Researchers Mixed Up Alleged Conservative and Liberal Traits

[Jack Hays]

This is quite an about-face. It seems the researchers got mixed up about conservative and liberal traits. Oops!

[h=2]Conservative political beliefs not linked to psychotic traits, as study claimed[/h] with one comment

Researchers have fixed a number of papers after mistakenly reporting that people who hold conservative political beliefs are more likely to exhibit traits associated with psychoticism, such as authoritarianism and tough-mindedness.
As one of the notices specifies, now it appears that liberal political beliefs are linked with psychoticism. That paper also swapped ideologies when reporting on people higher in neuroticism and social desirability (falsely claiming that you have socially desirable qualities); the original paper said those traits are linked with liberal beliefs, but they are more common among people with conservative values.
We’re not clear how much the corrections should inform our thinking about politics and personality traits, however, because it’s not clear from the paper how strongly those two are linked. The authors claim that the strength of the links are not important, as they do not affect the main conclusions of the papers — although some personality traits appear to correlate with political beliefs, one doesn’t cause the other, nor vice versa.
In total, three papers have been corrected by authors, and a correction has been submitted on one more.
We’ll start with an erratum that explains the backstory of the error in detail. It appears on “Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies,” published by the American Journal of Political Science: Read the rest of this entry »

 

[Jack Hays]

Bad science / Humor
[h=1]Friday Funny: Study claiming psychotic traits linked to conservatism gets reversed–finds liberalism more likely to have those traits[/h] From the friends of Stephan Lewandowsky, and upside-down Mann department Ralph Dave Westfall submits this story: Here’s an interesting example of possibly politicized research findings getting blown out of the water: Conservative political beliefs not linked to psychotic traits, as study claimed. Researchers have fixed a number of papers after mistakenly reporting that people who…

 

[Jack Hays]

Widely cited article on personality traits and political views reported results opposite of what data actually show. Epic correction of the decade [link]

 

[SocialD]

Widely cited article on personality traits and political views reported results opposite of what data actually show. Epic correction of the decade [link]

I'm not surprised. the scientific method sometimes seems so unscientific. at least they are doing a correction I suppose.

 

[ashurbanipal]

There was an editorial published in, I think, the British Journal of Science, last year, in which the editor said that it looks like basically HALF of all science is wrong. Of course, we don't know which half, but it's due to errors, and worse, intentional falsification of data combined with lack of other labs confirming experiments (basically no funding to do so). This claim was based on the editor's overview of a number of studies of corrections, retractions, anonymous surveys about faking data to keep a job, etc. They paint a damning picture of where science is these days.

 

[Jack Hays]

There was an editorial published in, I think, the British Journal of Science, last year, in which the editor said that it looks like basically HALF of all science is wrong. Of course, we don't know which half, but it's due to errors, and worse, intentional falsification of data combined with lack of other labs confirming experiments (basically no funding to do so). This claim was based on the editor's overview of a number of studies of corrections, retractions, anonymous surveys about faking data to keep a job, etc. They paint a damning picture of where science is these days.

P.T. Barnum once said, "I know half my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half."