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Larregue’s Critique of Cofnas et al. (2017): A Rejoinder
Nathan Cofnas
1
&Noah Carl
2
&
Michael A. Woodley of Menie
3
Published online: 12 March 2018
#
Abstract Data from the General Social Survey indicate that conservatives’self-
reported trust in scientists has steadily decreased since 1974. In Cofnas et al. (The
American Sociologist,2017), we suggested that this trend may have been partly
driven by the increasing tendency of scientific institutions, and the representatives
of such institutions, to distort social science for the sake of liberal activism.
Larregue (The American Sociologist,2017) makes three opposing arguments: (1)
It is Bvery hard^to establish the charge of bias, especially since we did Bnot state
what [we] mean by ‘bias.’^(2) We did not establish a causal relationship between
scientists’(alleged) liberal activism and conservatives’distrust of science, and we
ignored activism by conservative scientists. (3) We were wrong to advocate
Baffirmative action^for conservatives in academia. We address these arguments
in turn: (1) Larregue does not engage with our main arguments that liberal bias
exists in social science. (2) In recent years, prominent scientific organizations
have, with great publicity, intervened in policy debates, always supporting the
liberal side without exception. It is not unreasonable to assume that this would
diminish conservatives’trust in these organizations. Contra Larregue, in Cofnas
et al. (The American Sociologist,2017) we explicitly acknowledged that conser-
vative scientists can also be biased. (3) We never advocated Baffirmative action^
for conservatives, and in fact we object to such a proposal.
Keywords Politics and science .Trust in science .Political polarization .Political bias in
science
Am Soc (2018) 49:328–335
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-018-9372-6
*Nathan Cofnas
nathan.cofnas@balliol.ox.ac.uk
1
Balliol College, Oxford OX1 3BJ, UK
2
Nuffield College, Oxford, UK
3
Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
#The Author(s) 2018
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Introduction
Based on data from the General Social Survey (GSS), Gauchat (2012) reports that
American conservatives’trust in science has fallen significantly since 1974. GSS
interviewers preface their question about trust in science with the following:
I am going to name some institutions in this country. As far as the people running
these institutions are concerned, would you say you have a great deal of confi-
dence, only some confidence, or hardly any confidence at all in them?
The interviewer then asks respondents about Bthe Scientific Community.^In 1974,
49% of self-identified conservatives responded with Ba great deal^compared with 48%
of liberals and 45% of moderates. Moderates started reporting less confidence in the
late 70s and early 80s. Conservatives’confidence dropped steadily, while liberals
showed no discernible change. By 2010, 38% of conservatives, 40% of moderates,
and 50% of liberals answered Ba great deal.^
In Cofnas et al. (2017), we suggested that declining conservative trust in scientists—or
the leaders of scientific institutions—might be due to increasing liberal activism by scientific
institutions. We provided several examples where prominent, mainstream scientific organi-
zations or prominent members of the scientific community have misrepresented findings in
science (e.g., in testimony to Congress or as amici curiae) to promote liberal causes. We
cited evidence that conservatives have lost trust not in all scientists, but only in so-called
Bimpact scientists,^i.e., those whose work has policy implications (e.g., psychologists who
study discrimination). Conservatives have greater trust than liberals in Bproduction
scientists^whose work does not have policy implications (e.g., agricultural scientists)
(McCright et al. 2013). In Cofnas et al. (2017), we focused on activism in social science,
which encompasses the paradigm Bimpact sciences^(sociology and psychology) that have
played a role in numerous political debates in the last few decades.
Larregue (2017) makes three opposing arguments to our paper: (1) It is Bvery hard^
to establish the charge of bias, especially since we did Bnot state what [we] mean by
‘bias.’^(2) We did not establish a causal relationship between scientists’(alleged)
liberal activism and conservatives’distrust of science, and we ignored activism by
conservative scientists. (3) We were wrong to advocate Baffirmative action^for
conservatives in academia. We address these arguments in turn: (1) Larregue does
not engage with our main arguments that liberal bias exists in social science. (2) In
recent years, prominent scientific organizations have, with great publicity, intervened in
policy debates, always supporting the liberal side without exception. It is not unrea-
sonable to assume that this would diminish conservatives’trust in these organizations.
