It seems like the taboo is more publicizing than conducting the research (i.e., outside of your favorite specialized journal). The Bell Curve debacle underlined that, what with the APA task-force agreeing with most of its points. (On an unrelated note, I often wonder whether Murray was better off ignoring the racial dimension of it in terms of eliciting fruit from the debate, though that would have been somewhat dishonest.) The most interesting finding of Snyderman and Rothman's survey was that experts in the fields relating to intelligence favored scientists who hadn't really set foot in the public sphere over those who had; the specific views of the scientist in question were less relevant. Eg, they would dislike Jensen, but respect someone who held similar opinions but stuck to writing in journals.

Then again, I'm merely a college student without any experience in trying to publish.

Can someone point me to the research Goldberg refers to when he speaks of the negative consequences of gay marriage?

ANM:

Goldberg never claimed it is scientifically proven. I don’t know if it is true or not (as far as I know it has not been studied), but two potential negative consequences are more children raised in all-gay homes, and a reduction of the romantic “brand” of marriage, leading to more single mothers.

Lwka writes a good post, but I find the claim that we can’t or should not try to compare the left and right stupidity on science odd.

First of all let me point out an obvious reason why the left-war on science is worse than the conservative. Their stupidity has enormous policy consequences, creationism does not.

Secondly the lefts war applies to basically all of the modern left (I would argue that it is all but impossible to believe in racial and gender differences, the role of IQ, understand and accept the results from the science of economics and support the liberal left). The republican camp is split, plenty of classical liberals understand evolution and have no problem with science.

I think global warming is a good example: the left likes to tell themselves they are enlightened and scientific, but do not accept the rules of science, such as open fact based debate. Ask the average leftists that rants about global warming what the expected rise in sea levels is according to the IPCC, and why we should care.

ANM, I think that's on track. However, keep in mind that (IIRC) Larry Summers made his infamous remarks at a closed meeting. Likewise, I think a case can be made that publicity came to Jensen at least as much as the other way around.

Then there's the issue raised in the case of Lewotin's fallacy. It appears that the greater access to publicity given to uplifting (but incorrect) ideas can lead to their growing into an unexamined but oft repeated consensus. I've looked into the technical literature and even before AWF Edward's 2003 paper, you can find discussion of the basic problem of Lewontin's fallacy, although it is somewhat obscured by the technical nature of the discussion. These obviously weren't enough of a corrective, and the fallacy persisted.

A proper evaluation of the subject really requires a more in depth analysis.

can’t or should not try to compare the left and right stupidity on science odd.

i meant that we won't succeed (in producing a conclusion relatively free of bias) without more effort than any individual is liable to bring to the subject in any kind of arm-chair exercise

I would argue that it is all but impossible to believe in racial and gender differences, the role of IQ, understand and accept the results from the science of economics and support the liberal left

it may be "all but impossible" to believe those things and support their attacks on the science, or to support the reasoning given for liberal left policies, or to support all of the policies as they are actually executed, but i think Steven Pinker, Peter Singer, et al. demonstrate a counter example of left Darwinians. i imagine a straw poll of GNXP contributors and regular commenters would find additional counter examples. however, without a doubt, such people are thin on the ground.

Secondly the lefts war applies to basically all of the modern left ... The republican camp is split, plenty of classical liberals understand evolution and have no problem with science.

There is some data in the GSS that probably gets to this, but I don't know if it bears out your prediction. I don't think the beliefs of individual in mass society are especially informative to the topic. Elites and opinion leaders are the important demographic.

heir stupidity has enormous policy consequences, creationism does not.

more plausible before the religous right began to take an interest in medical funding (i.e., stem cells).


