When a New Study Debunks Science, Don't Ignore It
The world should know that there's no biological difference between liberals and conservatives.
But does it replicate?
Photographer: Keystone/Hulton ArchiveA recent fracas over a psychology experiment helps illustrate how social science is broken -- and how to fix it.
In 2008, Science, one of the top scientific journals, published a paper by a group of psychologists that claimed to find biological differences between liberals and conservatives. According to the paper, conservatives tended to react more to “sudden noises” and “threatening visual images.” This result, which suggests that political liberalism and conservatism spring from deep, indelible sources rather than reactions to the issues of the day, suggests that polarization will never end -- that the populace will always be divided into two camps, separated by a gulf of biology.