Conservatives are more susceptible to believe in lies, Fear and Anxiety Drive Conservatives, Liberal Hearts Bleed and Conservatives Don’t: these are just a few fallacious studies snatched by the media posing as fact. They permeate American society corrupting the minds of our youth, and contribute to the protest culture we face today.Accomplishing objectivity is mostly the work of experimentation, but according to a recent publication, researchers also suffer from such preconceptions and are poorly training collegegoers to follow suit.
It is human nature to support views with which we agree, even when evidence is lacking. However, becoming aware of this fact enables us to prevent following false assumptions proclaimed by the media and academia and instead attempt to view the world through impartial lenses.
Exposing the Bias
Lee Jussim, a psychology professor at Rutgers University, authors the book Politics of Social Psychology, which examines prejudices against conservatives in his field of inquiry. Dr. Jussim expounds that not only may investigational data typically favor specific groups but that the overwhelming majority of scholars are left-leaning, resulting in confirmation bias during the peer-review process.
Does Dr. Jussim have a point? According to the journal Behavioral and Brain Science, 58 – 66% of social psychologists are Democrats, whereas only 5 - 8% are Republicans. Furthermore, he exposes their failure to "test competing, alternative hypothesis." For instance, he notes some attempt to smear those on the right as "science deniers" while neglecting to conduct similar trials for liberals. The imbalanced conclusions, however, often take fire in the media and permeate the classroom, causing unsupported stereotypes to spread.
A Flaw in the Data
Chiefly to blame for the popularity of fallacious outcomes against Republicans is that they are preached as statistically significant. As a student adequately trained in higher level data analysis, I am well aware that adverse deductions may be easily manipulated against particular groups through unreliable experimental design and methods, including testing nonrandom subjects or small sample sizes and failing to take alternative hypotheses or confounding variables into consideration.
Psychologists are cognizant when displaying deceiving results, which is of enormous concern to the progress of our nation. As a manager of a cognitive neuroscience lab, I am mindful of the importance of the integrity of research which has been ingrained by the professors under which I work. The same cannot be said for many other students, however, who are indoctrinated by instructors to believe false conclusions.
Some may wonder why it is of considerable concernfor many to believe faulty statistics. The protest cultures currently underway at campuses across the U.S. typically involve social issues that are pushed by these left-leaning professors.
Bigots Beget Bigots
Take for example the Berkeley University lecturers canceling classes to enable protests against free speech week, as reported by Liberty Nation’s Jeff Charles. Furthermore, LN has also documented students across the U.S. attempting to ban right-wing speakers from their universities and spewing death threats at Republican colleagues for their differing political outlooks.
The damage resulting from bigoted instructors exhibiting faulty data is seemingly insurmountable.
Although those in academia are trained to be our most trusted sources for analysis, they are also highly capable of abusing their power through deception of their studies’conclusions. Americans must thus look to research with a skeptical eye. The purpose of science is, after all, discovery for the progress of society.
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