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Talk:Political views of American academics/Archive 2

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Archive 1Archive 2

Representative presentation of sources

Please note what I said here: [1], about, in part, the dangers of WP:Cherrypicking. I think that editors are going to need to go through most of the content on the page, and compare the page content with what the sources actually say. It's important not to select something from a source in order to prove a point, if what was selected is unrepresentative of the source as a whole. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:26, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

A prime example of cherrypicking is found in the first study cited: "Sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens were the first scholars to conduct a systematic survey of the politics of American university professors. The research, which was commissioned in 1955 by an arm of the Ford Foundation in response to McCarthyism, was focused solely on social scientists. Lazarsfeld found that just 16% of the social scientists he surveyed self-identified as Republicans, while 47% self-identified as Democrats.[1][2]:25–27" The study was published as a book. The book compares and contrasts professors' political affiliations and political and social views using several variables, including quality of the college where the professors work. Other variables that were studied were the level of academic freedom the professors believed they had at their college, and their occupational self-esteem. This study is also incorrectly cited, as there are three authors, not two.AnaSoc (talk) 23:35, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
That first paragraph under Research is also copied nearly word for word from the Neil Gross book, but does not have the appropriate quotation marks. Also another example of cherrypicking. If consensus has been reached about the revised title, and if the article is now stable and not in danger of being deleted, I'm willing to help edit, and would begin with that first paragraph. I own the Gross book and will have the Lazarsfeld et al. book in a few days. But if the article is going to be deleted, then I won't bother.AnaSoc (talk) 00:17, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
@AnaSoc: I'd appreciate it if you'd copy the relevant paragraph from Gross here so that I can determine if it's a copyright violation by our criteria (stricter than the official ones), as if it is I need to completely delete it (so that only other Administrators can view it) until it's rewritten properly. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 15:07, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Here's a copy ....will look it over Neil Gross (9 April 2013). Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-07448-4..--Moxy (talk) 15:19, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
From the Neil Gross book: “...just 16% of social scientists surveyed said they were Republicans. Forty-seven percent said they were Democrats.” [1] Compared to the text in the article: "...just 16% of the social scientists he surveyed self-identified as Republicans, while 47% self-identified as Democrats."AnaSoc (talk) 23:16, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
From the Neil Gross book: "...first was by sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld" (p. 25). This is an error in the Gross book, as there were two authors. Later, on page 26, Gross notes that Lazarsfeld had a coauthor, Wagner Thielens Jr. in the 1958 book. I was wrong about there being three authors in the 1958 book, and will struck that out above.AnaSoc (talk) 23:30, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Neil Gross. 2013. Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. P. 26.

Source examination

Now that the AfD has been closed as "no consensus" (meaning that the page will not be deleted), I'm going to try to do a rather extensive revision of this page. I've started going carefully through sources, and I like to say here what my thoughts are, before editing the page itself. So far, I have gone through the Research section (including the subsection about regional differences). I'm saying the following in discussion form, not writing a draft for the page yet. I'll go sort-of by paragraph, in order.

  • According to Neil Gross, the 1955 Lazarfield study was significant because it was the first attempt to poll professors about their political beliefs. He says that it was started by the Ford Foundation as a response to the McCarthy hearings, with a focus on academic freedom. Most of the study seems to be about whether there were Communists in universities. The question about Republican or Democrat looks like a single question (number F25) that was part-way through the questionnaire, but the focus looks more like a comparison of what Republican and Democrat professors, respectively, thought about Communism.
  • The 1969 Carnegie study by Ladd and Lipset looks like the primary important study of this topic: 46% liberal, 27% moderate, 28% conservative. Gross evaluates the study very positively, in terms of being reliable, and mentions that the earlier Lazarfield study was only of a small number of social science professors, whereas Ladd and Lipset gathered much more extensive data. I've looked around for sources that criticize Ladd and Lipset (compare the extensive criticism of later studies, below), and it looks like the experts generally regard it as accurate.
  • After that, methodological criticism of later studies looks like it has been very heated. There seem to have been some small fluctuations of the liberal/conservative numbers over time, with a small increase in conservatives in the 1980s, followed by an increase in liberals in the 1990s. Gross summarizes the data as of 1997 as 57% liberal, 20% moderate, and 24% conservative. Gross discusses a lot of issues that he sees with respect to sampling methods. Where the current version of this page mentions a coding error, there are actually multiple vitriolic letters-to-the-editor in scholarly journals, with various professors accusing one another of being totally wrong. I don't think the page needs to do a deep dive into this, other than noting that there have been a lot of disagreements among experts.
  • The 2015 study published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences was only about social psychology professors. The 2017 and 2018 surveys of university presidents were basically about how they saw Trump's election and DeVos as Education Secretary as affecting their schools, not really about the faculty's political views.
  • The Samuel J. Abrams material about regional differences is something where editors need to be careful. According to the Inside Higher Ed source, he wrote a piece in the New York Times with the cited numbers. The Inside Higher Ed source also says: "He has not published his findings in a journal, but shared the results in an essay in Sunday's New York Times." Here it is: [2]. Note how it is presented as an opinion piece. I've looked for everything he has published since then, and he has published books about the political divide in the US, but I don't see anything published about what is in the Times piece. So, aside from science by press conference, it's unpublished work, although it got picked up on by the popular press. I'm reluctant to give much weight to this and other sources that talk about liberal percentages much higher than 50–60%.
  • On the other hand, there are some things that should be added. This source: [3], is a popular press summary, but the linked scholarly studies within it are really quite significant for this page. The 4th and 5th points, about how conservative professors feel treated, and about how to explain the political differences, respectively, are particularly interesting. Conservative faculty actually seem more happy about their jobs than liberal faculty are. Conservative and liberal college students of equivalent smartness choose different career paths, with conservatives often seeking out business careers and liberals more likely to get PhDs, so it would stand to reason that liberals would be more likely to eventually get jobs as university faculty, but there is nothing sinister about that.

