chadn737

You are trying to introduce several red herrings here and are deliberately ignoring the arguments made while persisting in your use of ad hominem attacks on John Ray. By the way, this is the 3rd or 4th time now you have called him "Jay" which is not his name. You can either address the actual arguments I have made or concede the issue. Let me reiterate those arguments: 1) RWA fails to correlate with alternative measures of authoritarianism, but does correlate with alternative measures of conservatism. Logically, one must conclude that RWA does not measure authoritarianism and is simply another measure of conservatism. 2) The language used in the RWA (the actual questions used being referenced) inherently presume an association of right-wing beliefs with authoritarianism. This is reflected in the absence of non-authoritarian right wing beliefs in the questionairre or corresponding authoritarian left-wing beliefs. 3) The questions in the RWA are exclusively focused on a very narrow set of right wing beliefs of a particular moral/social nature. 4) The RWA does not correlate with other tests that you have proposed, such as the SDO. 5) The meta-analysis conlfates multiple measures that are not all equivalent (F-scale, C-scale, RWA, voting records). 6) Many of the reported associations (particularly in the meta-analysis) have small effect sizes. ......you have not actually addressed any of these arguments, all of which have been supported by published research, examination of Altemeyer's own methodology, and established statistical methodology. Your counter argument has been to resort to ad hominem and appeal to motive fallacies on John Ray, the introduction of red herrings, and also your own argument from repetition. I suggest you address the actual arguments I have made and then we can have a real discussion.

The questionnaire in question IS the RWA questionaire...I'm using Altemeyer's own scale....its not cherrry picking to use the very scale the author himself created and used in most of his work. The social dominance orientation scale (SDO) is not the same as a measure of authoritarianism. Rather it is meant to predict a desire for social dominance (for that individual or for a group)....although this is problematic as the exact interpretation has changed overtime and some have argued that the variations of the scale do not measure the same thing or even hypothesis. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00400.x/abstract Secondly, there is VERY WEAK correlation between Altemeyer's RWA and the SDO. The correlation betwen the two is only ~r=0.18 http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0022-3514.67.4.741 In fact, studies that measure SDO and RWA and their connection to prejudice show that the two are independent variables that are additive in nature rather than being interactive. This of course makes clear sense if one remembers that the two are very weakly correlated. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2006.00531.x/abstract The "context" of this quote from Altemeyer's book doesn't support your argument as you think it does. The SDO is not an independent scale of authoritarianism. Altemeyer is rather talking about independent tests that predictive of prejudice....but as the last paper I cite shows, this is NOT because SDO and RWA are related, but because the two are additive in an independent way. This completely undermines your argument, because the independence of SDO and RWA shows that the SDO is not a substitute or independent validation of what the RWA is attempting to measure. No, you are not applying my "own measures" you are applying fallacious arguments: appeal to motive and ad hominem attacks. I claim Altemeyer's test is biased based on the actual questions of the test and what it sets out to measure. My standards of bias are based on the actual methods that underly the RWA. Your argument is premised on John Ray (not "Jay") as a person and completely ignore the actual analysis conducted by John Ray. The two are not equivalent. I attack the methods, a valid form of scientific and logical argumentation. You attack a person, a classic fallacy.

