Ideology is Hollowing-Out Academic Biology

At Skeptical Inquirer, Jerry A. Coyne and Luana S. Maroja have written about the damage ideology is doing to the field of biology. Like many well-written articles today by people with their eyes open, this is not fun to read. It is never easy to read about the ideological capture of universities or the corruption of entire fields of study or the fact that numerous intelligent good-hearted people are increasingly afraid to speak up. I had the same reaction when viewing this 2022 video by Lawrence Krauss: "Is Woke Science the Only Science Allowed in Academia?"

Here is the Summary of the new article by Coyne and Maroja, "The Ideological Subversion of Biology."

Previous research indicated that corrective information can sometimes provoke a so-called “backfire effect” in which respondents more strongly endorsed a misperception about a controversial political or scientific issue when their beliefs or predispositions were challenged. I show how subsequent research and media coverage seized on this finding, distorting its generality and exaggerating its role relative to other factors in explaining the durability of political misperceptions. To the contrary, an emerging research consensus finds that corrective information is typically at least somewhat effective at increasing belief accuracy when received by respondents. However, the research that I review suggests that the accuracy-increasing effects of corrective information like fact checks often do not last or accumulate; instead, they frequently seem to decay or be overwhelmed by cues from elites and the media promoting more congenial but less accurate claims.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

Here we give six examples of how our own field—evolutionary and organismal biology—has been impeded or misrepresented by ideology. Each example involves a misstatement spread by ideologues, followed by a brief explanation of why each statement is wrong. Finally, we give what we see as the ideology behind each misstatement and then assess its damage to scientific research, teaching, and the popular understanding of science. Our ultimate concern is biology research—the discovery of new facts—but research isn’t free from social influence; it goes hand in hand with teaching and the public acceptance of biological facts. If certain areas of research are stigmatized by the media, for example, public understanding will suffer, and there will follow a loss of interest in teaching as well as in research in these areas. By cutting off or impeding interest in biology, the misrepresentation or stigmatization by the media ultimately deprives us of opportunities to understand the world.

[More . . . ]

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FIRE’s Model Legislation Prohibiting Universities from Requiring Faculty Member to Make Loyalty Pledges or Ideological Commitments

In February, FIRE announced its model legislation that would prohibit all political litmus tests by universities, including DEI statements. I am fully in support. Here is a link to the Model Legislation. What follows is an excerpt from FIRE's announcement:

FIRE warned in a statement last year that the First Amendment “prohibits public universities from compelling faculty to assent to specific ideological views or to embed those views in academic activities.” But colleges have not stopped imposing political litmus tests on students and faculty in the guise of furthering DEI efforts.

Vague or ideologically motivated DEI statement policies can too easily function as litmus tests for adherence to prevailing ideological views on DEI.

[In February, 2023 FIRE introduced model legislation that] prohibits the use of political litmus tests in college admissions, hiring, and promotion decisions. Legislation is strong medicine, but our work demonstrates the seriousness of the threat. While the current threat involves coercion to support DEI ideology, efforts to coerce opposition to DEI ideology would be just as objectionable. Attempts to require fealty to any given ideology or political commitment — whether “patriotism” or “social justice” — must be likewise rejected.

To that end, because we are cognizant of the endless swing of the partisan pendulum, FIRE’s legislative approach bans all loyalty oaths and litmus tests, without regard to viewpoint or ideology. In an effort to avoid exchanging one set of constitutional problems for another, our model legislation prohibits demanding support for or opposition to a particular political or ideological view. We believe this approach is constitutionally sound and most broadly protective of student and faculty rights, both now and in the future.

FIRE strongly believes that loyalty oaths and political litmus tests have no place in our nation’s public universities. Given the pernicious threat to freedom of conscience and academic freedom we have seen on campus after campus over the past several years, legislative remedies are worthy of thoughtful consideration. We look forward to further discussion with both supporters and critics about how best to ensure that our nation’s public colleges and universities remain the havens for intellectual freedom they must be.

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New Study Regarding Tribalism in Politics

New study by Bernstein, Zambrotta, Martin, & Micalizzi on political tribalism. Disturbing and not surprising to anyone who has eyes and ears. Title is: "Tribalism in American Politics: Are Partisans Guilty of Double-Standards?"