--Tryptofish (talk) 22:19, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Tryptofish Thanks for your work. The Lazarfeld study is more about professor's political and social beliefs. You are correct that the study was not primarily concerned with professors' partisan political affiliation. I also totally agree with you about not giving much credence to Abrams' writing, as they were opinion pieces, not peer-reviewed academic articles or book chapters.
The Keen book I mentioned earlier is a good source that describes J. Edgar Hoover's and the FBI's investigation into academic sociologists' political and social beliefs and activism. Those investigations are documented as having begun in the early 1900s. I would be willing to write about that. [1]
Thanks for taking on the rewrite. I think that this article can make a good contribution, and the issue certainly is both notable and timely. I'm quite happy that there was no consensus for deleting this article.AnaSoc (talk) 02:33, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
  • @Tryptofish: That's a lot to get through, but on your last point you described Five myths about liberal academia as a "popular press summary". How do you ascertain that? I can find only a sparse few search results: two blogs and some Wikipedia-clones. Its published in the Opinions section and seems to coincide with the release of the authors' book The Still Divided Academy[4]. The book would likely be a better source, certainly better than that short opinion piece and especially as it has about 46 citations which might be good for secondary sourcing of the authors' views or tertiary sourcing for the studies they mention. This review might be most helpful as it does review the book and also briefly mentions that opinion piece. -- Netoholic @ 08:35, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, both of you. About Hoover, I agree entirely that we should also include that. I just haven't gotten that far yet. And I agree about using The Still Divided Academy and the other original sources. My reference to the popular press was simply to indicate that it is in a newspaper as opposed to an academic journal, and to indicate that I was making use of it here in talk as an easy way to explain what I wanted to say, as opposed to making it sound like I regarded it as the best source to cite. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:36, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
Gotcha. Yeah its might be a good summary for finding more information, less good on its own. I looked into the Behavioral and Brain Sciences piece you mentioned and expanded on it a bit. I think its far more significant than our summary indicated and may deserve its own section. BBS is a top journal, and the study has news coverage and 215 citations which is pretty impressive for only 3 years. Its pretty much the most current word on this topic. It also ties into the spurious removal of Hetordox Academy. -- Netoholic @ 21:58, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Mike Forrest Keen. 2004. Stalking Sociologists: J. Edgar Hoover's FBI Surveillance of American Sociology. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Revisions

I am in the process of making revisions as described above, and that's the reason for the in use template. I'm not doing anything that I didn't say above that I would do. I will remove the template shortly, but I urge editors not to edit war. I can already see that there are objections, and it's fine to object, but do it here in talk. I've started this subsection for that exact purpose. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:23, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

To editor Tryptofish: - You've already edit warred. Per WP:BRD, its recommended that you not re-revert when you make a bold change. Also per WP:SUMMARYNO, your summaries are mislead and fail to adequately describe your changes - case in point this one which removed 6600+ characters of text described only as "pruning". I strongly request that you self-revert to the stabler June 1 version, work in a sandbox, and bring proposed changes here to the talk page. That is how you avoid edit warring and demonstrate good faith in the spirit of collaboration. -- Netoholic @ 23:36, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

