral-ish explanation), women playing it safe (perhaps less flattering to the progressive cause) to outright inherent sex differences in math ability (flattering to some conservative narratives). To me, you don't fix a problem by pretending it doesn't exist. So, if people really cared for female mentors, you'd admit the finding and then have a robust exploration for the various possible reasons for it.
Many Thanks for your article!
One other point worth mentioning: The general public is also a player in this. We voters need to decide which experts to consider trustworthy. Research is always unavoidable uncertain. Novel results are often at the limits of what statistics (or, in the physical sciences, instrumentation) allows us to see. Add to that scholar-activists putting their thumbs on the scales and entire fields (as you wrote, anthropology is the most flagrant case) become useless.
The situation is actually a bit worse than that: "Justice" is the policy preference of one faction, and university faculties are demonstrably far to the left of the median American. So scholar-activists are not only forsaking the truth for ideology, but for an ideology which is actively hostile to the median American. So the median American is doubly justified in distrusting scholar-activists' claims.
Excellent piece — chimes with my recent commentary for Nature about trust in science. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01975-x
You're right to distinguish between views and values guiding towards areas of inquiry, and views and values influencing what you find. There is though a subtler challenge at work too. If a discipline becomes dominated by a particular set of views and values, those are inevitably going to guide the whole discipline to regard some questions and areas of inquiry as inherently more worthy than others -- thereby skewing where the evidence base lands. This is likely to happen even if scholars are scrupulous about correcting for the type of motivated reasoning you describe -- which of course they are not! But these are different problems and challenges.
Thanks for the excellent piece. I'm a retired behavioral neuroscientist who has been concerned for a long time about the issues you raise in the article. Regarding your point about how to handle a finding that is socially/politically contentious, I agree about "admitting the finding" and considering possible explanations. BUT at least as important would be attempting to REPLICATE the finding, since the so-called "replication problem" in many areas of science is a very real phenomenon. If our first instinct is to distrust an "inconvenient" finding, that may not be unreasonable given the existence of this problem (of course the point is that we DON'T distrust findings that confirm our existing biases). In any case, unfortunately there is little motivation either from granting agencies or from journals for researchers to perform and publish basic replications of previously published work. That is a major problem that needs real reform.
I had a similar experience as an artist. In my MFA program, politics were taking hold. This was in 1981. I fell under criticism and the effect was persuasive. Rather than question and resist, I went with the flow and started producing preachy, political virtue signalling work. It was not great work and I regret my clumsy attempts at mimicking the anti-avant-garde. It is as hard to be rigorous and truthful in the creative disciplines as it is in the soft and hard sciences.
Great article! Reminds me of a paper I read a bit ago (‘On scholactivism in constitutional studies: Skeptical thoughts’ ) that tackled this same subject from a legal/philosophy perspective. Definitely made me rethink some things!
I looked into (and wrote a manuscript) on homosexuality. Studies on gay parents supposedly all say there is "no difference". But all those studies are made by activists, who have very strong incentives.
The flaws in those studies are too numerous to mention, but I think in some future it would be a field for some truth-searcher.
I can summarize it by saying that it's closer to systematic fraud than science.
Just think about it. If every researcher is an activist who wants to prove that gay parents are just as good as straight parents, would you expect their studies to show anything else?
This is a very clear case of acticvist agendas shaping an entire literature. Quite a statement here!
Sadly the critics are also motivated resoners. Take the Institute for Family Studies for example. They also start with moral priors then prooftext them and fail to account for things like selection effects which is likely the entire effect size for trad con priors. Trad con institutions dont adjudicate self interesy tradeoffs as well as they used to for as msny people and the people for whom it does select into them. These scholars were Christians first, scholars later and have personal self interest in propagating institutions that serve their conpetitive self interest. But this doesn't mean we should ignore them Probably the best we can do is just accept motivated reasoning on all sides and just evaluate the arguments.
You are correct. I disregard and distrust any IFS report for that very reason. (edit: I want to point out that the IFS isn't a scientific organization; I don't think anyone sees them as one either.)
There are a few lgbtq researches I think are reasonably trustworthy, such as Walter Schumm. See for example
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20524536/
Another one is Sotirios Sarantakos who made this study: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/children-australia/article/abs/children-in-three-contexts-family-education-and-social-development/BA0DB5DC62B9E7D955454A5BB165F7F8
I don’t trust the large study by Mark Regnerus, as I think it is too tendentious.
I almost wonder if motivated reasoning, in the right neutral ecosystem is actually a plus as it goads people to find flaws in arguments. So many trad cons are good at funding oversimplifications on the other side, but then turn ti mush when they get high on their own supply.
