Robert Merton's norms for a self-correcting epistemic community are referenced in Duarte et al.'s target article. These include the ideals of disinterestedness and organized skepticism. Notably, Merton makes no mention of balance in the political beliefs of the community's disputatious members. Merton prized the intellectual virtues we associate with a Thucydides (disciplined impartiality) or a Socrates (a principled commitment to explore the other side). He was well aware of the intellectual hazards attendant on the triumph of ideology over critical reason; which is perhaps one reason why he proposed that the members of an ideal epistemic community must be disputatious, and should be so by applying quality-control standards for reasoning, research design, and the interpretation of evidence. It seems to me the ideals of Merton's epistemic community are sufficient to critique and correct pseudo-empirical studies aimed at confirming beliefs that liberals (or conservatives) think deserve to be true.
Merton wrote during an era when an institution of higher learning (my own) could proudly declare in its official 1972 Report on the Criteria of Academic Appointment that the primary aim of a great university is the discovery and communication of new knowledge and the cultivation of rational judgment, and that in the furtherance of that goal “there must be no consideration of sex, ethnic or national characteristics, or political or religious beliefs or affiliations in any decision regarding appointment, promotion, or reappointment at any level of the academic staff” (Shils et al. Reference Shils, Chandrasekhar, Childers, Franklin, Friedman, Getzels, Johnson, MacLane, Rosenheim, Simpson, Straus and William-Ashman1972, p. 5). Duarte et al. want to overturn that prohibition on the political and ideological screening of scholars. I doubt that step will be effective. I do not think it is wise.
Throughout the target article, there are nods, hedges, shows of solidarity, and words of praise for social psychology, although the dominant tone is one of epistemic crisis. The authors propose that politically liberal research institutions should become proactive in welcoming political conservatives to campus, selectively setting them loose in the halls of the academy to define and engage the subject matter of social psychology. Social psychologists are called upon to create a disciplinary affirmative action program for political conservatives. This recruitment of scholars on the basis of political beliefs is justified by an appeal to the epistemic well-being of the discipline, so as to improve the stock of ordered knowledge in what Duarte et al. judge to be the relatively undisciplined and insufficiently disputatious contemporary social psychology community.
Narrowly stated, there is lots of “advocacy research” out there, both inside and outside the academic social science disciplines. “How do you feel about the murder of innocent life?” “How do you feel about female genital mutilation?” Those are not impartial interview probes regarding the voluntary termination of a pregnancy or surgical modifications of the human body; and precisely because they are leading, conclusion-tending questions formulated in such a way as to block alternative interpretations have no place in scientific inquiry (Shweder Reference Shweder2004; Reference Shweder2013). Duarte et al. are very effective at exposing this type of bias in the construction of interview probes.
Broadly summarized, the authors point to the ideological homogeneity of social psychology, the loss of a Socratic assumption questioning tradition, and the promotion of liberal egalitarian moral agendas and legends of Enlightenment progressivism (religion should and will go away and be replaced by science; groups should and will go away and be replaced by individuals; stereotyping individuals on the basis of group characteristics is vicious; heteronomy should and will go away and be replaced by autonomy), all dressed up in the appearance of empirical demonstration studies. The famous Milgram experiments come to mind. Most interpretations involve some form of disparagement of both hierarchy and in-group/out-group formations. Rarely considered is the adaptive function and reasonableness of the decision-making heuristic: Respect superior orders from high-status and trusted in-group members. Here one may well be faced with an experimental selection bias, in which a setting is contrived to produce a dramatic but atypically maladaptive result, like watching some species of birds sitting on a basketball rather than on their own eggs because of their reliance on circularity cues, which generally serve them well in their normal uncontrived reproductive environments where they do not typically find a very round basketball situated next to their imperfectly circular eggs.
These are real problems for those of us who value Socratic communities (Shweder Reference Shweder, Bilgrami and Cole2015). Nevertheless, the recommendation section of the target article (sect. 6), while seeking greater voice for under-represented ideological perspectives in social psychology, embraces the very problem it diagnoses by advocating a liberal affirmative action approach, by institutionalizing the self-proclaimed political and moral identities of social psychology students and faculty, and by making political attitude census categories legitimate criteria for the admission of students, the granting of fellowships, and the promotion of faculty. This type of bureaucratic formalization of political and moral identities, even in the intended service of a social justice quest for “viewpoint diversity” in the academy, is not likely to produce convergence in the search for truth or greater respect for the ways of critical reason. It might make things worse. I doubt the proposal will contribute to the process of imaginative hypothesis generation or the willingness to engage in skeptical reasoning.
One fascinating feature of the Duarte et al. proposal is the absence of a particular anticipated dissent. Early on, one of the co-authors is described as “a neo-positivist contrarian who favors a don't-ask-don't-tell policy in which scholarship should be judged on its merit” (sect. 1, para. 4). I found myself wondering: Does he or she really support the affirmative action recommendation? I would have welcomed that contrarian voice. Such a policy stance may seem old-fashioned, quaint, or utopian. Nevertheless, whether one is a positivist or not, that stance seems wise to me: Be disputatious; judge what is said (rather than the political beliefs of the person who said it); do so on its epistemic merits; prize Merton's ideals. The knowable world is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all points of view at once, and empty if seen from no perspective at all. Freely staying on the move between alternative points of view is still the best antidote to dogmatism.
