Fall Research Expo 2021

Exploring the Relationship Between Research Quality and Political Slant of Research

Over the past decade, the validity of social scientific research has been called into question due to widespread failures to replicate prominent social scientific findings and failed interventions based on those findings. One possible reason for this is political bias, or the possibility of the growing liberal presence contributing to potential publication bias in this field by silencing conservative voices and including less rigorous standards for the publication of liberal work. We studied whether the liberal majority contributes to the replication crisis and publication bias in this way. Specifically, we are looking for evidence of political influence on the published psychological literature by comparing bodies of research that explore political topics and nonpolitical topics.

PRESENTED BY
Grants for Faculty Mentoring Undergraduate Research
College of Arts & Sciences 2022
Advised By
Dr. Philip Tetlock
Annenberg University Professor
Join Karen for a virtual discussion
PRESENTED BY
Grants for Faculty Mentoring Undergraduate Research
College of Arts & Sciences 2022
Advised By
Dr. Philip Tetlock
Annenberg University Professor

Comments

Hey Karen! Your topic intrigued me because I've never thought of the politics of research or the way that researchers might overemphasize their results for political gains. I was curious about the methodology in your study: are those key words really enough to determine the political leanings of the authors? Even if so, I find that there's a lot of room for confounding variables or additional factors in this study that may contribute to the disparity in effect size seen between the two groups of articles. Either way, this is a super interesting topic that should definitely be explored more, so thank you for the presentation!