Here is the discussion section:

Across experiments, we found strong evidence for the existence of political tribalism and the application of double-standards. In Study 1, we found that tribalism occurs for the perceived legitimacy of hypothetical election outcomes. When asked whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden would be the legitimate president under three different scenarios, Republicans viewed Trump as more legitimate than Biden while Democrats viewed Biden as more legitimate than Trump. Similarly, in Study 2 Part 1, Republicans supported identical presidential policies and actions more under Donald Trump than Barack Obama while Democrats supported identical policies and actions more under Barack Obama than Donald Trump.

A noteworthy element this study is that each item was, in fact, true under both Presidents, which highlights the study’s real-world importance and is an important contribution over prior experiments. In Study 2 Part 2, we showed that Republicans viewed identical statements attributed to Bill Clinton as more bigoted than those attributed to Donald Trump while Democrats viewed the statements as more bigoted when attributed to Trump instead of Clinton. Further, Republicans viewed a statement advocating colorblindness to be generally not racist when attributed to either Dr. Martin Luther King (MLK) or Donald Trump (though racism scores were slightly higher in the latter condition); Democrats also viewed the statement as low in racism when attributed to MLK, but the racism score increased drastically when attributed to Trump. Taken together, these studies suggest that tribalism permeates many aspects of political life and discourse. Policy agreement differs according to the person enacting the policy. Perceptions of racism and xenophobia depend on the person who utters the statement. Alarmingly, even the perceived legitimacy of elections is dependent upon the winner; that is, people assign different standards for election legitimacy depending upon whether their preferred candidate wins or loses. Moreover, some of these effects are rarely seen in the social or cognitive sciences (e.g., Fs>250 when sample size <150), which suggests that tribalism plays a large role, at least in certain contexts.

Our main interest was in documenting if bias exists among each side of the political aisle. However, the study does invite us to ask which side exhibits greater tribal bias . . . To the degree that our results can help weigh in on this question, there was some indication that bias is higher among Democrats, which we call “left-leaning asymmetry”

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Exposing the Pretendians

Peter Boghossian Reports on the "Pretendians." An excerpt from Peter's article:

There is an epidemic of primarily white people—and white women in particular—who are pretending to be Native Americans for professional gain. Dubbed “Pretendians,” these individuals are predominantly active in academia and hold tenured faculty positions or even department chairs.

To be sure, this is a cultural oddity. It is not, however, particularly surprising given the career advantages the academy confers on Native Americans. What is bizarre is that once a university finds out that one of its faculty is pretending to be Native American, they do nothing about it. Nothing.

I invite you to ponder this: The same institutions that start meetings with land acknowledgments, champion Native American history, obsess over equity-based racial solutions to contemporary ills, and perseverate on historical tragedies, completely ignore known instances of fraud by white people who are pretending to be indigenous and who receive direct financial reward as a result. I cannot believe that the Pretendian scam is not a bigger story. It is a clear example of staggering hypocrisy on multiple levels.

Here is Peter's interview with Jacqueline Keeler, a Native American author and journalist who has explored the phenomena of Pretendians.

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Pay No Attention to that Rent-Seeking Anti-Racist Behind the Curtain

Is the enormous amount of money spent on DEI programs helping America's poor and disenfranchised. Connor Friedersdorf doesn't think so. Here's an excerpt from his article at The Atlantic:

"The DEI Industry Needs to Check Its Privilege: The worst of the industry is expensive and runs from useless to counterproductive."

[T]he DEI-consulting industry is social-justice progressivism’s analogue to trickle-down economics: Unrigorous trainings are held, mostly for college graduates with full-time jobs and health insurance, as if by changing us, the marginalized will somehow benefit. But in fact, the poor, or the marginalized, or people of color, or descendants of slaves, would benefit far more from a fraction of the DEI industry’s profits . . .

[T]he reflexive hiring of DEI consultants with dubious expertise and hazy methods is like setting money on fire in a nation where too many people are struggling just to get by. The professional class should feel good about having done something for social justice not after conducting or attending a DEI session, but after giving money to poor people. And to any CEO eager to show social-justice-minded employees that he or she cares, I urge this: Before hiring a DEI consultant, calculate the cost and let workers vote on whether the money should go to the DEI consultant or be given to the poor. Presented with that choice, I bet most workers would make the equitable decision.

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