Wednesday, February 9, 2011

TNR making good points on ideology and academia

It's here. The point about the natural sciences is a good one. If this is simply a matter of ideological bullying or cliquish wagon circling of "mere opinion", then why do you see almost identical patterns in the natural and the social sciences (see the data from Dan Klein's own paper)? I think it makes more sense to infer that this says something about the (1.) quality of progressive ideas, and (2.) the treatment of intellectuals by conservatives before you try to infer anything else. That's not to say there isn't an "anything else". Shady stuff may indeed be going on. But it's a very odd place to look to initially.

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