Rigging a study to make conservatives look stupid. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine
I've read a few of the articles Mr. Saletan is reacting to, and I think I agree with him in the sense that I think entirely too much is being made of the study by the press.
I have not read the paper, and I'm not going to, but I think the study authors would agree that too much is being made of an interesting study intended to have a very narrow scientific focus.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
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I suspect it's not worth your time. These kinds of tabloid-tailored studies are often reversed in time. For one thing, habitual response tendency can probably be tested in a variety of different ways that are not reflected here. Maybe Saletan is being unfair, and I do believe that this kind of millisecond hesitation analysis does produce reliable results, but the scope of evaluation seems very technical and excessively narrow. "W"s vs. "M"s! Get serious!
The conclusions were also much broader than the study seemed to warrant. You know this kind of stuff has got to be drastically preliminary. Even assuming there is a consistent difference between liberal and conservative thought strategies, you would still have to ask yourself, "What does this mean?" I'm betting it's not very well controlled either. For one thing, there are some universities where a conservative would have to be brain-damaged just to apply.
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