How a Rebellious Scientist Uncovered the

Surprising Truth About Stereotypes

written by Claire Lehmann

The Sydney Symposium

At the back of a small room at Coogee Beach, Sydney, I sat watching as a psychologist I had
never heard of paced the room gesticulating. His voice was loud. Over six feet tall, his presence
was imposing. It was Lee Jussim. He had come to the Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology
to talk about left-wing bias in social psychology.

Left-wing bias, he said, was undermining his field. Graduate students were entering the field in
order to change the world rather than discover truths.1 Because of this, he said, the field was
riddled with flaky research and questionable theories.
Jussim’s talk began with one of the most egregious examples of bias in recent years. He drew the
audience’s attention to the paper: “NASA faked the moon landing – therefore (climate) science is a
hoax.” The study was led by Stephan Lewandowsky, and published in Psychological Science in
2013. The paper argued that those who believed that the moon landing was a hoax also believed
that climate science was a fraud. The abstract stated:
We…show that endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the CIA killed Martin-
Luther King or that NASA faked the moon landing) predicts rejection of climate science as well
as the rejection of other scientific findings above and beyond commitment to laissez-faire free
markets. This provides confirmation of previous suggestions that conspiracist ideation
contributes to the rejection of science.
After describing the study and reading the abstract, Jussim paused. Something big was coming.

“But out of 1145 participants, only ten agreed that the moon landing was a hoax!” he said. “Of
the study’s participants, 97.8% who thought that climate science was a hoax, did not think that the
moon landing also a hoax.”
His fellow psychologists shifted in their seats. Jussim pointed out that the level of obfuscation
the authors went to, in order to disguise their actual data, was intense. Statistical techniques
appeared to have been chosen that would hide the study’s true results. And it appeared that no
peer reviewers, or journal editors, took the time, or went to the effort of scrutinizing the study in
a way that was sufficient to identify the bold misrepresentations.

While the authors’ political motivations for publishing the paper were obvious, it was the lax
attitude on behalf of peer reviewers – Jussim suggested – that was at the heart of the problems
within social psychology. The field had become a community in which political values and
moral aims were shared, leading to an asymmetry in which studies that reinforced left-wing
narratives had come to be disproportionately represented in the literature. And this was not, to
quote Stephen Colbert, because “reality had a liberal bias”. It was because social psychology had
a liberal bias.
Jussim explained that within the field, those on the left outnumbered those on the right by a ratio
of about 10:1. So it meant that even if left-leaning and right-leaning scientists were equal in their
bias, there would be at least ten times more research biased towards validating left-wing
narratives than conservative narratives. Adding in the apparent double standards in the peer
review process (where studies validating left-wing narratives seemed to be easier to publish) then
the bias within the field could vastly exceed the ratio of 10:1. In other words, research was
becoming an exercise in groupthink.
***
Jussim appears to have had an anti-authoritarian streak since day one. Born in Brooklyn 1955,
his family moved to Long Island when he was twelve. He lost his mother the following year
from illness, and after that, he lost his father as well, although this time not from illness, but from
grief. It was at this tender age that Jussim entered into a life of self-reliance. Ferociously
independent, Jussim describes having little respect for, or deference to, authority figures. In high
school he says he purposely made life miserable for his teachers, and later he would become an
anti-war activist.

In 1975, at the age of 20, he was a university dropout. He did not return again to study until four
years later, when he began undergraduate psychology, and it was not until 1986, at the age of 30,
that Jussim achieved his first publication. By this stage he was already married with a baby.

Jussim may not have known at this point that he was destined to continue living a life of non-
conformity. He was a reformed delinquent and anti-Vietnam war activist. He had his PhD and a
publication under his belt. He had settled down. His former life of rabble rousing and trouble
making was over.

Or so he thought.
Very early in his career, Jussim faced a crisis of sorts. An early mentor, Jacquelynne Eccles,
handed him some large datasets gathered from school children and teachers in educational
settings. He tried testing the social psychology theories he had studied, but consistently found
that his data contradicted them.

Instead of finding that the teachers’ expectations influenced the students’ performances, he found
that the students’ performances influenced the teachers’ expectations. This data “misbehaved”. It
did not show that stereotypes created, or even had much influence on the real world. The data did
not show that teachers’ expectations strongly limited students’ performances. It did not show that
stereotypes became self-fulfilling prophecies. But instead of filing his results away into a desk
drawer, Jussim kept investigating – for three more decades.

The Crisis in Social Psychology

Some months after Jussim’s presentation at the 2015 Sydney Symposium, the results of
the Reproducibility Project in psychology were announced. This project found that out of 100
psychological studies, only about 30%-50% could be replicated.
The reproducibility project follows in the wake of a crisis that has engulfed social psychology in
recent years. A slew of classic studies have never been able to be fully replicated. (Replication is
a benchmark of the scientific method. If a study cannot be replicated, it suggests that the results
were a fluke, and not an accurate representation of the real world).