I've done an obviously major rewrite of the Research section, and very likely it needs to have more added to it. Also, the Hoover and McCarthy material still needs to be added. There is one take on my edits in the comment just above. I'd welcome hearing from more editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:26, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Weight regarding studies should be given based on the relative importance as demonstrated by acceptance and citation of those studies. Your edits have heavily overemphasized the work of Neil Gross 137 results (cited 6 times in this article and given heavy presence) and yet all-but-removed much more academically important studies like "Political diversity will improve social psychological science" with 217 results, "The Academic Mind" 213 (1977) + 26 (1958) results, and "The Divided Academy" 518 results. You've also used "Five myths about liberal academia" three times in the article, when you had agreed above that the better source was the book that article is promoting - The Still Divide Academy (47 results). I haven't exhaustively reviewed everything, but I think this illustrates clearly that your edit has done more potential harm than good and should be reverted by you in good faith so that we can proceed more carefully. Your comments elsewhere on this page indicates that you feel Gross has a better view of this issue than others, but that may be tinged by your own personal beliefs or desires in regard to this issue - either way, its value is not born out in the citation evidence. -- Netoholic @ 00:51, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
I'm quite receptive to downplaying Gross and downplaying the Five Myths cite. I was trying to go by the discussion above, but what I did is far from the last word. At this point, I am most interested in hearing from other editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:57, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
Its not just that you've overused Gross, its that you use his lesser-cited work to downplay and throw doubt upon far more widely-received studies. This is seen in the lines preceding the "poor methodological choices" quote from Gross in your "Later studies" section. That paints his work as the final authority and dismisses others in broad strokes. Frankly, dishonest writing. -- Netoholic @ 01:04, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm paying attention to the portions of the comments above that are actually about content, and I really am perfectly happy to make corrections and revisions, particularly on matters of my having assigned too much or too little weight to various sources. Nothing about my edits is anything near to final. I feel like I need more input from more editors, in order to have a clear understanding about where to go next.
I'll make a few preliminary comments about my thinking so far. It's true that I put a lot of weight on Neil Gross' writings, maybe too much. I was influenced by comments of other editors above, about his book being a good overview. I also believe that it is necessary to make some statements about how certain studies have been recognized as historically or demographically important, and I do not want to write such statements in Wikipedia's voice. Thus, "according to Neil Gross", etc. I would be fine with changing some of that to "according to" someone else, but I'd like to have advice from other editors about it.
I also recognize that I used the Five Myths source from the Washington Post more than I had earlier planned to, although it's pretty much always cited along with one or another primary source from those authors, rather than on its own. As I was writing, I increasingly realized that the two books that the authors wrote or co-wrote are very long and have gaps in their Google Books previews. Again, I felt that I should not make, myself, judgments about including one thing that the authors said while excluding other things, so I felt like the authors' own summary in Five Myths would be a valid way to decide what to focus on, and having done that, I felt I should include the cite. But I'm receptive to other suggestions.
Now about the large amount of "Later studies" that I drastically shortened. Maybe some material should be added back, albeit in brief. But I think that, as writing for the general public, we risk getting tl;dr if we have paragraph after paragraph about every little bump along the research road. As I tried to explain above, the sources clearly indicate extensive controversy over many of those results, and I see no point in laboriously explaining every study followed by every debunking of it. Basically, there seem to be two groups of later studies: (1) those that claimed much higher percentages of liberals and were then widely debunked, and (2) those that basically got the same results, with trivial deviations, as the Ladd and Lipset study. I think the former should be given little weight, and the latter get repetitive if we give a lot of text to each one.
Anyway, I really need input from more editors about all of this, so once you've had enough time to look into it, please do comment here. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:04, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
  • I agree with Tryptofish's changes. We should be summarizing the "big picture" conclusions of these studies, not cherry-picking individual points. We don't need to use the sources with the most cites or search engine hits, as long as the sources reflect the mainstream view.
I'm unconvinced by Netoholic's Google Scholar numbers. Many of the hits seems to be similar studies that do not necessarily cite or mention the sources in question. –dlthewave ☎ 17:14, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
  • They are Google's numbers, not mine, and you can confirm them using whatever other citation index you have access to - the search results are all relevant and cite the listed source, that's the point of a citation index. WP:CHERRYPICKING is something you should read, as it applies to this case, where a less-cited work has had its conclusions presented as final authority - If you are familiar with multiple credible sources on a subject and they are significantly different from each other, you may realize that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines support reporting from some or all of the sources, and you should edit accordingly. WP:WEIGHT needs to be given in accordance to the provable acceptance of sources, and Google's citation index is an excellent measure of that and it demonstrates what the proper mainstream academic views are. Yes, its fine to use a summary style approach, but in this case the summary is clearly misleading. Case in point is that Gross' 2013 book is being used not only to dismiss the findings of more heavily-cited works in general, but it is even somehow used to specifically negate work that was published after 2013. That's a big cherry. -- Netoholic @ 17:42, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
About the Google hits, I want to add that a significant number of those citations were serious criticisms of the cited study, something that does not establish the importance of that study. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:24, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
If that's the case, then cite those criticisms rather than relying just upon Gross. I am sure some of those hundred citations of Gross are likewise criticisms, that's beside the point really, as number of cites goes toward us deciding what to include and the weight to give it, not necessarily what we say about them. I note that your edit doesn't include any rebuttal's to Gross' views. This again is presenting him as a final, infallible authority on this, which is certainly not the case. -- Netoholic @ 17:42, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
I did this: [5]. Again, I look forward to hearing from additional editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:37, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
And today we have a recent edit which prominently positions Woessner et al "Five Myths about Liberal Academia" as a "wrapper" around other work, giving the impression of "framing". That article only has 4 citations (1 by author himself, 2 from DB Klein's review of Still Divided Academy, and 1 from Conservative Criminology (pgs 1-2). DB Klein mentions it to rebut one of the "myths", and Conservative Criminology soundly rejects the idea that simple job satisfaction implies lack of discrimination or marginalization. Tryptofish, I'm simply not seeing where this Five Myths article belongs at all with no verification of its utility. Likewise, In this edit, Barry Ames et al Hide the Republicans... has only 2 citation results. These are primary sources for the author's opinions, and seeing as they have minor academic value, they should minimized while more important works are re-expanded from earlier versions of this article. -- Netoholic @ 22:44, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
I looked at that diff of my edit, and I'm not seeing a "wrapper", but perhaps I misunderstand what you said. As for Ames, I could change it back to Gross if you want. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:53, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
And, Netoholic, I don't plan on making any further edits to accommodate you until after other editors have weighed in. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:56, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
To editor Tryptofish: , how collaborative of you. I'll be restoring the major studies you've downplayed then in due to time so that the prior editors work isn't lost. -- Netoholic @ 23:21, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
There is nothing uncollaborative about wanting to hear from more editors. And I'm sure other editors will weigh in on anything that you roll back. By the way, page edit histories are never lost, so prior edits are never lost. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:27, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

These edits greatly improve the article and should remain. SPECIFICO talk 23:49, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree they should remain. I'm sorry that I don't have time to devote to improving this article. Doug Weller talk 19:29, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
I agree that Tryptofish's edits are very well done and form an excellent baseline for the article. Neutralitytalk 20:25, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
I'm concerned about Trypofish's efforts. The sources seem to be cherry-picked. Why are so many high quality sources being excluded? – Lionel(talk) 05:35, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
It's getting almost comical how, after I pointed out cherry-picking from sources, some editors are claiming it back at me. Why excluded? Maybe it's because I'm evil. Or maybe it's because, in some cases, they are not so high-quality (which I explained in talk above) and in other cases, I made a mistake. I have been saying over and over and over and over again that I consider my edits as not final and I was concerned that I might have removed too much and I welcome other editors pointing out things to add back. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:26, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Weight of sources