Secondly the lefts war applies to basically all of the modern left (I would argue that it is all but impossible to believe in racial and gender differences, the role of IQ, understand and accept the results from the science of economics and support the liberal left).

i find this odd, you make this comment on a blog where half the contributing principals find the assertions you submit possible, plausible or probable, and, consider themselves members of the liberal left! you see, the idea that one can not accept HBD and be on the left is as convincing to me as the idea that one can not believe in god and evolution simultaneously. myself, i am not on the left nor do i believe in god, but as an empiricist i have to admit that plenty of people seem to be leftish/liberal in sentiment who accept the factual content of HBD, and there are plenty of people who believe in god and accept evolution. i might disagree with the logic, but that doesn't mean i can wish these people away. individuals in both categories contribute to this blog. that's a fact.

also, ikwa said: "however, without a doubt, such people are thin on the ground" in response. i think this has to be qualified, many more people on the left are willing to accept the general findings of gender differences or the validity of neoclassical economics than racial differences. so the thinness differs depending on the issue at hand. finally, the thinness has to be normalized by the fact that in regards to racial differences a great number on the right also wouldn't accept this, though the religious tendency to call heretic is less pronounced outside of neoconservatives.

let me be more explicit about something. there are many here who speak of discovering HBD and how it destroyed their liberal sensibilities. for me this is not so.

a) HBD was never an epiphany, i always found it plausible, though i was skeptical before i explored the topic in detail.

b) if you plot my acceptance of HBD vs time (t0 = year 2000), the slope would be positive. if you plot my conservatism vs. time, the slope would be negative.

there are semantical issues about what "conservative" means of course, etc. the point is that there are complexities & it isn't as cut & dried in the same way for everyone in regards to what the axioms entail. it tires me when those who accept the reality of human variation can't seem to accept the reality of variation in a chain of inferences from the same axioms. people don't always think like you, deal (and here, i look both left and right).

1. “more plausible before the religous right began to take an interest in medical funding (i.e., stem cells).”

Ah! Great that you hit the spot directly: the Republican Party has opposed PUBLIC funding of stem cell research, but has not opposed PRIVATE funding. Stem cell research is yet another example of the leftist view of science as an identity rather than actual belief in reason based thinking: if stem cell research is worth doing the private sector will do it. Yet the subject is routinely discussed as if it were a question of the actual existence of the research, rather than vesting tax payer money in subsidies.

In the end a lot of money is irrationally being wasted as a way for leftists to signal how rational they are (state funding in California).

Do you have an example of actual policy consequences of creationism? Maybe there is one, but I can’t think of it.

2. Of course I know there exists people that believe in HBD and are liberals. Especially among the biologist crowd, that puts a lot of weight on anti-religiosity . But:

A) they are few, and from groups with strong liberal identities (academia, Jewish people). It is a statistical question, do you think this blog is representative of the population? In the general public the spread of these ideas would change undermine liberal positions dramatically.

B) they are very rarely strong in their left wing policies, or if they are than to be Frank that is just intellectual incoherence (how can you believe in Marxism as an explanatory theory and the empirics in the Bell Curve?). Pinker does a few half hearted attempts to claim beliefs in human nature have no effect on policies. Well, he had to say that, but it is not true. The ideological battle is not based on differences in morality, it is based on differences in world view. Feminism is based on a belief of patriarchal structures/socialisation explanatory factor for gender differences. Bring in biology and feminism becomes an empty ideology.

How about the idea that if we accept that genetic differences in IQ/ability are the main cause for inequality? The intellectuals who think this would make people MORE likely to want to give subsidies to the poor are kidding themselves. The main motivation for supporting a income equality is fairness-preferences. According to polling those who support the welfare state tend to believe the poor are socially “stuck” in poverty, and that they are no less lazy than others.

C) I intentionally included economics as a second component. If you are truly scientifically minded almost the entire Democratic party program is out the window.

Minimum wage? Taking oil company profits? Regulating drug prices? Protectionism? Public health care? Subsidizing loans? Opposing cost-benefit analysis of global warming?


What kind of liberal is left? Either someone who just doesn’t like traditional conservatives as people and doesn’t want to be associated with them, or someone who understands most liberal theories are nonsense, but who weights some particular issue very heavily (I don’t know, gay marriage or something like that).

I would argue that it is all but impossible to believe in racial and gender differences, the role of IQ, understand and accept the results from the science of economics and support the liberal left

Well the left often champion rights for the disabled, including transfers of wealth from others to help them with their misfortune. Would it be so different to still support transfers of wealth to the poor just because we found out they were poor mostly because of their genes?