For example, Bargh, Chen and Burrows published one of the most famous experiments of the
field in 19963. In it, students were divided into two groups: one group received priming with the
stereotype of elderly people; the other students received no priming (the control group). When
the students left the experiment, those who had been primed with the stereotype of the elderly,
walked down a corridor significantly more slowly than the students assigned to the control.
While it has never been completely replicated, it has been cited over 3400 times. It also features
in most social psychology textbooks.
Another classic study by Darley & Gross published in 1983, found that people applied a
stereotype about social class when they saw a young girl taking a math test, but did not when
they saw a young girl not taking a math test.5 Two attempts at exact replication have failed.6 And
both replication attempts actually found the opposite pattern – that people apply stereotypes when
they have no other information about a person, but switch them off when they do.6
In the field of psychology, what counts as a “replication” is controversial. Researchers have not
yet reached a consensus on whether a replication means that an effect of the same size was
found. Or that an effect size was found within the same confidence intervals. Or whether it is an
effect in the same direction. How one defines replication will likely impact whether one sees a
“replication” as being successful or not. So while some of social psychology’s classic studies
have not been fully replicated, there have been partial replications, and a debate still rages around
what exactly constitutes one. But here’s the kicker: even in the partial replications of some of
these stereotype studies, the research has been found to be riddled with p-hacking.4 (P-hacking
refers to the exploitation of researcher degrees of freedom until a desirable result is found).
***
When I went through university as a psychology undergraduate Jussim’s work was not on the
curriculum. His studies were not to be found in my social psychology textbook. Nor was Jussim
ever mentioned in the classroom. Yet the area of study Jussim has been a pioneer of – stereotype
accuracy – is one of the most robust and replicable areas ever to emerge from the discipline.
To talk about stereotypes, one has to first define what they are. Stereotypes are simply beliefs
about a group of people. They can be positive (children are playful) or they can be negative
(bankers are selfish), or they can be somewhere in between (librarians are quiet). When
stereotypes are defined as beliefs about groups of people (true or untrue), they correlate with real
world criteria with effect sizes ranging from .4 to .9, with the average coming in somewhere
around .8. (This is close to the highest effect size that a social science researcher can find, an
effect size of 1.0 would mean that stereotypes correspond 100% to real world criteria. Many
social psychological theories rest on studies which have effect sizes of around .2.)

Jussim and his co-authors have found that stereotypes accurately predict demographic criteria,
academic achievement, personality and behaviour.7 This picture becomes more complex,
however, when considering nationality or political affiliation. One area of stereotyping which is
consistently found to be inaccurate are the stereotypes concerning political affiliation; right-
wingers and left wingers tend to caricature each others personalities, most often negatively so.7
Lest one thinks that these results paint a bleak picture of human nature, Jussim and his
colleagues have also found that people tend to switch off some of their stereotypes – especially
the descriptive ones – when they interact with individuals.7It appears that descriptive stereotypes
are a crutch to lean on when we have no other information about a person. When we gain
additional insights into people, these stereotypes are no longer useful. And there is now a body of
evidence to suggest that stereotypes are not as fixed, unchangeable and inflexible as they’ve
historically been portrayed to be.8
A Cool Reception
Studying the accuracy of stereotypes is risky business. For many, investigation into stereotypes
is tantamount to endorsing bigotry. To understand why this is the case, one has to take a long
view of the discipline’s history.

Social psychology arose from the ashes of World War 2. An entire generation had to come to
terms with the legacy of the war, and the study of prejudice and authoritarianism naturally
captured their imaginations. Gordon Allport, a mentor of Stanley Milgram, conceptualised
stereotypes in his 1954 book The Nature of Prejudice as inaccurate, pernicious and unshakeable,
and influential in shaping the social world9. From this point onwards, this conception has largely
remained unchallenged.
Reactions to Jussim’s findings about the accuracy of stereotypes have varied on the scale
between lukewarm and ice cold. At Stanford this year after giving a talk, an audience
member articulated a position reflected by many within his field:
“Social psychologists should not be studying whether people are accurate in perceiving groups!
They should be studying how situations create disadvantage.”

Jussim has heard this position over and over again. Not just from students, but also colleagues.
One might find it surprising that psychology researchers would become so invested in shutting
down research they find politically unbearable. But one shouldn’t be.
 It is not uncommon for social psychologists to list “the promotion of social justice” as a research
topic on their CVs, or on their university homepages. One academic, John Jost at New York
University, who argues that conservatism is a form of motivated cognition, runs what he calls
the Social Justice Lab. Within the scientific community, the blending of science with political
activism is far from being frowned upon. One only has to take a brief look at Twitter to see that
scientists are often in practice of tweeting about “white privilege”, “women in STEM”,
“structural disadvantage”, “affirmative action”, and “stereotypes”. For many scientists, the
crusade to change the world is seen as part of one’s job description.
Jussim has weathered aloof, and at times openly hostile attitudes to his work for virtually three
decades. In an email to me earlier in the year, he wrote that he felt like his work life has been
lived in solitary confinement. It is possible that Jussim’s citation count – or impact factor – has
been artificially suppressed. And for renegade academics such as Jussim to get published, they
often must resort to sugar-coating and camouflaging their results, leaving important findings out
of journal titles and abstracts.

Yet he points out that despite the hostility towards stereotype accuracy, he has been well treated
by social psychology – having been given an American Psychological Association Early Career
Award in 1997 – and being cited by his peers over 6000 times. Jussim also points out that while
doing research that breaks taboos and undermines political narratives is hard, it is not impossible.
Ultimately the scientific method wins.

It is too early to know how research into stereotypes will unfold in the future. And we do not
know yet if social psychology will ever be able to achieve ideological diversity, or realistically
address its left-wing bias. What is certain, however, is that despite producing work that has been
unwelcome and unpopular, Lee Jussim has remained a faithful servant to the scientific method.
Even in the face of great personal costs.