Contra Larregue, in Cofnas et al. (2017) we explicitly acknowledged that conservative
scientists can also be biased. (3) We never advocated Baffirmative action^for conser-
vatives, and in fact we object to such a proposal.
Is There a Liberal Bias in Social Science?
Citing Gross (2013), Larregue (2017) suggests that scholars in different fields have different
views about the extent to which Bpolitics should influence teaching and research.^Those in
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some disciplines, such as biology, tend to take an Bobjectivist stance,^denying that politics
should have any influence on research. Scholars in other disciplines, such as the humanities,
are Bmuch more skeptical about professors’capacity to keep politics at bay^(i.e., they
accept that researchers’politics can legitimately influence their work). Larregue writes:
As Neil Gross found in the interviews he conducted, Bsociology is best described
as an epistemological hybrid, combining elements of objectivism and skepticism^
(Gross 2013, p. 190). Interestingly, sociologists were further fractally divided
between two scientific poles: those closer to the humanities or activist camp, who
shared the belief that objectivism is an illusion, and those who endorsed a more
professional and positivistic stance, for whom sociology should try to attain
objectivity. This latter epistemological position was dominant among the sociol-
ogists interviewed by Gross: BFor most American sociologists, in other words,
objectivity remains an ideal toward which they claim to strive, even as they
recognize the impossibility of ever fully achieving it^(Gross 2013, p. 200). This
tends to contradict CCW’s [i.e., Cofnas et al.’s] claim that social scientists are
consciously distorting their science to fit their agenda.
There are a couple things to say about this. First, according to the source that Larregue
himself seems to take as authoritative, the Bbest descri[ption]^of sociology is that it is an
Bepistemological hybrid^that is only partly committed to Bobjectivism.^This suggests that,
at the very least, there is a major element within sociology that does not even try to Bkeep
politics at bay.^Second, Larregue cites Gross’s report that Bmost American sociologists^
that he (Gross) interviewed endorsed the objectivist stance. According to Larregue, BThis
tends to contradict [our] claim that social scientists are consciously distorting their science to
fit their agenda.^But what does it mean for this to Bcontradict^our claim? In light of the
evidence we provided—i.e., examples of large numbers of social scientists acting collec-
tively through their principal organizations to misrepresent science—how much probative
value does Gross’s survey have? The fact that more than 50% of sociologists say in a survey
that they are committed to objectivism does not, in our view, overturn strong evidence, based
on their behavior, that they often distort science for political reasons.
Larregue argues:
To substantiate their claims, CCW use cherry-picked examples that, of course,
confirm their hypothesis of a liberal bias in science. One major problem with
CCW’s argument is that they do not clearly state what they mean by bias. Since
we can envision more or less strict or lenient conceptions of what constitute a bias
in science, their statement is quasi-irrefutable.
The claim that we Bcherry-picked^examples implies that there where comparable
examples of both liberal and conservative bias, and we cited only examples of the former.
So if we were guilty of cherry-picking, this would be very easy to demonstrate. Larregue
simply needed to show several examples from the past few decades of a major, main-
stream social science organization (such as the American Sociological Association or the
American Psychological Association), or a recognized leader of a social scientific field
(such as Robert Putnam), distorting science to advance a conservative political cause. But
as far as we know not a single example of conservative bias like that exists at
330 Am Soc (2018) 49:328–335
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all—Larregue certainly did not mention one. There may well be individual social scientists
who are biased in favor of conservative-friendly interpretations of science, or right-wing
think tanks that distort science. But these individuals and partisan think tanks have no
influence over the major scientific organizations that represent the scientific establishment
as a whole, and conservative mavericks are not regarded as leaders of their fields.
Larregue is in a way correct when he says that we Bmix up different types of bias in the
examples [we] use,^such as Bfraud^and Badvocacy.^But we believe he draws an incorrect
conclusion from this fact when he claims that this Bcontributes to blur [our] demonstration.^
Rather, our examples just show that mainstream social scientists engage in several different
types of bias to advance liberal causes. The fact that some of our examples reveal multiple
types of (liberal) bias operating simultaneously does not undermine our thesis that there is
liberal bias in social science. Our thesis is not Bquasi-irrefutable^because, to repeat, it would
be refuted if Larregue could show examples of any type of bias employed by a mainstream
social scientific organization to advance a conservative political cause.