There is an easy way to test Altemeyer and one that does not involve self-reference. We can see whether his scale correlates to other scales. As I mentioned earlier...which seems to have gone unnoticed...John Ray early on tested this very thing by comparing Altemeyer to two seperate scales. The first which was set up to measure authoritarian behavior independent of politics and the second set up to measure "conservatism" independent of any notion of "authoritarianism". Altemeyer's test fails to correlate to alternative measures of "authoritarianism" (r=-0.049), but correlates strongly with alternative measures of conservatism. As John Ray points out, this means that Altemeyer's scale is simply a measure of conservatism and not at all a measure of authoritarianism. Ultimately, it just points to the inherent bias in the questions and assumptions of Altemeyer's tests. His questsions are slanted with inherent presumptions of authoritarianism regarding "right-wing" positions and biased in such a way as that any politically left answer is presumed to be "non-authoritarian" while any politically right answer is presumed to be authoriarian. This is the worst sort of biased research, one where the experiments themselves are set up in such a way as to pretty much guarantee the desired outcome. You are committing an ad hominem fallacy at the moment as well as an appeal to motive. John Ray's argument against Altemeyer's RWA scale is based on a testable comparison to alternative scales, all which are also published and peer-reviewed. My own arguments have been based on the nature of Altemeyer's scale and the questions themselves. It is legitimate to call into question the the wording of the questions and whether those questions are biased or slanted towards achieving a certain result, it is not a valid argument to dismiss Altemeyer on his own politics. You are attacking John Ray personally and whatever his politics may be rather than addressing the actual argument and methods he has used. If Altemeyer is indeed measuring authoritarianism, then shouldn't his scale actually correlate to alternative measures of authoritarianism? How can one verify Altemeyer's methods if they do not correlate or correspond to independent means of validation? The alternative scale does not reference politics and thus is free of the potential bias that can exist in Altemeyer's scale which presumes a connection between the politics and the authoritarianism in the questions themselves. Its really impossible to avoid the obvious fact that the RWA questions are worded in such a way as to presume that authoritarianism and right-wing politics are inherently connected.

If you have read discussions of their validity, then I'm sure you are also familiar with John Ray's comparison of Altemeyer's RWA to seperate scales of conservatism and authoritarianism? John Ray developed two different scales. One attempts to measure "Authoritarianism" in a politically unbiased manner. The second is meant to measure "conservatism", but using a mix of questions that reflect both "authoritarian" and "non-authoritarian" aspects of the political right. John Ray then correlated results of Altemeyer's scale with these two separate scales. The expectation being, if Altemeyer's scale actually measures both conservatism and authoritarianism, then it will correlate with both scales to some degree. That was not the case. While RWA has high correlation with Ray's conservatism scale, it actually has zero correlation with the authoritarianism scale (r=-0.049). This work shows that the RWA does not actually measure "authoritarianism." http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1985.9922883#preview Indeed, we have other studies that call it into question, see the work of John Ray above who showed that there is absolutely no correlation with Altemeyer's RWA with an alternative measure of "authoritarianism". I'm not exactly sure what you are getting at, but it seems to missunderstand the importance of "effect size" vs "statistical significance". All statistical significance indicates when comparing two groups is that there is enough difference or low enough variability compared to some null distribution to say that there is a low probability (determined by a predefined threshhold) that these differences occurred by chance alone. It DOES NOT mean that the differences are important in terms of having a meaningful effect. The effect size tells you the maginitude....how big....the impact of that difference really is. I do lots of gene expression studies. Using a standard cutoff of p < 0.05 after multiple testing correction you will often find many differences....but not all are that meaningful. There can be a big difference between a gene that is induced 1000 fold verus one that is induced say 0.5 fold. In genetics, we often measure the contribution of individual genes towards explaining the variance of a phenotype. You will sometimes find genes that contribute large amounts...in some cases 100%....of the observed variation. These genes have large effect sizes. You will oftentimes find genes of small effect, some contributing < 1% of the variance. All are statistically significant, but some are biologically more important and meaningful in explaining the variation. Something with a small effect size.....you could be making a pretty big deal about something that really explains very little, even if it managed to pass some statistical threshold. All that p-value tells you is that you were able to detect a difference....doesn't tell you what the difference means or how important that difference really is towards explaining what you are trying to understand. For that...you really need other measures like effect size. Here is some information on effect size. http://www.statisticshell.com/docs/effectsizes.pdf

