[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Makarov

https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca...ory#internal=1

My point, in any event, was simply to rebut this idea that all of the ideas that are currently derided as “identity politics” emerged without any basis in serious, peer-reviewed academic work. That isn’t true..

Thanks.

I'm long removed from university as well. However, there are people working in it today who say the shroud of orthodoxy has descended on whole fields. Jonathan Haidt started the Heterodox Academy to combat what he and many other academics see as an ideological conformity on modern campuses which hamstrings the practice of disconfirmation that's necessary to arrive closer to the truth.

The example Haidt cites is multi-variant studies that look at the economic outcomes of Americans. While the studies are done, and the data is collected, the findings are subject to fierce social sanction in the university if they challenge the sacred social values of the dominant ideology on the campus. So when studies find single-parent households correlate strongly to poverty, and race shows a much weaker correlation, the former is ignored or suppressed, and the latter is highlighted. This is because the dominant political ideology in the social sciences and humanities today is social constructionism, which posits that differences in status and power are due exclusively to oppressive social structures. Biology, sub-culture values, individual choice - dismissed out of hand. The only thing worth talking about in culture and politics is the power structure - the hierarchical, patriarchal, colonial, oppressive power structure. To talk about choices around marriage, child-rearing, etc. in regards to poverty is victim-blaming, and completely beside the point - the only thing worth talking about is oppressive social structures. Social constructionism is not a scientific model, but rather a dogmatic lens with which its adherents regard society.

Pinker has reported similar hostility to his data-based approach to social analysis from many academics in the social sciences and humanities. His data-rich book showing the effect of innate traits and impulses on behaviour, the Blank Slate Myth, provoked a firestorm of hostility among the academic left. Sacred social values and ideological narratives trump data. Which is bad science.