Larregue says that to Bsubstantiate^our claims, we Brely on^Inbar and Lammer’s
(2012)Bsurvey of social and personality psychologists that showed liberal scientists
willing to discriminate against their conservative colleagues.^But, he says:
When they come to the implications of their results, Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers
do not mention any sort of liberal bias that would distort research to fit political
agendas. Their only statement regarding the content of science is that many
aspects of conservative thinking can serve as inspiration for interesting research
questions that would otherwise be missed (Inbar and Lammers 2012,p.502).
Apart from the fact that this is an unsubstantiated supposition, this argument by no
means implies that liberal science is biased or wrong. Here again the authors
confuse between the context of pursuit of research with the context of justification.
Here Larregue is criticizing Inbar and Lammers’sargument—which we do not refer to
at all—and portraying it as a criticism of our argument, which is different. As we will
discuss more below, we do not necessarily believe that Bconservative thinking can serve
as inspiration for interesting research questions that would otherwise be missed.^But
we do suggest that Inbar and Lammers’s findings reflect the existence of a liberal
establishment in social science that seeks to suppress ideas that are not friendly to
liberal politics. If a large percentage of personality and social psychologists admit that
they would be inclined to reject conservative-friendly papers in peer review, to not
invite a known political conservative to a symposium, and to reject conservative grant
applications and job applications, this would contribute to an environment that is not
receptive to liberal-undermining ideas, even if those ideas are sometimes correct.
The Causal Link Between Scientists’Liberal Activism and Conservatives’
Distrust, and the Issue of Conservative Activism
Measuring Activism
Larregue raises the problem of how we can show a causal relationship between
increasing activism among scientists and conservatives’distrust. How can we measure
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an increase in activism? BWhat variables can account for scientists’social activism over
time? CCW give no answer to these questions. They give examples of what they
interpret as political activism, sure, but this does not prove a statistical increase.^
It is true that activism among scientists is difficult to measure. There is no uncon-
troversial way to count up instances of activism among scientists, and measure a
quantitative increase over the last four decades. However, just because we cannot
investigate this question using ideal quantitative methods does not mean that the
question cannot be approached in a reasonably systematic and scientific way. A great
deal of historical analysis faces the same methodological problem. We can only point to
numerous examples where scientists appear to have engaged in liberal activism in
recent years. Since neither Larregue nor anyone else has been able to give comparable
examples of conservative activism among scientists in the past few decades, we think it
is reasonable to conclude that there is a trend toward more liberal activism.
It is difficult to prove that there is a causal link between increasing liberal activism
and conservative distrust in science. But we think it is a reasonable explanation for
decreasing conservative trust in social science that, in the course of practically all major
political debates, representatives of the social science community make an appearance to
promote research that supports the liberal side. Whether it’s gun control, death penalty
cases, affirmative action, or anything else, the ASA or the APA or the American Political
Science Association—or sometimes all these organizations together—will testify to
congress or submit amicus curiae briefs arguing that Bscience^shows that the liberals
are right. It seems the onus is on the critic to show why this wouldn’tdecrease
conservatives’trust in social science.
Did We Ignore Conservative Bias?
Larregue claims that BAs conservative apostles of objectivity, CCW believe that liberal
scientists are necessarily biased. Conversely, the mere possibility that conservative
thinkers might be, too, biased, is not even mentioned.^This is false. In Cofnas et al.
(2017), we say, based on Honeycutt and Freberg’s(2017) findings, that BThe same
proportion of conservatives and liberals [in academia] expressed willingness to dis-
criminate against those with opposing political views.^We calculated that about 1.33%
of personality and social psychologists are conservatives who would acknowledge that
they would discriminate against liberals. We then noted that a journal submission that
goes through an editor and three referees would have a 5% chance of being handled by
a conservative who discriminates against liberals. So we clearly acknowledged that
conservatives can be biased, and we portrayed this as a problem.
Larregue repeatedly accuses us of failing to recognize the difference between the Bcontext
of discovery^and the Bcontext of justification,^because we supposedly assume that if
scientists undertake scientific investigation with a liberal agenda then their results must be
false. Larregue notes that it is possible to be motivated by bias but make legitimate
discoveries. Ironically, however, it is Larregue who repeatedly confuses the contexts of
discovery and justification in his criticisms of us and of conservatives. For example, he says:
CCW also fail to take into consideration conservative scientists’activism....In
intelligence and race research, conservative scientists, from Arthur Jensen to
Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (authors of The Bell Curve), were partly
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financed by the Pioneer fund, a conservative organization that was active in the
American eugenic movement (Kühl 2002).