1) You are shifting the burden of proof and introducing a red herring. It is not necessary for me to produce a counter-set of "unbiased" questions to show that the questions Altemeyer uses are inherently biased. We only need ask whether or not the questions he uses assume a particular political slant and do the questions encompass the breadth of that political slant. Either one of these can introduce bias. By limiting the scope of his questions to a narrow set of positions held by some within that political orientation, the test is biased towards finding only a very narrow and specific type of authoritarianism. Its a classic case of cherry-picking. As I demonstrated earlier, the questions can be altered to include certain non-authoritarian questions which would lead to very different conclusions. 2) "Unbiased" questions are easily produced. For instance: A) "People should obey the law even if they disagree with it" B) "Certain institutions possess moral authority" C) "Protest is never justified" D) "Under some circumstances it is ok to break the law" E) "Superiors should be obeyed" ........etc These questions are general, they make no presumption about a person's political attitudes, religious beliefs, etc. One could easily ask such questions, guage the "authoritarianism" and then match such data after the fact to self-proclaimed political attitudes, behaviors, etc. In this way the test is not biased a priori to achieve a specific result. 3) Of course if you ask questions that are biased in such a way towards a certain to political belief and then ask people to self-identify, you are more likely to find a correlation between the two. Thats why the results, the questionaire, are biased. They are specifically designed to be more likely to produce results that confirm the hypothesis. Your arguments here are really lacking. You need to show that these questions are NOT biased. I have pointed out how the questions language and nature are inherently geared towards a priori assumptions about the nature of the right and left wing. I have shown how altering the question can easily done to be more likely to produce authoritarian answers the Left and non-authoritarian answers from the Right. I have even provided examples of politically unbiased questions. I have done my part in showing the inherent bias of Altemeyer's scale. You now have to show that its not. If you agree that there is evident bias in the nature of Altemeyer's questions, then you and I can actually agree then that his results are going to be biased and should therefore be questioned. After all.....to acknowledge a biased nature in the wording of the questionaire and try to justify the results after the fact is pretty much an admission that one is willing to accept biased results that conform to one's own prejudices.

If what I say is true, the Altemeyer's questions are biased to achieve a desired outcome and are therefore relevant. The questions can be viewed here: http://www.panojohnson.com/automatons/rwa-scale.xhtml There is an inherent bias in the questionaire to ask only questions of a certain religious/moral nature where agreement in any way is associated with "authoritarianism". Non-authoritarian questions associated with the right-wing in English speaking nations are completely absent as are any questions related to left-wing authoritarianism. For instance, take a question such as this: "You have to admire those who challenged the law and the majority’s view by protesting for women’s abortion rights, for animal rights, or to abolish school prayer." If reworded to be "You have to admire those who challenged the law and the majority’s view by protesting to save lives from abortion or to lower taxation", you would get a VERY different answer from someone of a left-wing persuasion. Or consider a question regarding gun ownership and government regulation: "The government has the right to limit ownership of guns and we need a strong leader to restrict gun ownership amongst private citizens". Agreement with this statement is clearly authoritarian as they support more power and oversight of a particular activity by individuals. In the US, the right would tend to disagree with such a statement and there would be greater support amongst the left. By biasing the nature of the questions, Altemeyer sets up the questionaire to reaffirm his own suspicions. It is also interesting to note, that the scale has a minimal score of 20 and a high of 180. The average response for adults of older generations in the US is a 90...not very high on the scale. You seem to miss the point in trying to get me to take my argument somewhere else. Its not that liberals are insane. Quite frankly I think any suggestion that half the population is "insane" to be both insulting and incredibly arrogant. Labeling the side you disagree with as "insane" is a classic propganda technique, no different than those used in war-time posters. The issue is, does Altemery bias his questionaire with loaded questions intended to achieve specific results. The answer is undoubtly yes.

Have you ever taken or seen the questions in Altemeyer's survey? They are inherently biased and slanted in a way as to portray any traditionally Left-wing cause as rebellious/free-thinking and any right-wing cause as authoritarian. The questions are also inherently of a moral/religious nature with overemphasis on traditional family values. Altemeyer's survey is set up to confirm the starting assumptions he has made regarding "right-wing authoritarians". If the questions were altered so as to present "authoritarianism" on the side of Left-wing values and right-wing values as non-comformist, one could easily slant the results as to portray the political Left as "authoritarian". The subjective wording of the questions introduces bias by Altemeyer and other researchers using his scale.