As per the above discussion, I've compiled an expandable table showing the studies/books we had in the more stable and lengthy version from June 1 and the new sources added by Tryptofish in the June 5-6 edit session (I've left off several sources, such as newspapers, which are not as rigorously indexed and act more as backup secondary sources). This table shows the number of Google Scholar citations of each work, and as WP:UNDUE says we should give weight "in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources", this table should work as an excellent guideline for how to approach weighing these sources in this article. With the citation results search link, we can also find potentially more sources to use. Case in point is that using this I found Schrecker's "No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities" (1986) with a staggering 814 citations, which seems to make it a preeminent record of McCarthyism and academia and should be examined to replace the 7 citation "Political Tests for Professors...". I've listed only the top 4 of "American College Teacher", but if the whole series is taken together would be a good source for creation of a graph or table showing ideological demographic changes over time (here is an article using this data in chart form). If I missed any sources, or we find others, I plan to try to maintain this list for a while until we get the article balance more correct again. -- Netoholic @ 08:41, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Do you have consensus here that the number of citations is the correct way to evaluate the usefulness of a source on this page, in the way that UNDUE refers to prominence in reliable sources? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:28, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
We have an objective measure of prominence in reliable sources. Some of your recent edits present low-prominence viewpoints in a disproportionate WP:WEIGHT. Did you have consensus to present them as such? -- Netoholic @ 20:03, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
So your answer to my question is "no". My answer to your question is that the consensus on this talk page is that the current version of the page gets due weight right, unlike the earlier version, that Google Scholar hits are not useful by themselves in assigning due weight, and that the revised version of the page is a significant improvement and should not be reversed, because there is consensus that the sources are now being presented correctly. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:08, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
I didn't answer your question, as consensus isn't a straw poll, its a process. And I didn't say it should be reversed in full. Certain passages which described more prominent sources must be restored, and certain conclusions from low-prominence viewpoints need to be reduced. This is not an this-or-that proposition, and framing it as such is not a collaborative approach. -- Netoholic @ 20:17, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
I'll let other editors assess who is doing the framing here. But I'll gladly offer this: Instead of asking that certain passages be restored in the same words that they used to be, I invite you to propose new wording that would fit well into the overall flow of the page (in other words, not be overly lengthy), that would address the balance issues that concern you. Perhaps we can work with that. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:22, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Tryptofish that Google Scholar hits, standing alone, are not useful by themselves in determining what is proper weight. In no particular order: (1) citation counts in Google School include citations in decidedly non-academic sources; (2) citations counts are influenced by date (older sources may be cited more often due to longevity, even if they have been superseded by other sources or are out-of-date); (3) raw citations counts don't account for whether a source is being cited favorably or critically (a source may be oft-cited, but also oft-criticized); (4) citation counts say nothing about what proposition the work is being cited for ("The American College Teacher" surveys deal with a lot more than political affiliation); and (5) works cited differ in breadth and scope (for example, some of the works cited deal with the academy broadly, others only with a particular sub-set, for example only social scientists or only faculty at particular universities). Neutralitytalk 20:25, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
The citation hits go towards providing an objective ranking of the overall prominence of the source and its value in the academic community. Both positive and negative citations ultimately both go towards proving prominence and how much we say, but of course the specifics will decide what we say. By dismissing such an objective measure out-of-hand, we are left with nothing more than non-neutral, personal POV interpretations of WP:UNDUE, which is often the last refuge of POV-pushing since its too easy to sway a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS in a particular direction without any solid standing or objective guide, which is why I've provided us one. Of course, the age of a source can be accounted for, but that's not significant problem. A recent study like Duarte 2014 (216 hits) should be seen as more prominent considering its short lifespan compared to something like Gross 2013 (136 hits), but if you look at the article, Gross has been presented radically more - and that's a problem. -- Netoholic @ 20:41, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
Tacking onto this reply, the link doesn't just show the number of citations each source has, but you can also see the citation numbers for the sources that use it. Using the secondary sources which have high citation counts themselves is a good way to find prominent favorable or critical views about the source in question. -- Netoholic @ 04:58, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
These aren't "Google hits" off the basic search engine. These are from the Google Scholar citation index. Not at all the same thing. WP:GNUM even says Google News, Google Books, and Google Scholar provide results that are more likely to be reliable sources. --Netoholic @ 19:14, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
The very next sentence of GNUM is But you would only be able to verify that these hits are reliable sources by reading the articles or books.. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:15, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
... of course? Moreso, since the citation hits are them themselves indexed, you can verify those secondary sources are prominent and reliable. You don't have to use the Google citation index, you can use any one you like and will get similar relative numbers. I have to ask, why are you working so hard to discredit the Google Scholar results? If we have no external, objective measure to estimate prominence of sources, all we have then is novice personal interpretation and local straw polls, which will continue to be of doubtful neutrality. As a result of these numbers, I've already changed my WEIGHT views on some of the sources I had previously located. If we don't use Google Scholar as rough guideline, then in what other way can we prove to each other the proper WEIGHT of these sources? -- Netoholic @ 20:29, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

HERI

  • From Political views of American academics#Later studies, after my revisions: Neil Gross and Solon Simmons concluded that, as of 2014, the numbers were approximately 44% liberal, 46% moderates, and 9% conservative, across a broad population of university faculty.
And from Netoholic's adding back Political views of American academics#Higher Education Research Institute: As of 2014, the percentage of liberal/far-left had increased to 60%.
--Tryptofish (talk) 21:11, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
Present both, in their own sections, but HERI surveys are used extensively for a number of studies and are seen as highly-prominent. I've already added one Washington Post article which wasn't in here before. In particular with Gross's claims, you should describe a bit his methodology and also check for support or refutation of it, since his claim is a primary source. -- Netoholic @ 21:30, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
I've said all along that I'm receptive to adding back some of what I had removed, so I'm fine with presenting them both. I don't know if this explains it or not, but I looked up the original Higher Education Research Institute for 2014, [6], and the numbers are 48.8% for liberal, and 11.0% for far-left. I also looked up the 2011 and 2005 results, and they were essentially the same, so it's not accurate to say that it was a sudden change in 2014. They asked based on "far left, liberal, middle of the road, conservative, far right". Gross and Simmons, [7], asked in terms of "extremely liberal (9%), liberal (35%), slightly liberal (18%), middle of the road (17%), slightly conservative (11%), conservative (8%), very conservative (1%)." Obviously, I'm not going to OR about the reasons for the differences. But I don't think that we can simply give each one their own subsection, and leave it at that. We should let readers see that there is a difference. The two sets of results should be presented together, and presented in terms of findings as of 2014 rather than in terms of some sudden and ominous change. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:05, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
As for methodology, I've looked back at the version of the page just before I made my edits: [8]. Simply quoting portions of that version, as they were written then, it said about HERI: Like the later Carnegie studies, these surveys do not focus on professor's' political beliefs, and contain only a single question about professors' politics. About Gross and Simmons: Gross and Simmons conducted a study with the intent of minimizing confounders... Gross and Simmons' survey received a relatively high response rate of 51%, corrected for response bias, and surveyed a large sample of nearly 3,000 professors from representative institutions. I didn't write any of that, but I remember that when I started my revisions, I took those factors into account when deciding what to include and what to minimize. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:33, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
And the more I think about HERI not focusing on politics, versus Gross and Simmons focusing on it and minimizing confounders, the more I think that Gross and Simmons merit more weight than HERI, regardless of Google hits. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:47, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
This is an WP:OR evaluation of the Gross source to try to justify WEIGHT - quite shaky ground. Have you not found verification, acceptance, or refutation in independent secondary sources? --Netoholic @ 23:40, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
Well, that's one way to ignore what I said. The first part is me just showing what I found in the original sources and saying explicitly that I don't want to OR based on it. The second part is me explaining why I made the edits the way that I did. And the third part is me expressing a concern, but not in any way edit warring over your addition to the page. I'll be back with more from the sources, don't worry. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:33, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I've looked very carefully at the sources, and although I am now in favor of including information about HERI (repeat: I am in favor of including some of this!), I believe that what has been added to the page is WP:UNDUE.