Claire Lehmann is the editor of Quillette. Follow her on Twitter @clairlemon

References
1. Jussim, Crawford, Stevens, Anglin, & Duarte (in press). Can high moral purposes undermine
scientific integrity? To appear in J. Forgas, P. van Lange, & L. Jussim (eds), The Sydney
Symposium on the Social Psychology of Morality.
2. Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, G. E. (2013). NASA faked the moon landing—
therefore,(climate) science is a hoax an anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological
science, 24(5), 622-633.
3. Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait
construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of personality and social psychology, 71(2),
230.
4. Lakens, D. (2014). Professors are not elderly: Evaluating the evidential value of two social priming
effects through p-curve analyses. Available at SSRN 2381936.
5. Darley, J. M., & Gross, P. H. (1983). A hypothesis-confirming bias in labeling effects. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 20.
6. Baron, R. M., Albright, L., & Malloy, T. E. (1995). The effects of behavioral and social class
information on social judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 308-315.
7. Jussim, L., Cain, T. R., Crawford, J. T., Harber, K., & Cohen, F. (2009). The unbearable accuracy of
stereotypes. Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination, 199-227.
8. Jussim, L., Harber, K. D., Crawford, J. T., Cain, T. R., & Cohen, F. (2005). Social reality makes the
social mind: Self-fulfilling prophecy, stereotypes, bias, and accuracy. Interaction Studies, 6(1), 85-
102.
9. Allport, G. W. (1979). The nature of prejudice. Basic books.
10. Jussim, L. (1997). Distinguished Scientific Awards for an Early Career Contribution to
Psychology. American Psychologist, 52(4), 322-324.
11. Duarte, J. L., Crawford, J. T., Stern, C., Haidt, J., Jussim, L., & Tetlock, P.E. (2015). Political
diversity will improve social psychological science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
doi: 10.1017/S0140525X14000430 [See summary here].
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FI LE D UNDE R: Features, Must Reads, Science, Spotlight

81 Comments
1. Neighsayer
o December 4, 2015
I’m guessing, like in so many things, pop culture adopts a newer definition and forgets
the older one, so stereotypes are now identified with the negative effects of their
misapplication and we’ve forgotten what they were at first – vague, often useful
collections of information like every other clump of fuzzy information we’re so good at
working with.
Also, as in all things, authority is the enemy of truth, social young scientists being told
search for the truth here and here, but not here . . .
for the record, I’m about as liberal as they get, but if it’s a bias to the left that’s
responsible for the crap parenting info people have been subjected to since BF Skinner,
then I’ll be with you on this.
▪ Jon
▪ December 12, 2015
I think Our culture is being taken over by Cultural Marxism.
▪ Jon
▪ December 12, 2015
What supports modern Marxism, cultural Marxism(the cause) is logical and if it
doesn’t support it’s not logical. The theme is tolerance? I get a dejavu with
judeoChristanity when it was injected into the Roman Empire. On religion the
Romans where tolerant to having many Gods and beliefs. Christianity was a
totalitarian poison that helped destroyed the Roman Empire culture and economy
from within. Marxism is the same. A totalitarian “final” ideological idea to destroy
the Western culture and economy from within. Are we going to make the same
mistake again?
▪ chris

▪ December 22, 2015

They agitate for social justice by destroying the old religious bonds of society, but
without having an equally powerful glue to re-connect people. You can’t connect
just by opposing. The net effect is fragmentation. Non-religious societies, societies
without strong codes of conformity and belief, are weaker. Yes, there are the PC
techniques to police & shame sexist language etc, but these moves are weaker than
the forces of fragmentation and tearing-down.
& the other side of cultural Marxism, ie economic Marxism, can’t help because
even though it might unite the masses, it just doesn’t actually work economically.
Therefore we’re unable to challenge any religiously-united group which comes
along.
▪ Stutz
▪ December 23, 2015
Would be interested in any evidence supporting the claim that non-religious
societies are weaker. Shall we create two lists and compare them?
▪ Jonathan

▪ December 22, 2015

Well, note that it was the Romans who were killing and persecuting Christians bc
of Roman intolerance and totalitarianism. Also, note that many of the virtues and
 liberties that have existed in the US (rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness,
etc.) were supported by theistic religious foundations, in contrast to the dearth of
rights that exist in an atheistic Marxist state.
▪ deepwellbridge
▪ December 24, 2015
The Christians of that time would disagree with you. They were routinely
butchered by the “tolerant” Romans for their refusal to worship the Emperor as a
god. This was the line that Rome had drawn, “Worship any god you like, but also
worship the Emperor”.
The fall of Rome could be attested to many things. As with many things, it was
complected.
▪ Chemiker
▪ January 17, 2016
So, Marxism is the opiate of the people?
2. Barry Woods