1) I did point out the specific measures. Look at the tables that includes data from the studies used in the meta-analysis. In the second column they typically indicate the measure used. This varies widely from F-scale to C-scale to RWA to even voting records. 2) This is a common misconception. Statistical significance means that some test had a p-value small enough to pass some threshold of being signficant...i.e. having a low probability of occuring by random chance. However, p-values do not tell you what the effect of something is. The ""effect size" references how large the effect was. I can hit a nail with a small amount of force that drives it in 1/8th of an inch or I could hit it with a large amount of force that drives it all the way in. Both amounts of force can have a consistent and statistically significant effect even if their actual effect size is quite different. If something is only weakly correlated with something else, then there may be a significant correlation, but the effect is going to be smaller than something that is perfectly correlated. Effect size is very important in all kinds of things, like drug studies. A new drug may have a statistically significan effect, but if its effect is only very tiny, then it may still never make it to market because there are more effective drugs out there. 3) I am referering to the specific meta-study originally linked to. They and the subsequent media releases equivocate Altemeyer's "right-wing authoritarianism" with right-wing politics. 4) So? That's irrelevant to my point. I'm not saying that economics is the only aspect of political conservatism, I'm saying that as a major aspect of political conservatism, a failure to find a correlation of the traits in question with this important political ideology throws into question whether or not their study actually political conservatism or whether they are in fact conflating another measure/attribute and thus guilty of the fallacy of equivocation. If what their study has found actually has significant bearing on explaining political conservatism, then measures like fear of death should be reflected in major politically conservative (in the US and UK, not other nations) positions like economic conservatism. A common problem in any study that evaluates multiple variables is the problem of multiple testing. If you run 20 tests and have a cut-off p-value of say 0.05, then by chance alone you will have at least one test show a statistically significant association. In meta studies, the inability to control for all the variance between the studies included make this problem much worse. In evaluating the study then, we should be asking whether or not the data actually explains or at least correlates with major and important characteristics of the phenomena in question and if it does not, then this begs the question of how valid the results are. A lot of the data in the study comes from Sweden, for instance, which has a very different political history and tradition than the US or the UK. There have been other studies that used Altemeyer's scales in Eastern Europe and found Left-wing Authoritarianism as a factor of the those nations very different political histories and traditions. I have a fundamental problem that looks at the issue of "political conservatism" conflating different measures based on an assumption of the Western European/North American world. It makes assumptions about human behavior and politics that are rooted in a narrowized political history. Its exactly the same issue that pervades all of psychology in having primarily studied WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democrat) college students. We assume that this is the norm and base our research on this failing to account for the vast diversity of humanity and history. Even in the meta study in question, many of the studies included looked at WEIRD college students.

Yeah, when it the studies clearly favor the conclusion that nuclear power is safe and reliable and clean....that GMOs are safe....its is unscientific. To use your argument in reverse, you seem to be assuming that opposition to "climate change" or "opposition to evolution" is unscientific or opposed to science somehow. I've seen people cite research and use pretty good logical arguments as reasons to disagree with anthropomorphic globabl warming or Darwinian evolution. But they are still unscientific because they cherry pick the data and ignore the larger body of data. I see the EXACT same thing everyday in opposition to GMOs. Um...no. Its primary a factor of rich liberal whites who also believe that organic food is safer and homeopathy is better. If you seperate undervaccination from unvaccination (the former being a factor of impoverishment), then the typical unvaccinated child is: "were more likely to be non-Hispanic white, have a mother who was older, married and who had a college degree. These children were more likely to live in a household with an annual income exceeding $75,000." http://www.immunizationinfo.org/science/demographics-unvaccinated-children That demographic doesn't particulary fit in with the description you just mentioned. Its far more typical of the sort of rich white liberals living in places like Oregon (highest rate of unvaccinated children). I don't claim that it is for political reasons, I claim that it is a characteristic of those on the Left and a movement that finds its political support largely in leftist politics. I would no more say that people reject evolution for political reasons. These believes are held a priori or independent of the politics, but then manifested in their politics and the regions where the political left dominates. Its the same with GMOs and nuclear power. In the states that have passed or attempted to pass anti-GMO legislation....these are all "Blue states" that typically are Left leaning. Opposition to the technology comes from groups that are associated with the political left like Greenpeace. And as far as political ideology driving anti-science....this is very evident in a lot of the anti-GMO movement who oppose the technology in large part because of the involvement of large corporations. Similar opposition to modern medicine can be seen and the rise of alternative medicine as a form of anti-corporatism, a characteristic of the political left.

