RealClearScience reports the results of a study of what are the taboo subjects in the social sciences, with particular emphasis on psychology. The researchers interviewed 41 scholars to build a list of topics with a substantial likelihood of getting an author deplatformed or perhaps fired. They came up with 10 hot-button issues.
1. “The tendency to engage in sexually coercive behavior likely evolved because it conferred some evolutionary advantages on men who engaged in such behavior.”
2. “Gender biases are not the most important drivers of the under-representation of women in STEM fields.”
3. “Academia discriminates against Black people (e.g., in hiring, promotion, grants, invitations to participate in colloquia/symposia).”
4. “Biological sex is binary for the vast majority of people.”
5. “The social sciences (in the United States) discriminate against conservatives (e.g., in hiring, promotion, grants, invitations to participate in colloquia/symposia).”
6. “Racial biases are not the most important drivers of higher crime rates among Black Americans relative to White Americans.”
7. “Men and women have different psychological characteristics because of evolution.”
8. “Genetic differences explain non-trivial (10% or more) variance in race differences in intelligence test scores.”
9. “Transgender identity is sometimes the product of social influence.”
10. “Demographic diversity (race, gender) in the workplace often leads to worse performance.”
The researchers then sent these 10 issues to some 4600 psychology faculty who were asked to anonymously rate the truth or falsity of each. Roughly 10% responded. Anonymity of response means there was no way to determine the extent to which the respondents were representative of the whole.
Just over half said scholars should be free to examine questions like these, and 1.6% said the topics should be taboo. Some 46% said "it's complicated" which I presume means some topics "yes" and some "no." Or it may have meant one can't look at scary topics unless tenured.