First of all, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray never received funding from the
Pioneer Fund. (They were criticized for citing people who had received such funding.)
More important, the fact that science is funded by an organization with a political
agenda does not mean that the funded science itself is ipso facto Bactivism.^
In Cofnas et al., we never claimed that liberal scientists engaged in activism simply
because they received funding from liberal organizations. The question is whether
prominent, mainstream scientists and scientific organizations actively distort science to
advance a political agenda. That is what we provided evidence for.
Larregue also attempts to discredit us by claiming that we—Cofnas, Carl, and
Woodley of Menie—are motivated to criticize liberal bias in social science by our
conservative agenda to Badvance the position of conservative scientists within
academia.^Besides the fact that this is an illegitimate criticism because it conflates
the contexts of discovery and justification, the evidence that Larregue brings forward to
prove our commitment to a conservative agenda is problematic—even, we might say,
biased. For example, he says:
The lead author, Nathan Cofnas, has published op-eds in conservative outlets,
including National Review and Quillette. Recently, he accused Stephen Hawking
of promoting a BDadaist science^, after the world-renowned physicist said that
Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord would Bpush the Earth
over the brink.^
This is inaccurate. Cofnas (2017) criticized Hawking for his claim that Trump’s
withdrawal from the Paris climate accord would Bpush the Earth over the brink to
become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees [Celsius], and
raining sulphuric acid.^As a Google search of that quote will reveal, Hawking was
widely criticized by mainstream climate scientists for expressing a view that had no
justification whatsoever. Larregue accuses Noah Carl of having a conservative agenda
because he Bhas contributed to the conservative academic blog Heterodox Academy.^
The fact that Larregue sees Heterodox Academy as Bconservative^is rather illustrative,
given that the organization is nonpartisan in both its mission statement and the
composition of its members. As of June 26, 2017, Heterodox Academy’s members
identified as Left/Progressive (18.2%), Right/Conservative (17.3%), Centrist/Moderate
(24.9%), Libertarian/Classical Liberal (23.2%). (16.4% were unclassifiable, preferred
not to say, or were Bother.^). Regarding Woodley of Menie’s supposed bias, Larregue
says: BMichael A. Woodley of Menie...has given an interview about human intelligence
to Stefan Molyneux, a well-known Canadian conservative podcaster who supported
Trump's campaign.^But Molyneux has conducted interviews on human intelligence
with outspoken liberals including Eric Turkheimer and James Flynn. The fact that
Molyneux interviewed someone does not indicate that he is a conservative, let alone
that he has a conservative bias.
1
1
The results of this survey can be found on Heterodox Academy’s website (http://heterodoxacademy.
org/krugman-is-wrong-we-are-not-conservative/).
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Should There Be BAff irmative Action^for Conservatives in Social Science?
As discussed, Larregue devotes one-out-of-three of the main sections of his
paper to criticizing us for advocating affirmative action for conservatives. He
says: BThe third section of this article is devoted to CCW’s political proposal,
namely introducing ‘affirmative action’for conservatives in academia.^Note
the quotes he puts around the phrase Baffirmative action,^which makes it seem
that he is quoting us. However, the words Baffirmative action^do not appear
anywhere in Cofnas et al. (2017). We suspect that Larregue misinterpreted the
last paragraph of our paper:
In the past few years, a number of social scientists, led by Jonathan Haidt, have
called upon social scientists to diversify the field and make a conscious effort to
root out liberal bias (Duarte et al. 2015). We conclude with a prediction: If social
scientists begin counteracting liberal activism, the trend of lowering conservative
trust in scientists will reverse. (Cofnas et al. 2017)
In this paragraph, we refer to the fact that Haidt endorses active efforts to
recruit conservatives to social science, but we do not endorse this proposal. In
fact we do not think it is a good idea. Our personal hope is that scientists,
whether they are liberal or conservative, will stop being biased and discrimi-
nating against others for political reasons. If this happens, we think more
conservatives will become social scientists because it will be much easier for
them to be hired and to pursue research that may not support liberal assump-
tions about how the world works.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and repro-
duction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and thesource, provide a
link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
References
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