▪ December 4, 2015
The other thing was Prof Lewandowsky, knowingly surveyed 8 blogs that hated climate
sceptics, no climate sceptic blogs took part…. Would you only survey republicans and
come to conclusions that Democrats are nutters?
They included a blog, that he was a regular contributor to, that lists climate sceptics as
misinformers, including Dr Pielke Junior, Prof Judith Curry, Prof Spencer, Prof Christy
and other scientists they don’t like. The invite to participate was to a private group
email, of those blogs that he participated in, that all hated climate climate sceptics..
Comments under the climate sceptic hating he blogs surveyed, thought not even deniers
would be dumb enough to fall for what the survey was so obvious trying to achieve..
even the locals didn’t think the ‘deniers’ would fall for such a transparent survey…
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/survey-says/#comment-44097
“Yeah, those conspiracy theory questions were pretty funny, but does anyone think that
hardcore deniers are going to be fooled by such a transparent attempt to paint them as
paranoids?”
Very early criticism of this paper, are in the comments here:
http://talkingclimate.org/are-climate-sceptics-more-likely-to-be-conspiracy-theorists/
3. Stephen McIntyre
▪ December 4, 2015
Jussim points out that no peer reviewers had noticed that “out of 1145 participants, only
ten agreed that the moon landing was a hoax!”
He did not point out that this was pointed out at a skeptic blog within one day of
(partial) underlying data being made available:
see http://manicbeancounter.com/2012/09/01/lewandowsky-et-al-2012-motivated-rejection-of-
science-part-3-data-analysis-of-the-conspiracy-theory-element/. This observation was rapidly
covered at other blogs.
In response, Lewandowsky accused his critics of “recursive” conspiracy theory, listing
the above blogpost as supposed evidence.
▪ Art Critic
▪ December 5, 2015
Jussim stated “no peer review”. . . Do you really feel that the link you posted
qualifies as a peer review journal in the scientific community?
 ▪ Steven Mosher
▪ December 5, 2015
“Jussim stated “no peer review”. . . Do you really feel that the link you posted
qualifies as a peer review journal in the scientific community?”
No the link does not count as Peer review which is an indictment of peer review.
That “rank amateurs” could find such an obvious flaw in less than a day, doesn’t
speak
to well for the process of “peer” review.
Steve’s comment is not a claim that the blog post substitutes for peer review. His
comment, rather, establishes several things.
1. The Priority of his criticism. In scholarship we do care about who said things
first
2. The Failings of peer review
3. The Benefits of expert review from individuals OUTSIDE the discipline
4. The Jussim’s failure to acquaint himself with all the the literature surrounding
the paper in question
▪ Curious George
▪ December 5, 2015
An excellent summary. The Hockey Team’s redefinition of a peer review has been
successful beyond dreams.
4. Jonathan Jones
▪ December 4, 2015
As Stephen McIntyre points out the Lewandowsky papers were comprehensively
shredded on various blogs shortly after publication. Getting comments into the formal
literature has been trickier, but there are several around. My comment (joint with Ruth
Dixon) published in Psychological Science concentrates on the statistics used, and
shows that the conclusions of the Moon Hoax studies are an artefact of assuming a
linear model when the data is strongly non-linear. The comment is available open access
at http://pss.sagepub.com/content/26/5/664
▪ Kevin Marshall (Manicbeancounter)
▪ April 9, 2016
The Lewandowsky Moon Hoax defied basic logic. Below is a comment I made on a
short time ago.
https://manicbeancounter.com/2013/11/14/lewandowskys-false-inference-from-an-absurd-
correlation/
Even more bizarre than absurd correlations, is to draw inferences of cause and
effect from correlations, when there are a huge number of equally valid (or invalid)
inferences that can be made.
The title of the Hoax paper is “NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate)
Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science“. The first
part implies that, due to coming to believe that the moon landing was faked,
survey respondents reasoned that climate science was also a hoax. But, given that
this survey was only on climate blogs, is it not more likely that the respondent’s
rejection of “official” or orthodox version of events goes the other way?
Looking at the data there is a similar issue of low numbers on support of the
paired statements. Only 10/1145 supported CYMoon. Of these only 3 supported
CYClimChange. Of these only 2 scored “4” for both. And these were the two
faked/scam/rogue respondents 860 & 889 whose support of every conspiracy
 theory underpinned many of the correlations. The third, 963, also supported every
conspiracy theory. Let us assume that they are genuine believers in all the
conspiracy theories. Further, let us assume that one of the 13 conspiracies in the
survey did trigger a response of the form “because I now know A was a conspiracy,
I now believe B is a conspiracy”. There are 2n(n-1) = 312 possible versions of this
statement. Or, more likely, no such reasoning process went through any
respondent’s mind at all. Given the question was never asked, and there is no
supporting evidence for the statement “NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore
(Climate) Science is a Hoax” it most likely a figment of someone’s imagination.
5. Kåre Fog
▪ December 4, 2015
I dislike the comment from Barry Woods.
When somebody “hates” (couldn´t we just say “dislikes”) for instance Dr. Christy and
Pielke junior, it might possibly be because these persons produce something which is of
really low quality (I would like to say “bad”, but that might be misunderstood).
Stay open to the possibility that if some “scientists” are disliked by many, it might be
because there is really a good reason to dislike them.
As said in the article, when people have formed an opinion of somebody else, it might be
roughly true in 80 % of the cases.
▪ Barry Woods
▪ December 4, 2015
Hi Kare
These are 6 of 8 of the anti-climate sceptic blogs that were surveyed,
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2010/08/counting-your-attitudes/
http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/opinion-survey-regarding-climate-change/
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/08/29/survey-on-attitudes-towards-cl/
http://hot-topic.co.nz/questionnaire/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/survey-says/
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/take-a-survey/
The unity blog, dd not have comment, and although Skeptical Science was claimed
to have been surveyed, it was not, Cook and Lewandowsky continue to lie about
it’s participation.
The readers generally do hate skeptics, and are absolutely their opponents (and
Prof Lewandowsky knew this when he approached them) the comments are
mocking and extremely derogatory take a look through the comments, and blog
posts in August 2010, or earlier the time of the survey… ie Deltoid which was
pretty infamous back then
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/08/
Lewandowsky claimed in his paper a survey of climate blogs with a diverse
audience, and a prevalence of sceptics similar to the USA public. The group of
blogs surveyed, are the absolute opponents of climate sceptics blogs, and any
skeptical reader/commentator, was a rare and masochistic finding. Prof
Lewandowsky, obtained a content analysis from John Cook of the Skeptcal Science
blog, to claim this diverse audience with a high prevalence of climate sceptics for
this paper (20%, magically matching the general public) somehow this analysis
was also smeared across the other 7 blogs to represent their readership as well
(how did that escape peer review)
The fact that Cook’s blog never actually held the Lewandowsky survey, makes this
even more problematic.
 John is Lewandowsky’s PhD student, and oddly in an interview with Yale just
weeks after the survey, John Cook informed the interviewer that sceptics don’t
read his blog much and a small group pf bloggers keep in touch. (Cook’s content
analysis is undocumented, and unavailable, despite being requested)
John Cook:
“The kind of people who visit my site regularly are not the same people who look at
the skeptic sites,” Cook said. As for skeptic sites that he sees as his competition,
“the closest thing to mine in Australia” is joannenova.com.au, which he said gets
about the same level of monthly traffic as his own site. He identified Anthony
Watts’ WUWT site as a counterpart American skeptics blog, “though he gets an
order of magnitude more traffic than my site gets.”
Pointing to climate change sites such as Tim Lambert’s Deltoid, Tamino’s Open
Mind, and Michael Tobis’s Only In It For The Gold, Cook said that “all the climate
bloggers, we all keep in pretty close touch. There’s a whole bunch of them.” – Cook
http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2010/12/skeptical-science-founder-john-cook/
this is the very group of bloggers that Prof Lewandowsky approached, via a request
to a private google group of these blogs, that Cook/Lewandowsky were part of and
Prof Lewandowsky is a regular contributor to John Cook’s blog (none of which is
declared in the paper)
▪ Barry Woods