  • If we are going to look for "verification, acceptance, or refutation" of the HERI findings, I sure do hope that we would give due consideration to what the HERI authors, themselves, say about it. Here is the link to the most recent survey in its original publication: [9]. I've gone through the entire thing, page by page. A lot of it is tables of survey data, but as one would expect, there is text before the tables (as well as some methodological text after), in which the authors of the study discuss their interpretations and conclusions. Here is what they say about the political views of faculty:
They never mention it. At all. But here is a secondary source that is specifically about the leftward shift, [10], in which Professor Sylvia Hurtado, the director of the HERI survey is asked directly how she regards the findings:
Sylvia Hurtado, professor of education at UCLA and director of the Higher Education Research Institute, said that she didn't know what to make of the surge to the left by faculty members. She said that she suspects age may be a factor, as the full-time professoriate is aging, but said that this is just a theory. Hurtado said that these figures always attract a lot of attention, but she thinks that the emphasis may be misplaced because of a series of studies showing no evidence that left-leaning faculty members are somehow shifting the views of their students or enforcing any kind of political requirement.
(After that, they quote Neil Gross, so they must have considered him an important expert to ask, but I won't quote him!) If the authors of the HERI study consider it to be not very useful in evaluating faculty political views, maybe we should be cautious about giving it its own section on the page.
  • Why has it been cited so many times? Here is what is wrong with using Google hits uncritically. The HERI survey questionnaire is huge, with a huge number of questions. (As an aside, I was one of the faculty who were asked to fill it out.) The focus of the questions is stuff about how to make faculty better able to provide excellent undergraduate education. Here are the topics that the HERI text focuses on: online teaching, lectures versus other teaching practices, teaching loads, research productivity, corporate influence on universities, faculty views of their administrators, campus diversity (gender, race, etc., no mention of politics), mentorship, academic dishonesty, differences in how faculty are treated by gender, rank, institutional resources (not politics). Of course that gets heavily cited in the literature on higher education, because of all those topics. But the heavy citation is not as a study of political views.
  • So how did it get attention about the political data? According to this source: [11], some members of the Heterodox Academy decided to comment on the political numbers (maybe to justify the Academy's existence?), and that caught the attention of conservatives and the popular press.
  • What do independent sources say about methodology? This source, [12], says:
The HERI data are on four-year college and university faculty members, and much research suggests that community college faculty members are more centrist than are their four-year colleagues.
Thus, the population that HERI samples (because of what they are actually interested in) skews left, relative to all academics in higher ed in the US. That's why they got different results than other studies, like Gross and Simmons, who included a wider study population – and were focused specifically on political views.
  • I'm still in favor of including HERI results and the increase over time, but not as if it is a major section of the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:33, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
    • I noted above that the Heterodox Academy first drew attention to the HERI political data. I decided to track down where they did that. Here it is: [13]. Note who the author is: the same Samuel J. Abrams whose unpublished (except in a newspaper opinion piece) analysis of New England was added back to the page. I'm not disputing his academic qualifications, but there's a circular, self-referencing sort of process of drawing attention to the data. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:37, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
      • Abrams certainly caused a recent flurry when he looked at the results, but its inaccurate to call his the "first". Almost all the people studying politics of academics refer to HERI - either directly or in referring to studies which interpret HERI numbers. Gross in "Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?" uses both faculty and student HERI data several times. So does The Still Divided Academy. Careful what you ask for. -- Netoholic @ 20:47, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
        • Careful what I ask for?? I'm asking for a good Wikipedia page. The reason I called it the "first" was because this source: [14], presents it as beginning with the Heterodox Academy. But I already said that. Maybe that source was wrong, but I was going by what it says. I know that Neil Gross in "Why Are..." cites the HERI data to point out why they are probably wrong, but I'm glad that you are referring to him as an authority.
        • You've replied to my add-on comment about Abrams. Are you going to reply to my main comment? Do you care what the HERI authors themselves say about their study? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:28, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
          • The part that reads "she didn't know what to make of the surge to the left by faculty members. She said that she suspects age may be a factor" sounds like guesswork on her part. I'll leave interpretation to independent published analyses. --Netoholic @ 23:59, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
            • In other words, you are saying that based on your opinion of what she said you are going to disregard what the authors of the HERI study say about the study, in order for you to include the content that you want to include. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:38, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
            • I've added what she said, and I think that doing so is quite reasonable and appropriate. On the one hand, this gives a more balanced presentation of the HERI studies, but on the other hand it raises serious questions about whether the page gives the HERI section too much weight. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:28, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
              • The undue weight is to frame her opinion as if it is discrediting the very same survey she administrates. If there are more mainstream, published, peer-reviewed analysis of the survey's faculty political views numbers, use them. Not appropriate to feature her off-the-cuff backpedaling. No doout she is under some pressure, both in her internal beliefs and from external commentary, to explain away the growing disparity. But she is not doing so scientifically and view is not prominent nor cited strongly. ADDED: I've looked an Hurtado is well-published in journals using HERI data to focus on students and racial diversity primarily. She may have a published analysis of the faculty data, but I've yet to locate one. If there is one, then it might be on par with the prominence of other published analyses we use, but otherwise a single guess in a single article is very low weight compared to all the studies that accept the HERI results and devote more stringent effort to them. ADDED 2: It looks like Hurtado stepped down as director in 2015 (pg 3). -- Netoholic @ 22:08, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
                • This dispute has become ridiculous, so I am taking it somewhere else. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:10, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
                  • We have so many higher-quality sources (#Weight of sources) to work with and incorporate. You've accused other editors of cherry-picking, but that's what it looks like when you select one informal opinion in one article over published analysis. She is the only person that has suggested "age" as a factor. Don't you think that's weird? --Netoholic @ 22:45, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
  • I've changed the header to "Demographics studies" to help contextualize this. These demographics gathering surveys are the raw data used by later studies which interpret their results. They are baseline to later work we'll be discussing, especially in regards to studies which use this data to try to determine causes and effects of the disparity. While we have point-in-time surveys from Ford and Carnegie, HERI fills in the later years and is on-going. Every year when their results are released, we can expect another flurry of studies, and then commentary based on those studies. As pointed out in prior talk sections, some studies focus on surveying certain populations (conservatives, social scientists, etc.), but the HERI is comprehensive. -- Netoholic @ 20:47, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes, I saw the changes you made to the section headers, and I like those changes. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:30, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
  • But I'm uneasy about the rest of your comment. Maybe I misunderstand, and I hope so. But it sounds to me like you were saying that you plan to bring up "later work we'll be discussing", and your expectation is that the page is going to keep having "another flurry of studies" added to it. It seems to me that this would be rolling the page back to what it was before my recent edits, or something similar to that. Is that what other editors want to see for this page? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:34, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
  • What I'm referring to is the living nature of Wikipedia articles. In the coming years, will have more information to add as it's produced, so a certain aspect of this is structuring for the long-term future of the article. --Netoholic @ 23:44, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Good, thanks for clearing that up. For the short term, please keep in mind what other editors have been saying on this talk page. I really want to work with you, so long as you, in turn, do not dismiss what others are saying to you. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:41, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Professors and Their Politics

