[...]Ideological Bias in Social Psychology? « The Situationist[...]…

First, I would expand on the concession that Haidt himself made by joking that the underrepresentation of conservatives in social psychology could very well be due to their being closed to new ideas that may threaten the status quo. And that post-Galileo, closed-mindedness is not a desirable trait in a scientist.

Second, regarding his dubious claim that academia is dominated by the left, I would respond: economics. Then I’d say: “Economics. Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention – where you talking about some sort of left-wing bias in academia?”

Back to seriousness: that is a good point. If academia is dominated by the left, we’d see economics departments that are a hell of a lot different than currently constituted.

Third, Haidt’s evidence, such as it is, is composed solely of the disproportionate representation of leftists in social psychology. That, and a couple of anecdotal examples of conservative students who feel discriminated against. (I don’t need to tell the readership here that SJT would predict members of advantaged groups to be more sensitive to discrimination than members of disadvantaged groups.) I would move for dismissal of Haidt’s case on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

The rest of what he had to say is prima facie plausible. No doubt, conservative students feel as uncomfortable expressing their political views among their disproportionately leftist colleagues as would vegetarians expressing their dietary choices among their co-workers at a meatpacking plant.

But that is irrelevant. And here is where a trademark of the right – braggadocio, for lack of an English word – might come in handy. If social reality is being misrepresented by social psychologists owing to their “liberal” bias, then a forum for these conservative iconoclasts (oxymoron alert!) should be created. If political conservatives have theories that produce robust results in experimentation, they can be invited to publish their work anonymously on The Situationist, or a more fitting forum.

Then again, I was probably irked far more than most by Haidt, and inspired to write this solely on account of his using Larry Summers in his argument – as a martyr. Yeah. One of the guys responsible for Russian life expectancy plunging by over a decade is a martyr – a *martyr*! – because some politically correct academics unfairly castigated him for making a supposition about genetic factors playing a role in determining female representation in… who-the-hell cares, the guy’s grasp of his own academic discipline is such that the implementation of his ideas resulted in millions of needless, preventable deaths!

Fin.