▪ December 4, 2015
The nature of Skeptical Science is to have a page of Climate Misinformers – with
photos, and quotes. Misinformer is a very loaded word for any scientist to be
labelled with.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Roger_Pielke_Jr.htm
It is enough for Skeptical Science to call Roger a Misinformer, without, actually
giving any evidence.. no quotes, no links, etc,etc this is apparently good enough for
their readership.
▪ ATheoK

▪ December 5, 2015
Kåre Fog:
I find your comment puzzling.
“When somebody “hates” (couldn´t we just say “dislikes”)…”
You have a problem with the emotion description ‘hate’? The emotion ‘dislike’ is
not the same as ‘hate’.
Demoting ‘hate’ to ‘dislike’ alters the discussion. I take ‘dislike’ to be a mild
aversion whereas the description ‘hate’ implies unreasoning intense passion.
When someone, who researched the discussion mentioned extensively and
documents them, as he demonstrated above, uses the word hate, it was a
legitimate use of the word. The commenters he referred to are literally eaten up
with hate for the people they view as real enemies instead of people with a
different opinion.
I have to wonder why you determined to demote hate to dislike? Were you
determined to make out a ‘dislike’ argument regarding the scientists in question?
 A curious approach, since you refer to ‘low quality’ products and infer that certain
blogs dislike the scientists for ‘low quality work’; something that neither Dr.
Christy nor Dr. Pielke are known for. Dr. Christy, in particular, is known for very
high quality science.
“…As said in the article, when people have formed an opinion of somebody else, it
might be roughly true in 80 % of the cases”.
I have no clue what you are referring to. I am unable to find 80% or ‘roughly true
opinions’.
▪ John Benton

▪ December 5, 2015
Kare Fog
If you’re not even prepared to do the most basic checking of facts I don’t see what
value your opinions have. Even the most rudimentary scan of the information
freely available into Lewandowsky’s work will reveal the true nature of this
charlatan.
▪ Brad Keyes
▪ December 7, 2015
Kåre,
Think of this as a lesson in reading microexpressions.
If you seriously don’t detect Lewandowsky’s hatred for unbelievers, you’re
cordially invited to my next poker night.
▪ goldminor
▪ December 12, 2015
If you have an extra seat at that game, then I would love to sit in at the table.
▪ Brad Keyes
▪ December 15, 2015
goldminor,
Sure, come along, but only if you’re face-illiterate. Like Jaime Lannister, I keep my

armor unscathed by choosing my opponents well.