Gross, Neil; Simmons, Solon (29 May 2014). "The Social and Political Views of American College and University Professors". In Gross, N.; Simmons, S. (eds.). Professors and Their Politics. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-1-4214-1334-1. LCCN 2013035780.

@Fyddlestix: - The reason I tagged this citation is because the book in question is a compilation of papers and in total has been cited 24 times. If we narrow that down to just the Gross/Simmons essay which appears in chapter 1, "The Social and Political Views of American College and University Professors", it has only gotten 6 unique citations in works that themselves have not been cited widely. I know Gross/Simmons have other more prominent work, but I don't see a lot of evidence that this particular one is demonstrating prominence or authoritative use. -- Netoholic @ 04:30, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Weight is not just a matter of citation counts, as others have repeatedly told you already on this page. Gross and Simmons are acknowledged experts on the topic of this article, and the work cited there is one of the few book-length, peer-reviewed explorations of the topic by a major, academic publisher that's out there. Sorry, but it's straight up ridiculous to suggest that it has a weight problem. Fyddlestix (talk) 04:39, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
@Fyddlestix: - I refer you to the message on WP:UNDUE which says "The relative prominence of each viewpoint among Wikipedia editors or the general public is not relevant and should not be considered". So no, I don't see how the number of editors has any relevance. Citations ARE how we measure "prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources". I am open to being shown any other evidence that this source holds prominence, but per our policy, editor opinion is not evidence of such. The content of the PAP survey is covered in many more reliable and demonstrably prominent sources, this one just isn't one of them. Also, we have no secondary sources which point to the prominence of the specific line this citation is used to source. It could be cherry-picked. We just don't know because secondary sources aren't used to establish why that line is important over any others in the essay. -- Netoholic @ 04:50, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
You, uh, don't need to ping me every time you reply, obviously I am watching the page. And who said anything about the number of editors being a factor? Your interpretation of how weight is measured is overly narrow - academic publications by experts in the field carry a lot of weight, and it's straight-up silly to try to tag the one use of that source in the article as undue. Fyddlestix (talk) 05:16, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
Using adjectives repeatedly like "silly" and "ridiculous" doesn't improve your comments. This is not my interpretation - its the letter of the UNDUE policy. Just because an author is noted in a field doesn't mean every publication and every claim can be included with only his work as the primary source. It might be of use itself as a secondary reference to something else, but it is primary source for his new claims, and if no secondary sources establish that this particular claim is a relevant viewpoint, then it must be removed. -- Netoholic @ 05:27, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
About the repetitive pinging even after being asked not to, welcome to my world. I suspect the real reason for that tag was a tit-for-tat because I had just restored the cleanup tag after I had (prematurely, as it turned out) thought that the problems had been corrected. I said the other day that I would pretty much refrain from editing the page unless I saw indications from other editors that they felt similarly to how I feel. Well, now no one can reasonably say that this is just a disagreement between Netoholic and me. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:09, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
Except that you just spent the time to write a comment about the editor and nothing to do with the topic at hand in relation to the article. The reason for pinging is simply courtesy since this talk page is huge. --Netoholic @ 19:18, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
Actually, I was indicating why I no longer feel obliged to leave in place the self-revert that I had made. But if you feel that way, then perhaps you now know how it feels on the receiving end, after you have so many times been the one directing comments at me instead of commenting on content. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:32, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
Right, so let me restate this and you tell me if I'm correct: You now feel that you can resume editing this article because you now perceive a numerical advantage. -- Netoholic @ 07:52, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
Pinging is unnecessary since anybody can look at the page history and find out what has changed since the last time they saw the page. You should only ping people in Talk pages that have been deserted for a while. --Hob Gadling (talk) 04:32, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Neil Gross opinions on other researchers