If you look at the rough correlation of vaccinations and voting by state, those with highest vaccination rates typically voted Republican and those with lowest typically voted for Obama. http://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2014/10/20/are_liberals_or_conservatives_more_anti-vaccine_108905.html

Yes currently in the US. Where does opposition to a technology like nuclear power come from? How about primary opposition to GMOs? How about primary opposition to vaccine use? Is it coincidence that it is the most Left leaning school districts are seeing increases in the incidence in preventable childhood diseases due to kids not being vaccinated? History is always relevant and its not just historical examples that are at hand. Nuclear power, vaccinations, GMOs.....all find opposition that has strong political biases. They often get ignored because the Left has created an illusion that only the Right is guilty of opposition to science and technology....one that has been bought into by many here as well. Early in my career I found that a lot of the anti-science I had to deal with was largely anti-Evolution from the Right. Now, when I get into scientific debates, that its typically around the issue of GMOs and its coming from people on the political Left. BusaDave9 didn't pull his frustration out of his ass and neither am I. I have friends who are scientists and work in government. They see political opposition to approval of many GMOs coming from appointees from this current administration. Where once Evolution and Stem Cells seemed to be the scientific issue of the day, now its GMOs. The opposition to these technologies is just as inhibitory to science as the opposition from the right towards stem cells was nearly a decade ago. If you want to say that the Right has been guilty of holding back science, then I agree completely. What amases me is that people believe this nonsense that the political left is somehow not guilty of the same thing when I see it happening around me today and deal with it on a daily basis.

1) Meta study conflates multiple measures (F-scale, C-scale, voting records, RWA) that do not measure the same thing and are known not to measure the same thing. 2) Many effect sizes, even if statistically significant, are small. 3) Politics is conflated with authoritarianism even when the two contradict each other. 4) Important aspects associated with the "right" or "conservatism" in nations like the US or the UK fail to show any association. Namely economics, which in the US is central to the political right.

While I agree, there is a problem with that. Others brought these studies (or in some cases cherry-picked youtube videos) into this debate to somehow counter my argument that the Left is also guilty of the same things as the political right and making it part of the debate. In reality it is one big red herring. My argument first post was in response to an obvious assumption that the blame somehow rests with a single party. I pointed out that it is characteristic of all, after which the red herring of problems with political right was brought up to distract from the inherent fact that these things occur on the Left as well. It was a successful red herring. As I pointed out earlier, however, there are many clear cut cases of the political left having suppressed science or biased it. We see this in the rejection of Darwinian evolution by even some great scientists. We see it in the suppression, imprisonment, and murder of geneticists under the Soviets....although they were not the only ones. We can see it historically in the early 20th century progressives advocating eugenics programs that were successfully instituted in the US, Sweden, the UK, and especially Germany. One can even see it now in the US in political opposition to certain technologies that mere right-wing opposition to technologies like stem cells.

That is actually another one of the problems with this meta-study. It has been pointed out before by others in the field that these scales do not exactly mesh with "conservatism" in politics and depending on the particular nation and its history, the association of RWA will differ politically. If you read through the metastudy, multiple measures are used besides RWA. This includes the C-scale, the F-scale, and even voting records/history. Therefore there is an inherent conflation of RWA which does not necessarily measure political ideology with other scales that do not measure the same thing.

