If you’ve payed attention to the news, you could currently be fooled into thinking Academia is about to collapse under the weight of its own corruption. A small group of, let’s be kind and call them scholars, submitted a bunch of hoax papers in the past couple of years, some of which even got published. These studies focused particularly on issues of gender and race equality, and were in line with sometimes more extreme progressive positions. To them, as well as many right-leaning media, this was again proof that the so-called grievance studies were ideologically biased and deeply corrupt, and that gender studies, race studies, yes the whole discipline of sociology needs to be defunded and dismantled.
Now I haven’t read the papers—there’s a lot of them and I have better things to do with my time. (And I seriously doubt the nay-sayers have.) But quite frankly, one does not to read the articles to understand that the world is not moving towards a dystopic future of children indoctrinated and forced into believing they should identify as a non-binary gender, which would lead to the end of the family as the cornerstone of Western civilization.
Now I haven’t read the papers—there’s a lot of them and I have better things to do with my time. (And I seriously doubt the nay-sayers have.) But quite frankly, one does not to read the articles to understand that the world is not moving towards a dystopic future of children indoctrinated and forced into believing they should identify as a non-binary gender, which would lead to the end of the family as the cornerstone of Western civilization.
Peer review
Simply put, all these hoax studies show is that peer review cannot control for real or made-up research, but it can still control for quality research within accepted disciplines. Of the many studies that were submitted, most were either rejected, or given a revise and resubmit. The latter may seem like the articles were considered promising, but as any scholar know, R&R does not guarantee acceptance in the second or even third round. It can signify that there is still major work to be done, and articles can easily be rejected even when they’ve been resubmitted.
The fact that reviewers were kind in their critique is also meaningless; we expect others to review in a supportive way, as we would do ourselves. Research is a collaborative, not an individual project. We’re a community, and we should act as part of that community. And I know that there are reviewers that can be overly harsh, but the fact is that I’ve never seen a review that was cruel, hostile, or in any way rude. So it’s no surprise that even hoax papers receive fair reviews.
As a researcher who is asked to review a paper, there are a number of questions you have to answer, primarily among them (1) does the research make a useful contribution to the field? and (2) is the research methodologically sound? If both conditions are met, then you have to write either a really bad paper for it to be rejected outright, or you have to submit to a journal that accepts very few papers. But in neither case do we gain any insight into the supposed ideological bias of the field.
The fact that reviewers were kind in their critique is also meaningless; we expect others to review in a supportive way, as we would do ourselves. Research is a collaborative, not an individual project. We’re a community, and we should act as part of that community. And I know that there are reviewers that can be overly harsh, but the fact is that I’ve never seen a review that was cruel, hostile, or in any way rude. So it’s no surprise that even hoax papers receive fair reviews.
As a researcher who is asked to review a paper, there are a number of questions you have to answer, primarily among them (1) does the research make a useful contribution to the field? and (2) is the research methodologically sound? If both conditions are met, then you have to write either a really bad paper for it to be rejected outright, or you have to submit to a journal that accepts very few papers. But in neither case do we gain any insight into the supposed ideological bias of the field.
Confirmation Bias
The problem is that these so-called scholars wrote up what they considered ideologically progressive articles and theories. As any undergrad who’s taken a basic methods course knows, that doesn’t prove the field is ideologically progressive, because you’re not actually controlling for that variable. All they’ve shown is that a scary large number of hoax papers (25%) found their way into actual publication. And while that is obviously bad, and we should try to find ways to do better, that happens in every field. In fact, it’s in fields like Medicine where the real problems still lie: that’s where we find the biggest frauds and cheats in Academia, not the Social Sciences.
In a sense, we’re simply dealing with a matter of Confirmation Bias. These authors already “knew” that these fields were biased, and so they went out to find evidence that would support that hypothesis. But again, that’s plainly bad research. A good scholar knows that his or her ideas and theories will cloud his or her analysis of the data. So one should not look for confirmation—also, that brings us to the issue of the white swan, seeing ten does not mean all swans are white—but falsification.
In a sense, we’re simply dealing with a matter of Confirmation Bias. These authors already “knew” that these fields were biased, and so they went out to find evidence that would support that hypothesis. But again, that’s plainly bad research. A good scholar knows that his or her ideas and theories will cloud his or her analysis of the data. So one should not look for confirmation—also, that brings us to the issue of the white swan, seeing ten does not mean all swans are white—but falsification.
Constructive
And the fact is that they might actually have a good point. We do not want any field to be ideologically biased. We know that academia is largely left-leaning, particularly in the social sciences and humanities where there are ten liberals for any conservative. If fields like gender and race studies have a significant impact on society, then we obviously don’t want research in those fields biased towards certain theories. Science makes progress through debate and critique, not propaganda. And so we might indeed discss the value any field of research has for society and whether it should be funded by a government or public institute.
People cry foul when any industry, whether it’s food, tobacco, or finance, is given the right to evaluate and sanction itself. We need to hold academia to the same standard. But we need to do that in a constructive manner, and so we cannot rely on the opinion of ideologically driven scholars alone, whether they be liberal or conservative. If a field is worth funding, the people in it should be able to explain that to the funders, the public. And if they disagree, then maybe we have to rethink what type of research we are willing to fund through tax-payer money.
People cry foul when any industry, whether it’s food, tobacco, or finance, is given the right to evaluate and sanction itself. We need to hold academia to the same standard. But we need to do that in a constructive manner, and so we cannot rely on the opinion of ideologically driven scholars alone, whether they be liberal or conservative. If a field is worth funding, the people in it should be able to explain that to the funders, the public. And if they disagree, then maybe we have to rethink what type of research we are willing to fund through tax-payer money.