6. Barry Woods

▪ December 4, 2015
Hi Kare
These are 6 of 8 of the anti-climate sceptic blogs that were surveyed,
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2010/08/counting-your-attitudes/
http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/opinion-survey-regarding-climate-change/
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/08/29/survey-on-attitudes-towards-cl/
http://hot-topic.co.nz/questionnaire/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/survey-says/
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/take-a-survey/
The unity blog, dd not have comment, and although Skeptical Science was claimed to
have been surveyed, it was not, Cook and Lewandowsky continue to lie about it’s
participation.
The readers generally do hate skeptics, and are absolutely their opponents (and Prof
Lewandowsky knew this when he approached them) the comments are mocking and
extremely derogatory take a look through the comments, and blog posts in August 2010,
 or earlier the time of the survey… ie Deltoid which was pretty infamous back then
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/08/
Lewandowsky claimed in his paper a survey of climate blogs with a diverse audience,
and a prevalence of sceptics similar to the USA public. The group of blogs surveyed, are
the absolute opponents of climate sceptics blogs, and any skeptical
reader/commentator, was a rare and masochistic finding. Prof Lewandowsky, obtained
a content analysis from John Cook of the Skeptcal Science blog, to claim this diverse
audience with a high prevalence of climate sceptics for this paper (20%, magically
matching the general public) somehow this analysis was also smeared across the other 7
blogs to represent their readership as well (how did that escape peer review)
The fact that Cook’s blog never actually held the Lewandowsky survey, makes this even
more problematic.
John is Lewandowsky’s PhD student, and oddly in an interview with Yale just weeks
after the survey, John Cook informed the interviewer that sceptics don’t read his blog
much and a small group pf bloggers keep in touch. (Cook’s content analysis is
undocumented, and unavailable, despite being requested)
John Cook:
“The kind of people who visit my site regularly are not the same people who look at the
skeptic sites,” Cook said. As for skeptic sites that he sees as his competition, “the closest
thing to mine in Australia” is joannenova.com.au, which he said gets about the same
level of monthly traffic as his own site. He identified Anthony Watts’ WUWT site as a
counterpart American skeptics blog, “though he gets an order of magnitude more traffic
than my site gets.”
Pointing to climate change sites such as Tim Lambert’s Deltoid, Tamino’s Open Mind,
and Michael Tobis’s Only In It For The Gold, Cook said that “all the climate bloggers, we
all keep in pretty close touch. There’s a whole bunch of them.” – Cook
http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2010/12/skeptical-science-founder-john-cook/
this is the very group of bloggers that Prof Lewandowsky approached, via a request to a
private google group of these blogs, that Cook/Lewandowsky were part of and Prof
Lewandowsky is a regular contributor to John Cook’s blog (none of which is declared in
the paper)
7. Barry Woods
▪ December 4, 2015
might be a duplicate comment , sorry, please delete one.
8. Neighsayer
▪ December 5, 2015
this topic has me all excited. Here’s an excerpt from the blog you’ve inspired. I hope it’s
applicable . . .
All the ramifications of the work summarized in The Blank Slate are boiling over these
days, and yes, it’s true: Left wing ideology has had far too firm a hand in social science
generally. However, contrary to what all the talk out there about irreplicable studies and
the beating social science is taking, this isn’t news, that ideology is what drives the
studies of human things, crime, child-rearing, politics, etc.
Most of those things have been the province of religious teaching and law, forever, right?
That’s ideological. So let’s put this thing in perspective. Religious teaching and law is
pretty static. The religious – fair to associate today’s political Right with religion, I
think? – weren’t interested in social science, and if the great preponderance of social
scientists were from the Left, then it’s probably true enough to say that the Right just
 wasn’t f@#$%^g interested. So social science just marched off towards the future and
turned Left at nearly every fork in the road.
Right? I mean, correct?
So now, that’s the debate, between a science that has been left to its own devices, the
checks and balances of the opposing viewpoint absent during the centuries of its
development (maybe this is one major cause for the apparently widening divide between
the secular and the religious generally) – and the same old static, incurious attitudes of
the world’s churches (not to mention the world’s parents), now armed with the tools of
medical and brain science and knee-jerk Twitter clickbait headlines. Of course the
researchers in the articles rarely share the world-shattering enthusiasm of the headlines
...
▪ calbeck
▪ December 22, 2015
Historically, one can argue that religions were the FIRST social scientists. Mainly
in that a number of them (such as Judaism) were as much about governing and
managing large populations, as they were about hacking the head off a goat before
burning the rest for their chosen deity.
Examine, for example, Leviticus, and imagine that “abomination before God” just
means “this is a bad thing”. It reads like a health and behavior code, applicable to
the society for which it was written: a nomadic, desert-dwelling tribe of thousands
(if not tens of thousands). The prohibitions on various types of food, on various
types and timings of sex, in particular, correspond rather closely to prevention of
virus-, fecal- and blood-borne disease transmission vectors.
None of which requires God actually handed down the literal Law, but after
decades or centuries of tribal custom it was simply noted what behaviors had what
bad effects and how to avoid them. Draconian punishments weren’t “the wrath of
God” so much as deterrence against someone spreading dysentery (in a primitive,
massive, desert-region encampment with few sanitation options).
Indeed, a common criticism of religion in general is that it was invented to control
human behavior for some presumed betterment (whether of the clergy, the
nobility, or society at large).
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10. John Ray
▪ December 5, 2015
Yes. As a much published psychologist, I could see that the Lewandowski article stank
from day 1. And I said so on my blog:
http://antigreen.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/junk-psychology-about-skeptics-having.html
11. ATheoK

▪ December 5, 2015
Claire Lehmann:
Thank you for an excellent description of Lee Jussim’s presentation and his findings. I
found your article uplifting and rather inspirational.
On a negative side: Here is another one of those biased social psychology research
studies:
“Climate-change foes winning public opinion war”:
 ‘http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2015/climate-change-foes-winning-public-opinion-
war/’
“This is the first experiment of its kind to examine the influence of the denial messages
on American adults,” said Aaron M. McCright, a sociologist and lead investigator on the
study. “Until now, most people just assumed climate change deniers were having an
influence on public opinion. Our experiment confirms this.”
Lee Jussim can add this study to his list of egregiously bad design studies.
12. John Benton

▪ December 5, 2015
What surprises me is that Bristol University continues to employ Lewandowsky. I know
they’re not anywhere near top notch, but even they must surely realise how detrimental
to their reputation this character is.
▪ Brad Keyes
▪ December 6, 2015
Would that be the Bristol University whose main achievement to date is its brief
appearance in The Inbetweeners 2? I assumed it was a clown college, and
Lewandowsky was on the fast track to Chancellor.
13. mothcatcher
▪ December 5, 2015
If you want to understand how human beings use stereotypes, you’d be far better served
to ask evolutionary biologists, or possibly even neuroscientists, rather than social
scientists. If social science wants to be classed as a ‘real’ science it should really start
with the basics.
Stereotyping is an important part of how humans learn to interpret the world so
effectively. If you don’t know too much about the person you’re confronted with, a
stereotypic generalisation is a good start. As you learn more, that stereotype is modified
and fades into the background. Stereotyping is also a good way of communicating
verbally a trait or feature, or a set of features, that will help the guy you’re
communicating with. It’s an intrinsic, essential part of the way we operate.
Of course, such classifications can, and have, lead to the justification of some dreadful
episodes in our history, as we well know, and I suppose that is what underlies the
relentless attempts to banish it from our society, and even to banish from our language
words and phrases which seem to tolerate the idea of the stereotype. That’s sad.
Stereotypes and generalisations are an integral part of our intelligence, and they are a
powerful tool – for good or evil.
The PC folk should be saying instead – ‘stereotypes are fine, as long as you don’t visit
upon the individual the consequences of stereotyping him. Let him show his
individuality’ They shouldn’t be trying to fiddle the science to serve their preconceived
narrative.
14. Charles Black