This is not something I just pulled out of my ass. The small, medium, large effect sizes is one that has a long tradition in statistics just like the use of p-values < 0.05 or < 0.01....many of these recommendations being set forth by Cohen.

Not a broad brush. This is specifically what is looked at and correlated in the meta-study you have mentioned. Its also a fact that they are specifically looking at a particular attitude that is at odds with many "right-wing" ideologies and also which fails to correlate with critical "right-wing" agendas in their own study. Look at the correlation with political-conservative economics. There is none. In the US right-wing, economic ideology is one of the major parts of the political right. Yet even in studies examined that were conducted amongst American populations, there failed to be a correlation in many of these factors. This calls much into question...namely is the major factor being studied ("right-wing authoritarianism") truly representative of "conservative" politics, at least in the US. It also begs the question of how they define "authoritarianism". I know many individuals who are authoritarian on one issue, but anti-authoritarian on others. These studies are easily biased by how questions are framed and this is a known issue in sociology. I have a friend whose primary work has been in the development of questionaires and their analysis for various sociological studies involving public health. Framing of the question affects results. While the same is true in any discipline, its a lot harder to bias the results of a genetics study than it is a sociological one. Indeed and I'm not particularly impressed when I read both the traits studied...in particular the focus on "authoritarianism" and many of the inconsistencies in the correlations. If "authoritarianism" is representative of the political right, then there needs to be some way to justify it in the context of classical liberalism that pervades much of the political right in the US and UK as well as the economic liberalism that is characterisitc of these same parties. It also has to explain the weak correlations of many of the traits, even if statistically significant and whether their findings are of actual significance or if they happened to find a set of traits that only weakly explains some of the conservatism that exists. Talk about broad strokes, this is a classic example. Find a weak correlation that explains maybe a fraction of some trait and then broadly apply this to the whole. Fortunately, we have ways to evaluate such data, the Pearson Correlation giving us a rough measure of the "effect". If the effect is not large, then we know that painting broad strokes about conservatives, as done in the press releases and as appears to have been done now in these threads by those citing the paper, is false. There are lots of questions about the paper that I find questionable, and even more objectional is the media misrepresentation of the study and the very obvious equivocation that takes place. That such arguments are used in these forums without full skepticism is problematic.

Don't be too sure about that. If the paper is framing the question and data in such a way as to be highly subjective, I'm going to be very critical and dismissive of it, even if its in genetics. I could point you to many papers that make claims of "epigenetics" that I would launch similar criticisms of because they misuse terminology and seek to arrive at a predetermined conclusion without actually showing its validity. This is particularly true of the work of Michael Skinner at Washington State who routinely makes grandiose claims of heritable environmentally induced epigenetics while failing to account for genetic variation. Similarly, I am very critical of papers like this that frame the subject only in a negative light, examine only negative characteristics, make only correlations, even weak ones, with relatively negative characteristics to a vague trait called "authoritarianism that is inherently at odds with the ideology of many right-wing politics in some of the nations in question. I've read the meta study. There are many "statistically significant" correlations reported with an r < 0.3. As a general rule of thumb, an r of 0.2-0.3 is generally considered to be of "small effect", correlations of ~0.5 being "medium effect" and correlations of 0.8 or more being "large effect". Many of these correlations reported would be of small to medium effect and are therefore maybe not that important, even if statistically significant. However, where are the studies doing similar comparisons of "left-wing authoritarianism" for comparison? The focus on right wing politics, even when the described traits do not match politcial ideologies, reveals an inherent bias in the objective of the researchers in these fields.

