So, Conservatives not the psychotic ones, after all..

[Dill]

(06-10-2019, 04:58 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Here's the problem with using a third person source rather than seeking the full quote

The erroneous results represented some of the larger correlations between personality and politics ever reported; they were reported and interpreted, repeatedly, in the wrong direction; and then cited at rates that are (for this field) extremely high. And the relationship between personality and politics is, as we note in the paper, quite a “hot” topic, with a large number of new papers appearing every year. So although the errors do not matter for the result that the authors (rightly) see as their most important, I obviously think the errors themselves matter quite a lot, especially for what it says about the scientific process both pre- and post-review.

He admits that the errors don't change the argument of the paper (our personalities alone don't dictate our political beliefs) but that the errors matter in terms of the pre and post review process and how the media and other journals use data like this. We should be worried that an error slipped past the review process and that so many sources incorrectly used it to push agendas.

He has already been told and shown this.  To no effect. The New York Post article is still the definitive source, not the article itself.

Neither the authors of the article nor those who caught the error were seeking to prove that either "liberals" or "conservatives" were "the TRUE authoritarians."  Even in the article the authors point out that Eysenck's terminology is "poorly labeled" and should be replaced simply by the less pejorative label, an italicized "P." which they use.  "Having a high Psychoticism score is not a diagnosis of being clinically psychotic or psychopathic"(p.38). "Anti-authority," as in desire for independence from rules and authority, would in fact be a better parse for what Eysenck means by authoritarian.

As far as the authors' own view of their errors, this is rather like getting a story problem in math problem right, despite a mistake in the steps. It does matter, e.g., for the next problem you have to solve, if you don't figure out what you did wrong. And if you are a teacher you certainly don't want to teach students the wrong method, even if it "makes no difference" sometimes.  So the "dudes" who wrote the article are right--the error did not invalidate their results.  "Dude" who disagreed did so because false data can be abstracted from the article, regardless of the conclusion, and be put to other purposes. And he is also right. That is bad social science.

Main point though, is that this isn't a bunch of social scientists arguing over who is most authoritarian. That debate only emerges when the research terms and problems are injected into another narrative being furthered by the New York Post, for people who will never read the original article or the correction. Science says: LIBERALS the real authoritarians.

PS. the error slipped past whoever reviewed the article for the journal, but it did not slip past the "review process" to which all social science knowledge is subjected.  It was caught by at least three people.