▪ December 5, 2015
Very good article. And mothercatchers more in depth description of stereotypes is
helpful. It’s been evident to me for some time that stereotyping— aka, generalization— is
a necessary part of cognitive functioning. We’d be completely incapacitated without it.
 My rule of thumb is that stereotypes are okay, but try to be precise and don’t be an
asshole. Problem solved:)
When someone says something like, “Social psychologists should be not be studying
whether people are accurate in perceiving groups! They should be studying how
situations create disadvantage,” you have to wonder what they would be saying if the
results had come out the other way. Results showing stereotyping to generally be
inaccurate would have met this person’s criteria of what “creates disadvantage.” It’s not
the subject matter (stereotyping) that upsets them, it’s the results and the discomfort
the results give them when they realize that reality doesn’t map onto their worldview as
well as they thought. In their mind, these are “bad facts” that bad people use for bad
purposes. If research on the subject supported their worldview they’d eat it up, whether
it’s on stereotyping, intelligence, or biocriminology.
15. Curious George

▪ December 5, 2015
I’ll contribute a stereotype of my own. “Social psychologists should be not be studying
whether people are accurate in perceiving groups! They should be studying how
situations create disadvantage.” That’s too long. Social psychologists should be not be.
▪ Stop Thought
▪ December 6, 2015
Curious George–good grammatical catch. Should the statement be corrected to
just “Social psychologists shouldn’t be?”
16. Perry

▪ December 6, 2015
Stop Thought-could not resist this. “Social psychologists shouldn’t be allowed aloud?”
17. Pingback: Lee Jussim on stereotypes « Samizdata
18. Mick

▪ December 6, 2015
I wonder what Jussim’s take on anti-male psychology would be.
I have found this both personally & in psychology papers I’ve read. Especially in papers
coming out of gender study depts.
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21. Clovis Sangrail

▪ December 6, 2015
@ Brade Keyes
“Would that be the Bristol University whose main achievement to date is its brief
appearance in The Inbetweeners 2? I assumed it was a clown college, and Lewandowsky
was on the fast track to Chancellor.”
Sadly, Bristol is a top 10 (or so) UK university by most measures and generally regarded
as a good second to Oxford and Cambridge.
22. Brad Keyes
▪ December 7, 2015
 Thanks Clovis. Depressing if true.
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24. Mongoose

▪ December 7, 2015
If so-called leftists realised it was eco-fascist money behind the hatred for carbon
dioxide, they might save the world, after all.
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Atlas Monitor
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27. infovoy

▪ December 8, 2015
You’re ignoring what a stereotype is. They are not ‘simply beliefs about a group of
people’ but ones specifically for use in the act of stereotyping, that is, in assuming that
statistical generalizations about groups hold for individuals in those group, without
knowing them.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=stereotype
Therefore, while statistical generalizations can be right or in error depending on their
accuracy stereotypes are always in error by definition, regardless how well they predict.
You could of course disagree by thinking it’s fine to make assumptions about individual
people without knowing them and this would then be the core disagreement here. But
the short term for that is ‘prejudice’.
28. Sam Grove
▪ December 8, 2015
“Graduate students were entering the field in order to change the world rather than
discover truths1.”
I suspect this is true of other fields as well, particularly the environmental sciences.
This begins in primary education where I also suspect a majority of teachers hold the
“liberal” perspective.
29. EMyrt

▪ December 9, 2015
The low quality of climate “science” has already been covered so I can just second all the
skeptics here. Although I would add that unscientific abuse of skeptics was already
visible in the 1990s–see the ad hominem and appeal to authority arguments used to
attack Bjorn Lomborg in Scientific American back then.
My other point is that I fled the social sciences (physical anthro) in 1974 for two reasons,
one economic, one ethical:
Most of the tenured positions in my field were already taken by people ten years older
than me, so, since I could count, it was pretty clear there was little opportunity for a
tenure track career.
More importantly, an incident in a social psychology graduate seminar pushed me from
leftism toward my present libertarian politics. We were discussing human traits and Bell
curves; several of my classmates opined that if the data showed that some groups
performed less well than others than that data should be suppressed.
 I delivered a passionate rant on the importance of intellectual honesty in science and the
next year moved to economics and an MBA–which completed my political conversion.
▪ TallDave
▪ December 14, 2015
Self-selection is self-reinforcing, which creates some dilemmas.
30. cephus0

▪ December 9, 2015
While interesting this hardly comes as a major revelation. The entirety of western
academia is infested with far left dogma to the extent that demonstrating one’s leftist
credentials is a far more important pursuit that any merely trivial result in science or the
arts and everything is malleable in the overarching march to totalitarianism.
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32. Robert

▪ December 12, 2015

The author, and apparently Lee Jussim, have completely misread what the study
claimed – to the point of making me wonder if the misreading was intentional. The
study said very clearly that:
“We…show that endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the CIA killed
Martin-Luther King or that NASA faked the moon landing) predicts rejection of climate
science as well as the rejection of other scientific findings above and beyond
commitment to laissez-faire free markets. This provides confirmation of previous
suggestions that conspiracist ideation contributes to the rejection of science.”
What the author and Jussim imply is that the study said that the converse is also true.
that client skepticism predicts belief in conspiracy theories like the faked moon landing.
This is a logical fallacy known as “affirming the consequent”.
If the author and Jussim have a valid point to make then they need to show that belief in
conspiracy theories like the faked moon landing do not predict belief in climate
skepticism. Showing the converse by citing the fact that “Of the study’s participants,
97.8% who thought that climate science was a hoax, did not think that the moon landing
also a hoax.” is pointless, unless the point is to mislead. The rest of the article follows
from a false premise, or at least an unsubstantiated one.
▪ Robert