I think one cannot escape motivated reasoning and activists and critics are both guilty of this. I suppose as long as there are different views that each contest each other, the truth eventually emerges. But only as long as there is robust research on both sides. Where I think activists/critics differ from those of us who have other conflicts of interest (e.g., wanting your pet theory confirmed), is that activists/critics make their biases explicit, leaning into them, whereas garden-variety scientists try actively to limit their biases, to have them only mininally impact the conclusions they draw...
We lean into this in adversarial justice systems. That is, such systems are built on the idea that having counterbalanced motivated reasoners (ideally with an impartial judge and jury!) is a better way of getting at the truth than trying to ensure all the participants in the system are impartial.
That might be fine when that are real advocates on all sides. But, sadly, psychology is more or less a political mono-culture with very few advocates on the other side. So this system requires viewpoint diversity. It also requires impartial judges. Who might they be?
But even if we had that, I am still not sure it would suffice, to be honest. An example from your old grappling partner, Paul Bloom. Let's say I'm a sexist--I hypothetically believe men are better at math/STEM than women. Should I be paired with a dissenting scholar and we duke it out? Or should I not try to blind myself as much as possible to not let this bias seep into my judgment of quant manuscripts written by women (like a blinded orchestra)? I would suggest both remedies (balancing and blinding) have a place--assuming conditions are right.
I din’t know, IFS is populated by scholars who see rhe IFS as a research institute. I learned to be skeptical of adding “studies” to discipline names from church Bible Study, which is the ideal type of starting with conclusions then prooftexting. Let me know when either Women's Studies or the Institute for Family Studies says “Wow, it turns out this thing i have strong pre-existing moral intuitions (and related self interest incentives) about isn’t true.
100%
Great insight and food for thought. Your accolades of Don Taylor threw me back a few decades (more than 3 but who's counting). I adored him. He also inspired me to continue in social sciences and was one of the most dynamic educators I've ever had. I didn't know he passed, he certainly left an incredible legacy. Baruch dayan emet.
Glad you recovered your balance. I was in cognitive, but even there, people get attached to "pet theories", and sometimes resist the evidence.
It’s probably psychological research’s biggest flaw and it infests the entire field. Manipulated studies abound, get massive citations, and drive clinical practice and legislation. The gurus of old thus hold sway even when many of us realise they were full of shit, and new ones arise in a continuous stream.
Honest, accurate, excellent; thank you!
This is great stuff. You have articulated my thoughts more cogently than I have. I share your concerns.
Here's a relevant article: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/is-it-time-to-liquidate-the-study-of-sociology-6b85ac14?st=n3x8JR&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I am worried that psychology will look increasingly like sociology, bringing itself down.
Not that it matters, but I agree with you about the activism and I have seen it in my subfield of psych. It's sad and certainly not why I got into this field. I wonder if the political landscape has made some people recalibrate their interests and decide that the usual topics are just not meaningful enough for them anymore. Maybe they were never *that* interested in pursuing scientific truth? For me, that was always the main driver--I didn't fall into my topic by being a keen student but by questioning and persevering on my own. I find it hard to relate to some of my colleagues now, who are substantially activist in their motivations, it seems.
I love this quote from the Wall Steet Journal: "Whereas those disciplines often use cutting-edge methodologies, sociology seems dusty and theory-laden." It's the theory-laden part I find delicious because many (dusty people) in our field see theory as the answer to our numerous malaises. In contrast, I think we ought to hold off on big-T theorizing and instead try our hand at prediciting a bit more: https://www.speakandregret.michaelinzlicht.com/p/hasty-theories?r=2scefo
Ha ha. Honestly, I think we need a sociological analysis of our field! Because the use of "theory" and "cutting edge methods" doesn't strike me as evidence that we are a harder or more objective science but rather only that we desire to be perceived in that way and we have different status markers. If you use <insert fancy quant method> and have <insert complex and important-sounding theory> you can publish in <insert high status journal>. That's probably too simplistic but you get what I mean! I'm curious about what the dynamics are in your dept re: activism vs truth-seeking?
This is very sad for me to read. I got my M.A. in sociology in 1982 & b/c I wasn't good at statistics & d/n like the politics of college departments, I chose to go into law rather that pursue a Ph.D. in sociology. But my 36 year career as a prosecutor was informed by what I had learned about group interaction, sub cultures & roles in America society. It made me much more understanding in my attitude toward defendants, victims, witnesses & investigators, such as cops, forensic scientists & other experts. I think it made me a better, more open minded prosecutor.
I would never have been able to obtain that degree today b/c I would not have been able to conform.