Posted on 05/06/2019 6:19:59 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Political science is the study of homo politicus, what Plato considered the most quintessential of human behaviors. Over the centuries, it has generated a library of observations, theories, and findings about the way we think and act. The work has forged a broad consensus in many of the discipline’s realms of inquiry.
Yet, although academic political scientists consider themselves experts who have built robust models validated by all sorts of empirical studies, they seem to believe the kinds of misinformed and prejudicial attitudes and anti-social and harmful behavior they attribute to just about everyone else have somehow evaded them.
That is odd. The last time I checked, political science professors were human beings. They are surely not immune from theories of human behavior they hold and have validated under scientific conditions.
One such in-vogue theory is unconscious or implicit bias. This is the idea that individuals are inherently prejudiced against others from certain groups. Social scientists use the theory to explain pervasive racism and prejudice against out or minority groups in all walks of life. The idea is that although a person may feel they judge others neutrally or on merits unrelated to group membership, they hold biases, admittedly often small, that they are incapable of correcting.
These attitudes adversely affect the individuals who constitute their object. Compounded, they can have material effects on public policy and social outcomes.
Although the theory has vocal critics and some proponents recognize its limited capacity to predict the behavior of individuals, the academy has produced a great deal of confirmatory published experimental and survey research.
Academics consider bias particularly pervasive in homogenous populations. Political science is certainly homogenous.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Political science isn’t!
Intellectual diversity...must mean a combination of Democrats and conservatives. Very diverse....
In general, if the word “science” is in the name of an academic so-called discipline, it isn’t science.
Examples:
Political Science, Social Science
Counter-Examples:
Chemistry, Physics
Even Chemistry and Physics are broad. A better example of an exact science is Electromagnetism (a branch of Physics).
Excellent article, thx.
And the study of consciousness ?
If something exists and you want to study it in depth, It can’t be science ?
Dreams, memory .....
No. It is called Ontology.
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