I would argue that it is all but impossible to believe in racial and gender differences, the role of IQ, understand and accept the results from the science of economics and support the liberal left

Also, the science of economics does not establish that free market capitalism is a fair and just system. For example see these articles by the Harvard Business School and the New Scientist.

Econophysics is increasingly revealing the structural unfairness within free market capitalism. Not just in practice but even in theory. I can see opposition to capitalism taking a more neo-Georgist turn in the future, rather than the present knee jerk, ad hoc, redistributionism of socialism.

If you are truly scientifically minded almost the entire Democratic party program is out the window.

Minimum wage? Taking oil company profits? Regulating drug prices? Protectionism? Public health care? Subsidizing loans? Opposing cost-benefit analysis of global warming?

well, if you are truly scientifically minded, the entire Republican platform is out the window as well--no child left behind? protectionism? private health care? the drug war?

I'm not trying to get in a debate about "who is worse", but let's not pretend there's some ideal political party for scientifically-minded thinkers.

Reading and really getting the arguments in _The Bell Curve_ was probably a big contributor to my moving somewhat away from libertarianism, and toward more acceptance of welfare kinds of programs for people at the bottom. If you accept the premise that a huge part of your success in life, by almost every reasonable definition of success, depends partly on IQ, and if you accept that IQ is mostly determined by genes and childhood environment, how the heck do you completely blame people for their own failure to do well in life? Blaming someone for being on welfare starts looking a lot like blaming them for being on chemotherapy.

Most people didn't get that from _The Bell Curve_; in fact, I think a lot of people got either the "Yikes, these guys are closet Klansmen" reaction or the "Aha, I always knew we were superior" reaction, even though neither one was much supported by the contents of the book.

p-ter: private health care- Here is an interesting factoid - in the last decade there are two areas in the practice of medicine where ( simultaneously) costs have gone down and outcomes improved dramatically. lasik vision surgery and cosmetic surgery. The common factor- third parties payers do not cover either procedure. choices are all completetly commoditized consumer driven choices. If anything the " bush" plan- or one iteneration of it at least takes steps in this direction.

Protectionism is alot more a ideological platform of the left than the right.

I don't see a lot of democrats out there champining legalization either- au contraire the few serious discussions I have seen have been on the right libertarian side of the spectrum.

-no child left behind?- a feeble misguided repub attemt to coopt an essentially dem platform.

But getting back to " on topic" Don' tyou agree that for scientists and acdemics to exhibit the amount of cognitive dissonace and ideologically driven tomfoolery that they exhibit is a lot worse that when politicins do the same. In matters of science we do and should expect a higher standard of rigourousness from our scientists that from or pols. is that naive?

The academic system in this country ( and i suppose most others ) is mired in the worst forms of clubbyness nepotism good ole boyism etc. the tenure system in universities and the system of lobbying for grants, promote abuse of science and pc/junk science. It is not surprising thet in the last two decades, a very substantial portion of advaces breakthroughs etc have come from the evil profit motive freemarket industry, not from the sterile and purile academic world of ideologically driven science.

finally, the thinness has to be normalized by the fact that in regards to racial differences a great number on the right also wouldn't accept this, though the religious tendency to call heretic is less pronounced outside of neoconservatives.

this is borne out in the gss data. hbd denial wrt race diffs is invariant to party identity among whites. republicans tend to blame race differences in social outcomes on "will" and democrats on "discrimination", but the correlation is moderate.

belief that humans evolved has a moderate correlation with party identity

Noen of the topics in the 'partial' list are actually taboo. Perhaps research on them might be sneered at by the chattering class in academia, but that doesn't mean the work won't be funded or get done. Research grants are competitive, but a good solid proposal has a reasonable chance of success even if the chatterers don't like it. The use of 'left' and 'right' in this discussion is somewhat simplistic, as well. Both sides have historically been 'against' things before they were 'for ' them.