I didn't bring that specific article/study into the debate. I merely called out people for placing all the blame on a single political end and failing to see that their own favored side is just as guilty. I'm not defending the political right here. I'm calling into question the inherent assumptions that most people here have that the Left is innocent. I find such views lack sufficient skepticism and I am bothered by such partisanship. The linked post linked to a press release describing the meta study and in it Reagan, Hitler, and Moussilini were considered equivalent political ideologues despite the fact that couldn't be more different. Hence the problem. "Authoritarianism" does not mesh well with a classical liberal ideology espoused by many on the political right in the US at least. Classical Liberalism is inherently anti-authoritarian. The problem with these studies and the resulting media hype is one of equivocation. A view point of "right-wing authoritarianism" is equivocated to "right-wing politics" because of the word "right-wing". The fact that the viewpoint identified in such studies does not match the political ideology is ignored and conflated. Therefore we have an equivocation of a study of "right-wing authoritarianism" being used in this thread to argue that the political right in two nations of a Classical Liberal history (the US and Britian) are therefore insane. This sort of equivocation of a study is an excellent example of abuse of research.

There are many great evolutionary geneticists who would challenge the idea that "natural selection" is the driving force of evolution. Kimura is the obvious example, but increasingly I find myself agreeing with the viewpoints of Masatoshi Nei who argues that it is really mutation. Depending on demographic factors, strength of selection, changing environment....there is a tradeoff on every trait between selection and genetic drift. One thing is for certain, both of these forces only act on the variation that exists and do not themselves produce any variation. In the short term, they may have more immediate impact on evolution, but over the long term, it is ultimately mutation that creates the variation. As a whole, I think the idea of trying to attribute one a dominant role to one of the four forces of evolution is silly to the extreme and ultimately has less to do with science and more to do with egos or attempts to undermine the science. Its a common tactic in creationist circles to try and use the neutral theory to undermine Darwin and on the other hand, there are too many Darwin fan-boys who have pushed the selectionist mindset to the extreme at the expense of admitting that other forces play an important role.

I find such studies inherently problematic because the way they are conducted is with a clear starting premise that something is wrong with political conservatism and then seek to confirm the starting bias by studying attributes that are only viewed negatively. Secondly, political conservatism is not a unified set of ideology, particularly when one is talking about a study that spans multiple countries. In American politics, my centrism would be to the Left or Right in other nations. According to the linked article, they group Reagan with Hitler and Moussilini and call the latter two "Political Conservatives". However, in the periods when Hitler and Moussilini were rising to power, they were very much identified as being on the Left....this is especially true of Moussilini who was the darling of many Leftist media outlets in the United States. Their economic policies were largely socialist and populist in nature with agendas that mirror those of the modern American progressive politics. In Italy, the fascist party arose in a split of the Italian socialist Left. Those socialists who had been in support of WWI were what went on to become the Fascists. The eugenics policies of Hitler, were also in line with eugenics policies that were pushed by the political Left in the US. Of course, these historical facts are all things that have been forgotten and redefined so as to confuse and change the past. We now think of the Fascists as the political right, even though they were a third way system that split off of the political Left and at the time were viewed not as conservative, but as the radical left. Fair enough, but the Brits and Americans share a much more similar history and political ideology than do the rest of the world. Its dangerous and foolish to frame the debate only then in this history which grew out of Classical LIberalism...which many now consider "conservative" which never existed in much of the world (Russia, China, etc) and would not be considered "conservative" in those parts. The use of "conservatism" to describe an specific ideology that is anything but "conservative" and "conservative" only in the narrow historical narrative of one part of the world is problematic to the extreme.

If one studies the science of even some of our greatest scientists, there are many who have been guilty of letting politics trump scientific fact and color their results. As many here are American, the debate is obviously shaped by one of largely the American experience. Even there, one of the greatest geneticists, Thomas Hunt Morgan, allowed his strong leftist politics to overshadow his science and cause him to vocally reject the roles of natural selection in evolution. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, leftist political ideology led to the outright persecution, imprisonment, and even execution of scientists who challenged a state imposed view of inheritance that was clearly wrong. If I step back and look at the history of science and its relationships with politics, I see as much reason to condemn the Left as I do the Right. The advantage of not being married to particular political ideologies is that I'm also not blinded to reality.

