Social Science leaning Left

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/11/du_fresne_on_media.html#comments

some interesting thoughts and quotes develop in this discussion

Bob R (882) Says: 
November 15th, 2012 at 12:59 pm

I think part of the reason for dismissing someone like MacVicar as a “nutter” is that it avoids having to actually consider his arguments.

Why would any intelligent person want to avoid opposing arguments? Because they might threaten a sacred value. You see the same thing in discussions of religion. The response is to simply demonise the heretic.

There was a fascinating article in the NY Times a year ago about Jonathan Haidt’s talk on sacredness and bias in social science research (there seems to be a similar thing in the Climate Change debate to some degree).

Haidt observes:

“The politics of the professoriate has been studied by the economists Christopher Cardiff and Daniel Klein and the sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons. They’ve independently found that Democrats typically outnumber Republicans at elite universities by at least six to one among the general faculty, and by higher ratios in the humanities and social sciences. In a 2007 study of both elite and non-elite universities, Dr. Gross and Dr. Simmons reported that nearly 80 percent of psychology professors are Democrats, outnumbering Republicans by nearly 12 to 1.

The fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology have long attracted liberals, but they became more exclusive after the 1960s, according to Dr. Haidt. “The fight for civil rights and against racism became the sacred cause unifying the left throughout American society, and within the academy,” he said, arguing that this shared morality both “binds and blinds.”

“If a group circles around sacred values, they will evolve into a tribal-moral community,” he said. “They’ll embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they’ll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value.” It’s easy for social scientists to observe this process in other communities, like the fundamentalist Christians who embrace “intelligent design” while rejecting Darwinism. But academics can be selective, too, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan found in 1965 when he warned about the rise of unmarried parenthood and welfare dependency among blacks — violating the taboo against criticizing victims of racism.

“Moynihan was shunned by many of his colleagues at Harvard as racist,” Dr. Haidt said. “Open-minded inquiry into the problems of the black family was shut down for decades, precisely the decades in which it was most urgently needed. Only in the last few years have liberal sociologists begun to acknowledge that Moynihan was right all along.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html

Harriet (706) Says: 
November 15th, 2012 at 1:08 pm

” The true progressive is the first to realise that they are heading in the wrong direction, turn around, and head elsewhere.” Andrew Bolt – The Herald Melbourne.

” It is not the media that invades your privacy, it is the government.” Cassandra Wilkinson -The Australian.

Virtually ALL journalists and social science academics in NZ trumpet socialist and marxist viewpoints without question nor thought, yet just last century both were discredited by the deaths of 120,000,000 human lives.

“….In what we tell ourselves is an age of reason, we are behaving increasingly irrationally. A loss of religious belief has led the West to replace reason and truth with ideology and prejudice. The result has been a kind of mass derangement, as truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor are all turned upside down.” Melanie Phillips – British Writer.

flipper (1,113) Says: 
November 15th, 2012 at 1:11 pm

I think Du Fresne is partially correc. But Karl has stopped short (probably for space reasons) of canvassing some (not all!) key issues:

• The electronic media have a list of regulars who are presented as “experts” on issues which, judged by their utterances, they know bugger all. Think about the regulars on TVNZ and TV3. And, for Lords sake they put known left wing academics on the Q+A panel week after week.

• 2. Academics (well 90+ % anyway) per se have nothing but book knowledge, mostly in a narrow (What was their Phud dissertation on?) field. Their ability to apply their “knowledge” to the real, working world, is almost always zero.

• 3. Economic commentators are no different. Depending on how they want to skew their presentation they will go to an economist or economic group that will support their (the TV producer’s) line of argument.

• 4. Before turning finally to a lack of journalistic INTEGRITY, LET ME COMMENT ON THE AGW/CC/Warmist cult and media coverage. Fairfax lost all credibility when it/they entered into a financial arrangement with a Greenpeace subsidiary. That company, its shareholding et al, is described in the Fairfax annual accounts. Media and academics arguing for AGW/CC depend upon the promotion of this canard for their living. Editors just accept the crap and NEVER test wide ranging and risible assertions. There was one such example just this morning on TV One when their weather fool interviewed some “glacier expert” (who is not an expert or he would have known what causes glaciers to expand or contract) comment ion the contraction of the Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers. Big deal. They have contracted two (2) Ks since 1750 (yes, 1750) according to an AA/DOC road sign.

• 5. The AGW/CC debate is not a debate because the warmists have always declined to debate their views (As is the norm in every individual scientific discipline !) with those that disagree. They claim “peer review”. Crap. But they are always reviewed by a “safe” pair of known (not anonymous) hands. Moreover, CC is such a multi-faceted question that it cannot be adequately addressed by any particular field of expertise. Geologists of repute believe they know more ( it is all in the rocks) than weather (as distinct from wider- ranging climatologists) gurus like Salinger, Wyratt et al. Astrophysicists say they can explain temperature variations. Oceanographers say the sea level “increase” is bullshit and back their views with data from ocean buoys and satellites…..

6. And so on.
The score:
• MS media reporters and leader writers — ZERO. The blogosphere 10
and
Have a N D