Ah! Great that you hit the spot directly: the Republican Party has opposed PUBLIC funding of stem cell research, but has not opposed PRIVATE funding. Stem cell research is yet another example of the leftist view of science as an identity rather than actual belief in reason based thinking: if stem cell research is worth doing the private sector will do it.

who on the right supports defunding public monies to support scientific research? you point out that this weblog is a thin slice of the population, but similarly those on the right would would on principle reject public funding for science are also quite marginal (i would have been one years ago, so i know the lay of the land). you're playing rhetorical games to support your argument by employing double standards. the subset of the population that is "rational" is fundamentally a thin slice, and the subset that exhibits the intersection of the various opinions we are expressing here is by their nature a small slice.

If you are truly scientifically minded almost the entire Democratic party program is out the window.

re: economics, it's kind of dumb to talk about it as if it is "scientific" in the way biology is. downstream from a few core axioms and findings (e.g., free trade) it is a highly normative science when you get into public policy, as can be illustrated by the political range which economists exhibit. also, if you are interested in HBD shouldn't you chill the lionization of the "science" of economics since so many in this field have been pretty blind to bounding factors in their "rational actors"? the invisible hand of the market moves across a rugged psychological landscape.

again, you're one of those who simply seems to have a hard time understanding that

a) your axioms aren't 'scientific,' they're your foundational norms. not everyone has the same utility function

b) other humans can adhere to an alternative chain of propositions and still remain rational (i'm using a specific definition of rational here of course, that is, as a mental process rather than the "correct" sequence of inferences)

the Republican Party has opposed PUBLIC funding of stem cell research, but has not opposed PRIVATE funding

Well, if you don't support public funding for an innovative area, you're basically torpedo-ing the research -- no one likes huge risk & uncertainty, least of all in the private sector. Real innovation requires state intervention take the blow of negligible initial profitability. Take, say, the box as well as the network that you and I are using to communicate. Or the planes used to facilitate business across large distances.

Innovative things such as these either come straight from governmental bodies like the DoD or NIH, or else from the government's patronizing of "private" research institutes like MIT via grants, etc.

Also, you could describe our "Invade the world, Invite the world" policies as a No Child Left Behind writ large: Iraqis are best suited to liberal democracy (no one knows, but not obvious, and won't come from the barrel of an invader's gun anyhow), or lower-class Latin American illegal immigrants will easily assimilate to the demands that US society places on intelligence & behavioral traits.

This is due to a profound ignorance of human science -- though a cynic would say that the policies just reflect power-lust, and that those in power will slap together whatever post hoc, fashionable justification they can in order to sell it to others.

In any case, think of how much of a waste / cost these policies & their kind represent. It won't do to point to paleocons, since neocons enjoy vastly greater power than paleocons.

I intentionally included economics as a second component. If you are truly scientifically minded almost the entire Democratic party program is out the window.

also, i have to add this. here is one survey which shows that the ratio of democrats to republicans in the academy is
3:1 among economists. you've made up your mind. why look up data to support your contentions?

However, keep in mind that (IIRC) Larry Summers made his infamous remarks at a closed meeting.
It was, but it was also interdisciplinary, having experts from more than just say, psychometricians, to whom the offending knowledge would be intimately familiar. Assuming that they didn't publish much about the affair afterwards in mainstream channels, Summers would still be president. Similarly, one could've bought membership of the ISIR (the organization that publishes Intelligence) and attended their conference, and heard people talking about how skin color determines intelligence and caused a storm by 'revealing' this to the public. Even the liberals among psychometricians seem to submit to the unwritten rule that one shall not publicize his colleague's controversial theories (like the skin aforementioned one).

Agnostic, while the Invade, Invite view is held by some on the right, the opposite view, moreso of the Invite portion, is rather rare on the left. And, according to Wikipedia's history of flight article, the government did not have a big role (aside from a French airship, according to my cursory glance). It seems far too absolute to say that all major innovation stems from government research, or even nonprofit research.

who on the right supports defunding public monies to support scientific research?
It's about defunding research to which a large swathe of the public objects.

it is a highly normative science when you get into public policy, as can be illustrated by the political range which economists exhibit.
you've made up your mind. why look up data to support your contentions?