That is in the eye of the beholder. Being a staunch centrist, there is little distinction to me between the two sides and I see a clear oportunism on the Left to maintain and cater too their own constituentcies. The real difference is that the Left learned long ago how to better phrase their message. My behavior towards you on the subject of GMOs has to do with the inaccurate portrayal and denial of the science. That you yourself taint the science of GMOs with one of non-scientific issues is your own doing and I will call people out for injecting politics into the science. I can agree that the Right has its kooks and is wrong on many things. The difference between you and I is that I see the same on the Left. That you are unwilling to apply the same skepticism to your favored views is your own doing.

Compared to what animals? All animals have different rates of evolution. In large part, this is a matter of population size. That really is the biggest determinant at work here. It is population genetics 101. If evolution is change over time, then the rate of evolution will be determined by a combination of the various forces driving change. Those forces are 1) Natural Selection, 2) Genetic Drift, 3) Mutation, and 4) Gene Flow (migration, admixture, etc). Since we are talking about humans as a whole, #4 is not really relevant. We aren't interbreeding with chimpanzees or other species that would be a source of gene flow into the population. At best, gene flow would come from viral and bacterial infections. That leaves two major factors at work, natural selection and genetic drift. Both Drift and Selection act upon the variation within a species, they do not create new variation. Mutations do create new variation and its a very strait-forward mathematics to show that in a larger population, there will be more chances for mutations to arise. Humans currently have the largest population in all of history. Our population is much larger than some animals, smaller than others. In comparison to animals like tigers or lions...we have a lot more novel mutations upon which evolution can act, giving rise to new variation phenotypically. Its also basic population genetics that natural selection is most effective in large populations. The decreased population size of some species like tigers, means that natural selection is weaker and genetic drift is stronger. Its one of the major concerns of conservation genetics. At small populations, genetic drift can easily eliminate even beneficial alleles, increase deleterious ones, and send a population into a meltdown scenario. Now if you want compare humans to the populations of some insect species with many billions more individuals...then no, we are not evolving as fast. Compared to rarer and endangered species, we are probably evolving faster.

1) No Darwin was not "completely wrong". Darwin got a lot of things right. Science typically does not advance in absolutes...at least not in biology...with one side being entirely wrong and the other entirely right. Natural Selection is a critical force of evolution, its just not the only one. There has been 150 years of evolutionary study since Darwin and it has refined and improved his theory. Its proven something wrong...like his method of inheritance...while proving and advancing others, namely natural selection and the truly novel hypothesis of common ancestry. 2) And no, we do NOT "agree that survival of the fittest no longer applies to humans". Somebody show me the evidence that natural selection has stopped, that sexual selection has stopped. Just because we have more abundant food and better medicine just means that the selective forces that historically shaped us have weakened or changed. It does not mean that new selective forces have not arose or are in action. Part of the fundamental problem here is that people think that "survival of the fittest" means being the most bad ass atheletic/intelligent creature around able to weather any storm. What it actually means, what it meant to Darwin and all evolutionary biologists is who is reproduces the most. Its a factor of population size. In fact, natural selection will be even stronger now because the human population is the largest its ever been. The strength of Natural Selection is in part a factor of population size, being strongest in large populations and weakest in small. Genetic Drift has the opposite relationship to population size. Larger population sizes also means that there will be more new mutations than ever before, as mutations are a factor of time and population size.

None of that really has anything to do with science, let alone biology. Secondly, what is "pretty clear" to you, is not at all "pretty clear" to someone else. I for one disagree that the solutions offered by the Left are in the best interest of people and to me, there is clear incentive for the Left in misrepresenting the Right and portraying them as boogeymen in order to stir up voting. It happens on the Right too. I find it very amusing when people fail to see how deeply their own favorite party is guilty of the same crimes, but nevermind...they are all guilty of it.