Study about the persuasiveness of gay canvassing was apparently bogus
An alert reader send me a link to this article debunking the study described in this previous post of mine.
Donald Green, the Columbia political science professor who was the senior author on the study, which was published in Science and featured on many shows including “This American Life,” has said, “I am deeply embarrassed by this turn of events and apologize to the editors, reviewers, and readers of Science.” His co-author (and the person who actually did the supposed study), UCLA graduate student Michael LaCour, has said, “I stand by the findings,” and has “also said he will provide ‘a definitive response’ by May 29.”
Faked studies are unusual but hardly unheard of, and some of them have gotten far more publicity than this one. For example, the autism/vaccination reports that have wreaked so much havoc. So I find it odd that Green expressed this thought:
“There was an incredible mountain of fabrications with the most baroque and ornate ornamentation. There were stories, there were anecdotes, my dropbox is filled with graphs and charts, you’d think no one would do this except to explore a very real data set,” Green told Ira Glass, host of the This American Life radio program, on Wednesday.
I have some sympathy with Green, actually. We all think we can’t be fooled by a con, and it’s hard to believe people will go to such lengths to dupe others. But hard as it may be, the evidence is overwhelming that it happens all too often, and that healthy skepticism is always in order.
After all, Green was talking to Ira Glass, who—although not related to fabulist Stephen Glass—has a last name that is a reminder of how easy it is to fool people, and the sort of exhaustive detail a con artist is capable of generating in order to do so.
A faked study is invariably a sign of an agenda, the more egregious the falsity, the more fanatical the advocate of that agenda.
And, while not always the case, the easier the fooled party embraces the faked study, the more sympathetic is the fooled person to that agenda.
Remember the EPA study on second hand smoke? The EPA claimed exposure to second hand smoke caused some 3000 deaths a year from lung cancer. However, The EPA didn’t measure any exposure. People were asked about their exposure. In other words they were polled.
Currently polls inform us that Pubs are more skeptical towards “science” than Demos. In the past, there was no difference between Pubs and Demos regarding skepticism towards “science.” There has been an increase in fraud in “science” in recent years.
As Pravda would have once said, this is no accident.
As my background is STEM, I laugh at all the supposed “scientific” studies emanating from the social “sciences.” I knew a “social scientist” who had published a number of books- most of which are still in print- who got honored one year at a town’s Fourth of July parade: an effigy with his name on it, on top of a manure spreader. One cannot find a better summation of the “social sciences.”
And then there was “scientific socialism.”
Let us not forget the Sokal affair, where a physicist submitted a nonsensical essay to Social Text, a prominent academic journal, which proceeded to publish it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
I hope nobody on the non-left used the technique based on the faulty reporting.
Advocacy for selective exclusion is not persuasive. The trans-equality, or rather equivalence, movement needs to reject pro-choice policy. The selective cult they have joined is undermining their credibility.
The saddest fact about the original (fraudulent) article was that it was published in Science,which used to be one of the most prominent journals for the physical and biological sciences . Getting published in Science used to be a big deal. Now it runs articles on crap aka social science, and if you think I exaggerate, read the abstract. Never mind the fraudulence of it, the subject itself is crap.
n.n’s comment above takes the cake for something, but it’s not a cake of which I will eat even a crumb.
Frog…
You mean its now down there with Scientific American — another fallen periodical… (long fallen in SA’s case)
I’m not certain that this type of hoax is avoidable. Science depends upon the intellectual honesty and moral integrity of the researchers. That is why significant scientific experiments should be repeated by other scientists.
There is an element of truth in the Post Modern critique of science. As scientists become increasingly specialized, science becomes a group endeavor which is rendered vulnerable to social pressure rather than the thoughts of a solitary genius who understands all aspects of the field. An example of this type of scientific group think is climate science in which competition for government funding amplifies peer pressure to conform to the supposed consensus.
Tonawanda: “I hope nobody on the non-left used the technique based on the faulty reporting.”
The fraud doesn’t prove canvassing doesn’t work at all for its stated purpose.
That being said, from my perspective, the deeper value in the technique is not the technique. Rather, reaching the point of applying the technique implies development of an activist mindset, planning and goal-setting, team-building, etc, has occurred towards building up an activist social movement.
At that point of the game, canvassing is just one tool in the toolkit. Even if the target audience is unmoved by the technique, the experience of canvassing should help develop your team.
I told people these canvassers were confidence artists. Is it so surprising that the PR backing them, which others called edifying or important, was also a propaganda operation? It’s like people cannot connect the dots even though they are right in front of them.
It’s not a technique the retarded masses can learn from a study, reading about it, or watching the news. It is far beyond them.
Making any judgment based upon the expertise and word of the Experts, the Authorities, shows just how foolish and naive Westerners are. If you can’t do the research and data crunching yourself, you have no business talking about it as if you can decide whose authority is right on this matter.
Green is as much a fool as his intellectual peers and the confidence artists that think their judgement is better than my own. They are of a kind, so to speak.