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The Quest Concerning Scientific Values, Principles, and Responsibilities

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In the last several years, conservatives have argued that an overwhelmingly Left and liberal faculty has taken over American colleges and universities. In particular, two main claims have been advanced: (1) a disproportionate percentage of the faculty is liberal; and (2) these liberal faculty are pushing their values on students and colleagues, skewing the educational process. However, data to support these contentions come from unrepresentative institutions and/or disciplines and mistakenly equate party identification with political ideology. In contrast, we use two nationally representative surveys done by the Carnegie Foundation (in 1989 and 1997) to address these concerns. We have several key findings: (1) although left-of-center faculty increased slightly, the best overall description of these trends suggests increased movement to the center, toward a more moderate faculty, between 1989 and 1997; (2) there are sizable differences across disciplines and institutional types, with conservatives being the plurality in some fields and in two-year colleges; (3) changes in age and gender have offsetting effects on changes in liberalism; and (4) there are significant differences in educational values between liberal and conservative professors.
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The ability to self-correct is considered a hallmark of science. However, self-correction does not always happen to scientific evidence by default. The trajectory of scientific credibility can fluctuate over time, both for defined scientific fields and for science at-large. History suggests that major catastrophes in scientific credibility are unfortunately possible and the argument that "it is obvious that progress is made" is weak. Careful evaluation of the current status of credibility of various scientific fields is important in order to understand any credibility deficits and how one could obtain and establish more trustworthy results. Efficient and unbiased replication mechanisms are essential for maintaining high levels of scientific credibility. Depending on the types of results obtained in the discovery and replication phases, there are different paradigms of research: optimal, self-correcting, false nonreplication, and perpetuated fallacy. In the absence of replication efforts, one is left with unconfirmed (genuine) discoveries and unchallenged fallacies. In several fields of investigation, including many areas of psychological science, perpetuated and unchallenged fallacies may comprise the majority of the circulating evidence. I catalogue a number of impediments to self-correction that have been empirically studied in psychological science. Finally, I discuss some proposed solutions to promote sound replication practices enhancing the credibility of scientific results as well as some potential disadvantages of each of them. Any deviation from the principle that seeking the truth has priority over any other goals may be seriously damaging to the self-correcting functions of science. © The Author(s) 2012.
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This paper reports some data of an ARC funded study of academic staff in a number of disciplines in colleges of advanced education and universities. Generally, more university than college academics scored high on academic motivation, on teaching‐research synergy and promotion of student independence, with college academics scoring higher on good teaching practice. There are disciplinary differences, too.Slightly more than an average proportion of staff in the Social Sciences report good teaching practices. They are highly committed to promoting student independence, experience a fairly high level of teaching‐research synergy and have high intrinsic academic motivation. There is large‐scale consensus among Arts staff with university Arts academics scoring highest on promoting student independence, academic motivation, and teaching‐research synergy, and academics in CAE Arts departments scoring highest of all on good teaching practices.Science staff seem to have different academic values and practices. Their academic motivation is about “average”, and fewer science academics report good teaching practices or practices that promote student independence. In their own work they also experience less teaching‐research synergy. Engineering staff show the lowest academic motivation, least commitment to student independence, experience least teaching‐research synergy, and report below average good teaching practices.Health Science staff are akin to staff in Arts and Social Sciences in areas concerned with students, e.g. good teaching practices and promotion of student independence. In the areas which tap into their values as academics, e.g. academic motivation and teaching‐research synergy, they seem to be more like science and engineering staff.Commerce/Law staff were on all aspects somewhere in the middle.
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