Neil Gross's opinions about the methodology of other (rival) researchers is UNDUE per simple fact that he is involved in contradictory research. His work is not highly prominent (#Weight of sources) and specifically his opinions on other researches are PRIMARYSOURCE and likely cherry-picked as a result. Find better criticism from uninvolved researchers if such exist in prominence. -- Netoholic @ 23:08, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps you might consider raising your concerns in talk without first reverting other editors, because now there are multiple editors who are disagreeing with you. And every single editor who has commented has rejected your theory of citation numbers as a way to assign weight. In any case, it was pointed out by more than one of us that having only one line about the Gross and Simmons study was insufficient weight, so it is reasonable to quote them, as well as the fact that it's the mainstream point of view. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:18, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
Your (yet again) massive string of small edits itself was reversion, just interspersed with housekeeping. And stop counting editors and address this specific point. This reliance on "other editors" smacks of factionalization or tag-teaming. Gross is littered throughout this article, he is fine for background information, but his OPINIONS are UNDUE because he is (obviously) would want his research to stand out. The evidence suggests though that it doesn't. Its not highly-prominent, and his major work is not peer-reviewed but published in his own book. Its PRIMARYSOURCE and has no validation or evidence of secondary sources that agree or disagree. It is THESE instances which we cannot use. This is a WP:BLPREMOVE scenario. You have not presented any counter-evidence of prominence of his work, let alone his opinions on other's work. -- Netoholic @ 23:28, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
You appear not to understand BLP. And editors, as a group, are who decide consensus, which is going overwhelmingly against you. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:34, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
It is a violation of WP:BLPREMOVE to use a WP:PRIMARYSOURCE to make controversial claims about another (WP:REDFLAG). The reason is because it is unprovable whether the claims you have pulled out of the primary source hold prominence and are therefore very likely WP:CHERRYPICKed. This is why secondary sources are used on Wikipedia, especially with regards to BLPs, because we cannot determine by ourselves which claims warrant properly weighted inclusion. I don't care for your editor counting - these are CORE policies of Wikipedia you are treading upon. -- Netoholic @ 23:41, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
I'll just note this: [15], [16]. Wow! --Tryptofish (talk) 23:43, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Sorry but that's nuts, there's nothing remotely resembling a BLP vio or a redflag claim anywhere in Tryp's revisions. Fyddlestix (talk) 23:49, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
This long quote points to a WP:REDFLAG - its a clear conflict of interest for a researcher to disparage prior research and also its PRIMARYSOURCE'd, cherry-picked quote from Gross's own work. It flatly is an extraordinary claim considering the high prominence and acclaim received about that prior work and the low prominence of Gross's. Its indefensible. -- Netoholic @ 23:55, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
That actually reads like a pretty accurate summation of the recent debates - and it's written by two established experts on the subject, in a scholarly, peer-reviewed book published by a very well respected press. And it's specifically attributed to the authors rather than stated as fact. That piece is basically a review essay, it's exactly the kind of source we should be using. The hyperbolizing is really not doing your argument any favors here. Fyddlestix (talk) 00:39, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
Peer-reviewed book? The editors ARE the authors. This seems more like the paper couldn't get into a proper, independent journal (because such might demand access to their data set), so they put it into a book themselves. Its also not a review essay - you can't reasonably say someone can review all the work in an entire decade and make such a non-specific statement. The paper has only 6 independent citations - none of which echo this claim or quote them for it. This is exactly the type of source we should be avoiding at all costs. If this viewpoint is common and valuable, it should be -trivial- to find secondary sources. -- Netoholic @ 00:53, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
I don't think you understand how academic publishing works. They are the editors of the volume yes, but the book would still have been reviewed by the press' own editors, and sent out for peer review prior to publication. JHU is one of the premier academic presses out there too, so this is by definition an extremely reliable & authoritative source. As for it being a review essay: have you read it? That's pretty obviously what it is. Fyddlestix (talk) 01:22, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
I've presented a long list of much better sources. Even Gross own book Why are Professors Liberal... is more prominent by comparison. This quote is pulled from a lesser essay of dubious worth, and is a PRIMARYSOURCE with NO backing secondary sources. Please tell me then, by what standard (OTHER than a straw poll of editors) are you using to support this source's inclusion? How can you prove to me and anyone else that this viewpoint satisfies UNDUE? -- Netoholic @ 01:29, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
This seems more like the paper couldn't get into a proper, independent journal (because such might demand access to their data set), so they put it into a book themselves. - This glib disparagement of Prof. Gross is way out of line. SPECIFICO talk 01:39, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
Oh please, save the false projected offense. Its well-documented that the three big surveys (Ford, Carnegie, HERI) released their raw data. Gross has criticized others (Rothman etc) for not releasing data, and yet I have loocked for any replication studies which would show he did so and found no indication in his works for how to get the data (this is usually quite standard practice to include such information as an appendix). In that paper I linked just above, he says the PAP survey was done by CSR at Indiana University, but I can't find it anywhere listed - either in the current site or archived from 2006/7. Find the data or any studies which used his data, and I'll be pleased to admit I'm wrong. If I were to try to add sources with such a low bar of WEIGHT, I guarantee they'd be reverted. But since I actually care about UNDUE, I wouldn't add them just to prove a point. But if this example is the low bar you all want to set for this article, then you should have no objection to anything similar I would add. You guys just tell me the guidelines (PRIMARYSOURCES, low-citation counts, cherrypicked quotes with no secondary verification of their relevance) and I'll be happy to include the same. -- Netoholic @ 02:24, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Editors should be aware of the closely related discussion at WP:BLPN#Neil Gross.