Besides the possibility of inaccurate expert consensuses (consensi?), those economists aren't voting yes or no on the efficiency of a specific policy. They may be voicing their approval of the Democratic Party's overall platform, or just want enacted that party's redistributive schemes. To take a specific case, minimum wage, there is an opposite, 'Republican,' 3:1 trend:

A 2000 survey by Dan Fuller and Doris Geide-Stevenson reports that of a sample of 308 American Economic Association economists, 45.6% fully agreed with the statement, "a minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers", 27.9% agreed with provisos, and 26.5% disagreed. The authors of this study also reweighted data from a 1990 sample to show that at that time 62.4% of academic economists agreed with the statement above, while 19.5% agreed with provisos and 17.5% disagreed.[26] Wikipedia

Blaming someone for being on welfare starts looking a lot like blaming them for being on chemotherapy.
Well, what The Bell Curve did for your libertarianism, Heather Mac Donald may do for your support of welfare. Basically, she claims that people can lead decent but modest lives if they avoid the pitfalls of illegitimacy, addiction, divorce, etc.

this is borne out in the gss data...
But aren't we talking about party elites?

As suggested before, in light of HBD, will liberal policy may become far more radical, or will it moderate?

If the poor, for instance, are just as smart as the wealthy, is it such a bad idea to assure that they attend college in equal numbers? But it seems that they aren't, so the effort is misguided. If liberals accepted the inequality of the distribution of IQ among Socioeconomic classes, would they vie for SES AA still, or moderate their position by saying, let's determine the fraction of the poor who are suitable for higher education and make that our goal for their frequency in college (instead of going for equal representation). Liberal policies are predicated on the premise that they work, that they will reduce inequality. If liberals accept that they don't, what then? (Not that these views are limited to liberals.)

a very substantial portion of advaces breakthroughs etc have come from the evil profit motive freemarket industry, not from the sterile and purile academic world of ideologically driven science.

"sterile and purile academic world of ideologically driven science". wtf? you've got yourself a pretty phrase, but does it mean anything? Specifically, the vast majority of publicly funded science in the us is biomedical in nature-- what ideology is driving it?

also, I'm pretty sure no one here has said the profit motive is "evil". it's not evil, but nor is it a panacea. is that a statement you would agree with?

and heard people talking about how skin color determines intelligence and caused a storm by 'revealing' this to the public.

i'm a little confused about what you're saying here. be careful how you use the word 'determined.' we now know what causes skin color (genetically) to a good approximation. they are 4-5 loci of large effect. in contrast, g seems to be a conventional quantitative trait of small effect. on other words, the relationship is not causal in regards to genetic architecture, but a correlation from demographic history. if you don't know that, you're stupid and should stop commenting here.

Besides the possibility of inaccurate expert consensuses (consensi?), those economists aren't voting yes or no on the efficiency of a specific policy. They may be voicing their approval of the Democratic Party's overall platform, or just want enacted that party's redistributive schemes. To take a specific case, minimum wage, there is an opposite, 'Republican,' 3:1 trend:

i'm not saying they agree with the whole democratic agenda. but obviously there isn't anything fundamentally 'scientific' about being anti-democratic. as for problems about expert consensus, what do we do? just go along with everything you've reasoned because you're omniscient? experts are quite often wrong, but the key is to beat random expectation.

Basically, she claims that people can lead decent but modest lives if they avoid the pitfalls of illegitimacy, addiction, divorce, etc.

basically, your attitude is to stop at thinkers who support your contentions :-) i like heather, she's a friend, but behavior genetics has a lot to say about her culturalism which contradicts it (in a firm quantitative framework). i think that is the sort of thing that the original commenter was alluding to, and from your comment they're probably more well informed than you are (they're a long time reader, so i assume they are familiar with the evidence reviewed in judith rich harris' popular books). so stop looking down your nose at others.

Research grants are competitive, but a good solid proposal has a reasonable chance of success even if the chatterers don't like it

congress does have an effect on what gets funded, you know. people who do work on human fertility, miscarriages and the like, sometimes using tissue from miscarried or aborted fetuses, had to invent euphemisms for those things because members of congress were running searches on (already accepted by the NIH) proposals for things like "abortion" and "miscarriage" and lobbying to have them turned down.

it's also true that research on evolution continues despite political support for creationism and its various offshoots. but I wouldn't argue that everything is just hunky dory.

It's about defunding research to which a large swathe of the public objects.