▪ December 12, 2015

Sorry, some typos. In the third paragraph “client skepticism” should be “climate
skepticism”. I should have also said “Disproving the converse” rather than
“Showing the converse” in the last paragraph.
▪ Sigdrifr (@Sigdrifr)
▪ April 17, 2017
Draw it as a Venn diagram and you will see that while the vast majority of the very
small number of conspiracy believers are also climate skeptics, the vast majority of
a much greater number of climate skeptics do not believe in other conspiracies. So
while being a conspiracy nut is a good prior for predicting climate skepticism, the
 converse is not true; being a climate skeptic is a very poor predictor of conspiracy
nuttery. The original study was framed to suggest that climate skeptics are
overwhelmingly conspiracy nuts; their own data contradicts this. That’s the point.
33. TallDave
▪ December 14, 2015
Sadly, the Lewandosky paper is a microcosm of how badly climate science is done — bad
data, bad methodology, bad peer review.
There’s a lot of good, solid, unbiased climate research being done, but a few terrible
studies tend to grab the headlines and a few prominent nincompoops promote claims
for which there is very little evidence in order to drive policy.
Most climate scientists do not believe long term temperatures can be predicted given the
state of our knowledge about climate (2008) but the antics of the Hansens and
Lewandosky’s make the whole field look silly, if not creepy or even fascistic.
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35. omnologos
▪ December 22, 2015
It sounds like the only good social psychology is the social psychology of social
psychologists
36. Sam

▪ December 22, 2015

If you’ve read “The Culture of Critique” by Kevin MacDonald, this will come as no
surprise.
37. Doctor Pepe (@ItalyGG)
▪ December 22, 2015
This article is pretty fallacious
People are convinced to doubt things they gave for granted, and as a result they doubt
their other beliefs too; that doesn’t mean they are more likely to reject “science”, but
rather just anything in general that they were convinced to believe but there is no
evidence for.
And it isn’t surprising considering people (especially in America) are coerced to believe
in a lot of absurd, unproven narratives by using guilt-tripping like “if you don’t believe in
this you are a conspiracy theorist/extremist/racist/etc”.
Think of the American view of “Holocaust denial” for example.
The official Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, made by Israel, claims 5 million deaths, but
to Americans if you don’t believe the 6 million claim you are a conspiracy theorist;
absurdly, according to this logic all Jews are anti-semitic conspiracy theorists.
There is so much lingering fearmongering about believing narratives in the US (and
partly UK, Canada, Sweden and Germany), especially in schools, that people just accept
beliefs not because they are credible but because they are afraid to challenge them.
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39. Nick

▪ December 23, 2015

A standard effect size of 1 means the average difference is equal to 1 full standard
deviation.
40. Pingback: CLAIRE LEHMANN: How a rebellious scientist uncovered the surprising
truth about stereotypes. – the Revision Division
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42. Pingback: flaky research and questionable theories … | pindanpost
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44. Rainer Möller

▪ January 1, 2016
Claire Lehmann writes:
“Gordon Allport, a mentor of Stanley Milgram, conceptualised stereotypes in his 1954
book The Nature of Prejudice as inaccurate, pernicious and unshakeable, and influential
in shaping the social world.”
I suppose that one might begin this story earlier, with Adorno e.a.: The Authoritarian
Personality, or rather the papers Sanford and Levinson published before the book. Then
began the problematic blending of empirical science and activism. (Adorno himself had
no inclination forempirical reearch, so I think we should emphasize the role of Sanford
and Levinson).
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48. Pingback: Paper: The reproducible social science of stereotype accuracy | Philosophies
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49. Ardy

▪ January 27, 2016

Stephen Lew is much missed by me. He used to post outrageous climate change articles
on the drum and I got a good laugh from them and him. He was so out there, that even
climate change, strongest supporters were wavering in their belief.
They just don’t make people like him anymore. He makes the world a happier place.
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53. Christopher Steven Day
▪ April 7, 2016
This is an article from last December about a growing sub-field in social psychology. It
goes by the name stereotype accuracy, and it does the opposite of what social psychology
has been doing for the last half century: it investigates the accuracy of stereotypes
empirically before deciding whether they’re inaccurate or not.
Weird, right? It gets worse.
It turns out that despite some recent revelations that many studies in psychology have
not been successfully reproduced in follow-up experiments (up to estimates of 50% fail
this test of reproducibility), the findings from stereotype accuracy studies are wildly
reproducible, and the effects are quite stable.
So why don’t more social psychologists look into stereotyping in order to more honestly
figure out why we do it, what adaptive function it serves, and in which contexts it is most
likely to lead to gross predictive error?
Here’s one of the leading lights in the field, Rutger’s Lee Jussim, to explain the state of
play:
“Social psychologists have long been concerned with alleviating social problems,
especially those that arise from prejudice and discrimination. As such, much
foundational and influential research, and many social psychology textbooks, have
decried the many ways stereotypes reflect and cause social problems. Because
stereotypes were so obviously (to many psychologists) bad things, ipso facto, they must
be inaccurate.”
This is a bad way to do science. Perhaps we should consider whether we are willing to do
science, given that we can’t guarantee how comfortable we will be with the results. I’m
open to this sort of trepidation. But if we decide to do it, then let’s leave our wishful
thinking at the door.
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