UC BERKELEY STUDY - What do Hitler, Mussolini, Reagan and Rush Limbaugh Have in common....

UCBerkely News ^ | 22 July 2003 | Kathleen Maclay

[steve8714]

dufa...neuter noun and species.

[steve8714]

dufa...neuter noun and species.

[Bon mots]

Bump to read later... and follow your link...

[Search4Truth]

"Would make sense since the left works to tear down civilization and longs for anarchy."

They seek to create the same chaos in the world, that exists in their personal lives.

[dasboot]

Cognita constipatum. Excusiato!

[ValenB4]

Get real. Coming from Berkely, this strangely seems to verify left wing stereotypes of conservatives. I'd like to see a psychoanalysis of liberalism.

[Kahonek]

"The APA has been conducting outcome-based research for years"

Why is this a bad thing, again? Would you not prefer to know the likely outcome of a treatment before consenting to undergo it?

[TheAngryClam]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/950855/posts

posted yesterday.

[Congressman Billybob]

I put the following up on the other thread on this "study." Thought it was worthwhile to share with the readers of this thread on the same.

The key to understanding this "study" is in a short phrase which describes what was done. It is "meta-analytic calculations." The article does not explain what that is. Since I took stats in the Ph.D. program at American University, I can supply that information.

Meta-analytic calculations means taking just the RESULTS, not the raw data, from a group of other studies, and running them through mathematical tests for statistical significance. When the raw data from the assembled studies are something highly factual -- such as rates of death from tuberculosis or rainfall per acre of arable land, such calculations can be valuable and useful.

However, when that process is used in politics, the results from the prior studies must be coded by the researchers' opinions as to what they mean. The obvious and stupid error in the coding of this meta-analysis appears in this article. The "researchers" coded Hitler and Mussolini as "conservatives" along with President Reagan. Apparently, the "researchers" didn't notice that the first two were both, as a matter of political intent, socialists.

In short, this is bullsh*t, and any competent reader of the "results" of this "study" could look at the process and know that. Furthermore, all of the characteristics except one applied in spades to Billyjeff Clinton, to his wife, Lady MacBeth, and to all of their assembled Kool-Aid drinkers. The only one that does not apply to them is "avoiding ambiguity." That group raised the use of deliberate ambiguity to an art form.

This is another proof, if any be needed, that those who have Ph.D.s and carry clipboards are just as capable of lying as the worst of politicians, or even more frightening, the worst of trial lawyers. This is JUNK SCIENCE.

Congressman Billybob

Latest article, now up FR, "Sixteen Little Words."

[Fred]

"A great curse has fallen upon modern life with the discovery of the vastness of the word Education."

GK Chesterton

[steve8714]

Probably a conservative like President Reagan, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Milosevic, Satan, Mao and Castro.

[Smile-n-Win]

The only one that does not apply to them is "avoiding ambiguity." That group raised the use of deliberate ambiguity to an art form.

So what do you mean by "is" here? ;-)

[Mr. Silverback]

Hitler and Mussolini were conservatives like I'm Marilyn Monroe.

[Clint N. Suhks]

Would you not prefer to know the likely outcome of a treatment before consenting to undergo it?

You mean like homosexual research studies that begin with the premise that homosexuality is not a paraphilic disorder? Garbage in garbage out.

How about Meta-Analytic studies like Rind that begin with the caveat you can’t equate "wrongfulness" with harmfulness in sexual matters, but harmfulness cannot be inferred from wrongfulness in child sex abuse? If I wanted to prove pigs can fly meta-analysis is the way to go.

[Reagan Renaissance]

"..intolerance of ambiguity; uncertainty avoidance; need for cognitive closure.."

Here you have liberalism in a capsule. Non-judgmental is the sum total of their being. Liberals can not tell right from and wrong and have no desire to do so. Intellectual capacity is the ability to absorb and process information to get the benefit of the information absorbed. Does the phrase, "Those who fail to remember the past are doomed to repeat it" mean anything to you? Chaos is the result of liberalism. All progress of man and society clearly rests on the shoulders of conservatives. Liberals are not only intellectually incompetent, they are determined to remain that way.

[First Amendment]

I couldn't bear to read this - but I should, just for ammunition purposes. I grew up in an ultra-liberal academic family (everyone else has higher degrees, I have a GED - black sheep and all that) and having seen academic liberalism from the inside, it ruins my digestion to see it close up.

Liberalism is definitely a mental illness.

[Kahonek]

"You mean like homosexual research studies that begin with the premise that homosexuality is not a
paraphilic disorder? Garbage in garbage out."

No, actually I was referring broadly to outcomes-based research. You asserted that all outcomes-based research was worthless, and I was curious why you made a statement like that. Much of modern medicine (as well as psychology) is the result of very sound outcomes-based research. I've done a fair amount of outcomes-based research myself, but never on the topic you seem so preoccupied with and vehement about (sexual orientation).

"How about Meta-Analytic studies like Rind that begin with the caveat you can’t equate "wrongfulness" with
harmfulness in sexual matters, but harmfulness cannot be inferred from wrongfulness in child sex abuse?"

I am not sure you followed Rind's paper that well, based on your summary above. However, I do believe that "wrongfulness" and "harmfulness" are two distinct constructs that are not always overlapping (e.g., you can do harm without being wrong), and that harmfulness is not a perfect function of wrongfulness.

"If I wanted to prove pigs can fly meta-analysis is the way to go."

Not really. First, you'd have to find enough empirical studies of pig flight. Meta-analysis is a greatly misunderstood methodology that has very strong utility if used appropriately. Over the past two decades, we've developed pretty strict standards to control misinterpretation and misuse. One need only apply the standards.

[playball0]

"They also stressed that their findings are not judgmental."

Whenever a liberal says thay are not something, they are in spades.

This analysis is dreg, drivel and dog Sh?t.

Question: Which is more useful: The product of liberal professors or excrement?

Answer: Excrement, because it can be turned into fertilizer.

[Snidely Whiplash]

The major problem with this is that Hitler and Mussolini were leftists, not conservatives. They were (dare I say it?) SOCIALISTS!!!!

Eh...I've never been totally convinced that those Fascists were definable as either liberal or conservative, by the modern definitions of those terms.

The big problem here is that we are trying to use modern standards to define past political movements, and it doesn't work too well. As the Berkeley numnutzes pointed out, there were some very central features of Fascist policy (particularly Nazi policy) that would be by any reasonable definition conservative - emphasis on a "family values" agenda, nationalism (the "national" in National Socialism), and suchlike.

But then you have the problem that Hitler et. al were in some respects socialist, a distinctly liberal philosophy. On the other hand, Hitler was contemporaneously seen by some as a defender of capitalism and Western civilization against the Soviet Union; Hitler was certainly on record as despising Communism. In social policy, the Nazis could be classed as extremist conservatives - pushing the traditional family structure, to the point of actually awarding medals to women who bore lots of "Aryan" children, to their nationalistic Kultur. National Socialism also repudiated the philosophical underpinnings of the Enlightenment, the genesis of modern egalitarian liberalism (and Socialism, and Marxism).

The upshot of all this is - any attempt to label National Socialism or Fascism as exclusively conservative or liberals is intellectually dishonest, pointless and misguided. The phenomena defy the usual classification system. That, essentially, is the problem with this "study." It begins from a flawed premise, and with a bit of an axe to grind as well, I'm thinking.

Snidely

[attagirl]

Hitler and Mussolini were leftists, not conservatives

Here! here!

It's a wonderland. Alice would recognize it instantly!