"large swathe"? you had to say that because only a minority of the public objects to the specific research in question. if you eliminate all research that a "large swathe" objects to that's a lot of research.

an observation. on my other weblog ikwa noted that this conversation has turned into "left vs. right, who is more anti-science?" again. one of the frustations with scienceblogs i have is the assumption that liberals are by definition the "pro-science" side, and the faux scientific theories promoted by people like george lakoff that liberalism follows naturally and inevitably from a scientific worldview are in wide circulation. and yet here we have some who are arguing that liberalism is fundamentally anti-science (while marginalizing the anti-science elements of the right [creationism is not influential] or rejecting the scientific consensus when it doesn't suit [anthropenic global warming is a dogma]). it seems to me that perhaps scientism is a strain of HBU (human biouniversalism) on the elite level. not only does this mean that science is lionized as the summum bonum, but that their normative beliefs are by definition scientific.

(i have scientistic leanings myself, so the term isn't mean necessarily as an insult)

My side's Science can beat up your side's Science.

Razib:

The 3:1 ratio study is two years old for me, thank you. Let me repeat to you what I told Dan Klein: I D E N T E T Y. The same person who wrote that study recently wrote another great article, where he asked Economists that supported the minimum wage to motivate it.

http://www.econjournalwatch.org/ ...January2007.pdf

What is striking is the almost complete lack of reference to scientific economic research to motivate their political position.


“who on the right supports defunding public monies to support scientific research? you point out that this weblog is a thin slice of the population, but similarly those on the right would would on principle reject public funding for science are also quite marginal (i would have been one years ago, so i know the lay of the land). you're playing rhetorical games to support your argument by employing double standards. the subset of the population that is "rational" is fundamentally a thin slice, and the subset that exhibits the intersection of the various opinions we are expressing here is by their nature a small slice.”

Eh, no, I am not playing any game. What I wrote applies equally well to the right elite. National Review, bloggs etc. The arguments against public stem cell research are simple to make.

“re: economics, it's kind of dumb to talk about it as if it is "scientific" in the way biology is. downstream from a few core axioms and findings (e.g., free trade) it is a highly normative science when you get into public policy, as can be illustrated by the political range which economists exhibit. also, if you are interested in HBD shouldn't you chill the lionization of the "science" of economics since so many in this field have been pretty blind to bounding factors in their "rational actors"?”

Yeah, thank god biologists are not political or normative

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mismeasu...e/dp/ 0140258248

Rationality is an aggregate behavioural assumption, not a descriptive individual one.

Economics is more political than biology because it deals with more policy relevant issues, not because it is inherently (methodically) less scientific. This should be clear from the explosion of crazed political controversy whenever biology enters policy relevant issues.


”again, you're one of those who simply seems to have a hard time understanding that

”a) your axioms aren't 'scientific,' they're your foundational norms. not everyone has the same utility function”

Utility function has very little to do with differences in political opinion. World view is the main explanatory factor. Even opinions about equality-efficiency tradeoffs and similar issues that on the surface seem based on utility are often ultimately a function of how you see the determinates of inequality (structures or bad norms/judgement).

“ you had to say that because only a minority of the public objects to the specific research in question. if you eliminate all research that a "large swathe" objects to that's a lot of research.”

Razib why are you still making the silly claim that is about “eliminating” stem cell research? Surely you must be able to understand the difference between allowing free research on a morally loaded subject and taxing the share of the public that opposes it and forcing them to pay for something they morally object to?

“Well, if you don't support public funding for an innovative area, you're basically torpedo-ing the research -- no one likes huge risk & uncertainty, least of all in the private sector. Real innovation requires state intervention take the blow of negligible initial profitability. Take, say, the box as well as the network that you and I are using to communicate. Or the planes used to facilitate business across large distances.

Innovative things such as these either come straight from governmental bodies like the DoD or NIH, or else from the government's patronizing of "private" research institutes like MIT via grants, etc.”

I am sorry but this is just nonsense. If stem cell research really has potential it would be develop by the private sectors. No ones like risk and uncertainty; this is why the return of capital is higher than 2-3%. 2/3 of US R&D is privately financed.