Robert Merton's norms for a self-correcting epistemic community are referenced in Duarte et al.'s target article. These include the ideals of disinterestedness and organized skepticism. Notably, Merton makes no mention of balance in the political beliefs of the community's disputatious members. Merton prized the intellectual virtues we associate with a Thucydides (disciplined impartiality) or a Socrates (a principled commitment to explore the other side). He was well aware of the intellectual hazards attendant on the triumph of ideology over critical reason; which is perhaps one reason why he proposed that the members of an ideal epistemic community must be disputatious, and should be so by applying quality-control standards for reasoning, research design, and the interpretation of evidence. It seems to me the ideals of Merton's epistemic community are sufficient to critique and correct pseudo-empirical studies aimed at confirming beliefs that liberals (or conservatives) think deserve to be true.
Merton wrote during an era when an institution of higher learning (my own) could proudly declare in its official 1972 Report on the Criteria of Academic Appointment that the primary aim of a great university is the discovery and communication of new knowledge and the cultivation of rational judgment, and that in the furtherance of that goal “there must be no consideration of sex, ethnic or national characteristics, or political or religious beliefs or affiliations in any decision regarding appointment, promotion, or reappointment at any level of the academic staff” (Shils et al. Reference Shils, Chandrasekhar, Childers, Franklin, Friedman, Getzels, Johnson, MacLane, Rosenheim, Simpson, Straus and William-Ashman1972, p. 5). Duarte et al. want to overturn that prohibition on the political and ideological screening of scholars. I doubt that step will be effective. I do not think it is wise.
Throughout the target article, there are nods, hedges, shows of solidarity, and words of praise for social psychology, although the dominant tone is one of epistemic crisis. The authors propose that politically liberal research institutions should become proactive in welcoming political conservatives to campus, selectively setting them loose in the halls of the academy to define and engage the subject matter of social psychology. Social psychologists are called upon to create a disciplinary affirmative action program for political conservatives. This recruitment of scholars on the basis of political beliefs is justified by an appeal to the epistemic well-being of the discipline, so as to improve the stock of ordered knowledge in what Duarte et al. judge to be the relatively undisciplined and insufficiently disputatious contemporary social psychology community.
Narrowly stated, there is lots of “advocacy research” out there, both inside and outside the academic social science disciplines. “How do you feel about the murder of innocent life?” “How do you feel about female genital mutilation?” Those are not impartial interview probes regarding the voluntary termination of a pregnancy or surgical modifications of the human body; and precisely because they are leading, conclusion-tending questions formulated in such a way as to block alternative interpretations have no place in scientific inquiry (Shweder Reference Shweder2004; Reference Shweder2013). Duarte et al. are very effective at exposing this type of bias in the construction of interview probes.
Broadly summarized, the authors point to the ideological homogeneity of social psychology, the loss of a Socratic assumption questioning tradition, and the promotion of liberal egalitarian moral agendas and legends of Enlightenment progressivism (religion should and will go away and be replaced by science; groups should and will go away and be replaced by individuals; stereotyping individuals on the basis of group characteristics is vicious; heteronomy should and will go away and be replaced by autonomy), all dressed up in the appearance of empirical demonstration studies. The famous Milgram experiments come to mind. Most interpretations involve some form of disparagement of both hierarchy and in-group/out-group formations. Rarely considered is the adaptive function and reasonableness of the decision-making heuristic: Respect superior orders from high-status and trusted in-group members. Here one may well be faced with an experimental selection bias, in which a setting is contrived to produce a dramatic but atypically maladaptive result, like watching some species of birds sitting on a basketball rather than on their own eggs because of their reliance on circularity cues, which generally serve them well in their normal uncontrived reproductive environments where they do not typically find a very round basketball situated next to their imperfectly circular eggs.
These are real problems for those of us who value Socratic communities (Shweder Reference Shweder, Bilgrami and Cole2015). Nevertheless, the recommendation section of the target article (sect. 6), while seeking greater voice for under-represented ideological perspectives in social psychology, embraces the very problem it diagnoses by advocating a liberal affirmative action approach, by institutionalizing the self-proclaimed political and moral identities of social psychology students and faculty, and by making political attitude census categories legitimate criteria for the admission of students, the granting of fellowships, and the promotion of faculty. This type of bureaucratic formalization of political and moral identities, even in the intended service of a social justice quest for “viewpoint diversity” in the academy, is not likely to produce convergence in the search for truth or greater respect for the ways of critical reason. It might make things worse. I doubt the proposal will contribute to the process of imaginative hypothesis generation or the willingness to engage in skeptical reasoning.
One fascinating feature of the Duarte et al. proposal is the absence of a particular anticipated dissent. Early on, one of the co-authors is described as “a neo-positivist contrarian who favors a don't-ask-don't-tell policy in which scholarship should be judged on its merit” (sect. 1, para. 4). I found myself wondering: Does he or she really support the affirmative action recommendation? I would have welcomed that contrarian voice. Such a policy stance may seem old-fashioned, quaint, or utopian. Nevertheless, whether one is a positivist or not, that stance seems wise to me: Be disputatious; judge what is said (rather than the political beliefs of the person who said it); do so on its epistemic merits; prize Merton's ideals. The knowable world is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all points of view at once, and empty if seen from no perspective at all. Freely staying on the move between alternative points of view is still the best antidote to dogmatism.