09 December 2023

If You Set Out to Prove Something, You Likely Will - At Least in the Soft Sciences

They set out to prove that Red States are bad. Paper finds ‘anti-Asian xenophobia’ in red states, but scholars question design

Bias can get into the most rigorous scientific study. When the field of study is not all that rigorous to begin with...

It is a long article, that has to delve into the problems of the statistics used in the "study." And there are a number of problems with the methodology, which are addressed in the article by Rutgers University Professor Lee Jussim.

Why the scare quotes for "study"?

“First of all, what the journal refers to as a ‘research article’ is two half-pages and a map graphic and is only 567 words, less than the length of an op-ed,” Mark Perry said in an email to The Fix.

“In most fields, research articles would be between 10 and 40 pages with multiple charts, tables, appendices, etc., and most serious academic journals in most fields would never consider a 567-word article,” Perry said. “It’s more like a ‘Letter to the Editor’ or a Comment, but not a ‘research article’ in my opinion.”

But hey, researchers from NYU and the University of Toronto already knew that red states where prejudiced, so why go out their way to investigate?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comment Moderation is in place. Your comment will be visible as soon as I can get to it. Unless it is SPAM, and then it will never see the light of day.

Be Nice. Personal Attacks WILL be deleted. And I reserve the right to delete stuff that annoys me.