You have to distinguish between what the government does today and the extreme claim the it would not been done without the government.

i was about to post a point by point response, and i stopped, and was like WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE TALKING ABOUT ANYMORE??? it's like i'm reading those circle-jerking pol blogs. what a waste of time >:-( you two are majorly on my shit list. i know the 'scientific' way to treat people i dislike, that's for sure. i apologize to for taking the thread in this direction to everyone else.

Iwaka—

Interesting blog entry. I agree, too many quite low level but nonetheless lengthy comments.

My overall take which the entry tended to support in my mind (but didn’t itself directly argue) is that the right’s “war on science” is more a potential threat than something which has actually effected what is researched and how much, to any significant degree. The principal exception is of course stem cell research. Even there thought the push back from the left and center has been so strong that it seems the overall effects aren’t that great, given the private and some state level funding that has risen up to substitute. In climate research, the other area often cited, from what I’ve seen the Bush admin has principally only placed some pressure on moderating policy proposals and summary conclusions by some outspoken scientists in the administration, rather than affecting what climate science itself can research or the funding it’s getting to do it – which easily leads the world.

In contrast it seems to me that the pressures of the left in the academy and MSM on causing most (not all) scientists whose work touches on taboo topics to avoid research from which the most taboo conclusions can be drawn is pretty considerable. Further it’s been going on quite consistently and until very recently with increasing insistence for decades, no matter who is in power in Washington. It’s been and continues to be pervasive. It doesn’t manage to be completely effective, but it has surely had much effect. As well people are scared day to day about much of this pressure from the left in ways that researchers simply aren’t about pressures from the right.

Bruce Lahn announced he was going to focus his genetics research in other less controversial areas at a decent interval after his findings of that likely intelligence mediating loci had been under great selective pressure over the last ~6k years, and also appeared with startlingly different frequencies among Europeans, E. Asians and Africans, started raising a furor. His research institution was among those that reportedly applied pressure.

There are many examples of IQ researchers losing their jobs over their findings, particularly if they write about them in ways the better educated lay public can understand. Security of tenure and whether or not people have it varies by locale. Brand was fired. Rushton at an Ontario Canadian university was the subject of a criminal investigation for possible “hate speech” violations as a result of his discussions of his research findings, which did not involve any popular unscientific slurs or recommendation of any unsavory (or illegal) action. The problem was his scientific theories themselves, despite the fact that he has done considerable credible supporting research and literature reviews.

The pressures are felt all over the place by many people, in varying degrees.

I think the effects have been far greater.

The taboos of the left against doing certain research and especially against honestly summing up what all the disparate findings strongly suggest, has had massive effects on our continued national ineptitude in creating the most effective programs to help the “disadvantaged” as much as they can be in schools. (More discipline, more repetition of the basics until they’re actually mastered, and before long in the curriculum more focus on vocational training for the less intelligent – despite who most shows up there.)

razib:
That was the best possible reply a person could come up with on this thread. I mean that sincerely.

This is the >130IQ version of myspace drama. Fun to watch, but getting sucked into it is like the time-eating vortex of death.
Stick a fork into it, it's done.

For the most part, I am operating under the assumption that the problems identified by Mooney and Sokal are real and important, but I will argue that the problem they identify extends into academia.

It seems tremendously unfair not to note that Sokal, a self described leftist, has already had one of the great attacks (in 1996) on the non-scientific academic left. To quote wikipedia:

Curious to see whether the postmodern cultural studies journal Social Text would publish any submission which "flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions", Sokal submitted for publication a grand-sounding, but nonsensical paper entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity".

The journal did publish it, and Sokal then revealed the hoax in the journal Lingua Franca [2], arguing that the left and social science would be better served by intellectual underpinnings based on reason. He replied to leftist and postmodernist criticism of the deception by saying that his motivation had been to "defend the Left from a trendy segment of itself."

For those that haven't read "Transgressing the Boundaries," it is truly funny (in small doses).

It seems tremendously unfair not to note that Sokal, a self described leftist, has already had one of the great attacks (in 1996) on the non-scientific academic left.

by, for example, linking to the wikipedia sokal affair* article in the first sentence?

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sok...ki/ Sokal_Affair