And something else occurs to me. In describing the Duarte paper, that takes a position in opposition to Gross and Simmons, we quote what Steven Pinker said about the paper. But Pinker said that in a "tweet". By the reasoning that quoting from a podcast violates Gross' BLP rights, would it not follow that we should also remove Pinker's tweet on BLP grounds? --Tryptofish (talk) 18:24, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

The significance of Pinker's tweet is secondary sourced in the Jacoby article (which is decidely biased against the assertion, but notes it just the same) Full quote with context since I know this article is paywalled: Their findings have provoked many of the big guns in social psychology to respond. Steven Pinker dubbed the article "one of the most important papers in the recent history of the social sciences." What did the study show?. In fact, I have never sourced that line to his tweet, you guys did. -- Netoholic @ 20:21, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
OK then, I'm curious: in the NASS section, we quote Rothman et al. as saying "complaints of ideologically-based discrimination in academic advancement deserve serious consideration and further study." There is another source cited that criticizes their work. Is it necessary for that other source to include that exact quote, verbatim, to meet that criterion? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:52, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
In that case they are commenting on others ("complaints"), so it's a secondary review. There are indeed other sources of that exact quote though [17]. Are you legitimately challenging it, or just trying to dig up any cases to justify using Gross' primary claims about his own work? --Netoholic @ 00:07, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
I'm saying that the Rothman quote seems fine to me, as do the Pinker quote and the Gross quote. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:13, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Pinker is backed by secondary sources that quote him in these contexts. [Rothman and Gross don't have secondary sources - YOU picked the quotes that YOU think are important, and its why we're having this conversation. I've read reviews of Gross and Rothman. Some use quotes, but not the ones YOU've chosen. That's cherry-picking, and that's the difference. If its controversial (evidenced by it being discussed here), then secondary sources are needed or it must be WP:BLPREMOVEd. -- Netoholic @ 04:14, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
There's no BLP issue here, please stop citing an irrelevant policy. You were making much more sense when you were trying to argue that some of this was undue, although I disagree with you there too, as these are all the opinions of notable experts, relevant to the article, and pulled from high-quality sources. Yes, we can have an argument about which quotes or studies are DUE, but there is no requirement that everything (ie, every quote, every argument) we chose to highlight in an article be supported by both the work that it's sourced to AND an unrelated (secondary or tertiary source). That is a reductio ad absurdum, and if you really believe that's the case then you should get to work fixing the eleventy billion other articles out there that pull quotations and arguments out of high-quality academic sources without that particular quote being highlighted by an unrelated source - and without anyone raising a pointless stink over it. Fyddlestix (talk) 04:49, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
WP:BLPREMOVE - Remove immediately any contentious material about a living person that: 1) is unsourced or poorly sourced - This means remove it from anywhere, not just an article about the LP. If a quote isn't contentious (as in, if we weren't here discussing it), then likely it wouldn't need to be removed. That's not the case here. It is contentious, it is primary sourced (poorly sourced), it does itself shed other LPs in a poor light. -- Netoholic @ 04:58, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
that are unsourced or poorly source - ok, except that the statements we're talking about are sourced, and to high-quality sources. Again, please stop citing a policy that is obviously not relevant here. Fyddlestix (talk) 05:03, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
No source is high-quality for its original claims (ie, a primary source is never high-quality). If the claims truly are important, reliable, secondary sources will note them. If a particular quote from a source is relevant and important, reliable secondary sources will quote it. Otherwise, we suffer though exactly this type of lengthy discussion because no one can be sure the quote is representative of the whole, reliable, or prominent. Its cherry-picking a quote which agrees with the point YOU want to present, not what is representative of the subject matter. -- Netoholic @ 06:36, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Your position has no basis in policy, and those are secondary sources. Per WP:SECONDARY: a secondary source contains an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources. Secondary sources are not necessarily independent or third-party sources. Fyddlestix (talk) 13:09, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
It's becoming obvious to me that continuously reverting and arguing is just going around in circles, so I'm going to start opening these issues up to a broader segment of the community, via RfCs. In order to do this in an orderly and logical manner, I'm going to take one issue at a time, so this is going to take a while. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:03, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
If hypothetically we were to replace the quote from Gross with a quote from someone else, there are multiple reliably sourced quotes from other experts, that say pretty much the same thing. Offhand, I can think of Zipp, Ames, Rothman and the Woessners, and Abrams. There are others too, I'm sure. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:36, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
That is the point though. If multiple reliable sources say "pretty much the same thing", then use them along with anything critical, neutral, or positive in proportion to what we find among the sources. You keep talking as if you have a specific narrative in mind and just want to use quotes which appeal to that narrative. That's POV pushing. -- Netoholic @ 04:43, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

It's a sad thing that this discussion has continued to be such a battleground. After logging out last night, I was thinking about my comment about multiple other sources, and I had a sort-of "light bulb over my head" idea that I liked very much. And you know what? It was essentially the same thing as what Netoholic just said while I was logged out. Frankly, I wish I had thought of it sooner, but the heated back-and-forth gets in the way, at least for me, of thinking about creative solutions.

I'm also disappointed to see the edits that happened since yesterday. It's not doing any good to have editors waiting a day or so, and then massively reverting the edits of the previous couple of days. It would be much better to calmly figure out reasonable solutions like the one I talked about in this comment. I think that we are at the point where we should just have a series of RfCs to resolve the questions that remain unresolved in talk. The fact is, that there is already a local consensus, not a final community consensus, but a local consensus. And I think the page should take the form of that local consensus, not one editor's insistence against that local consensus, until such time as the community figures out something more durable. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:09, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Looking good

The article is much improved! Thanks for your work. This citation is incorrect: "As part of a survey of faculty views about Communism and free speech, they asked professors of social science a large number of questions, and found that approximately 2,500 of these faculty members had been visited by the FBI.[3]:xiv." The book is by Mike Forrest Keen, not Fox. And there is no reference to 2,500 on page xiv in Stalking Sociologists. Perhaps the wrong book was cited?AnaSoc (talk) 02:02, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, and thanks for closely examining my edits for mistakes, which is certainly something that is always a good thing to do. I like the way that you revised the wording in several places. I've double-checked that source, and I am guessing that we are looking at different editions of the Stalking book, and that I am using a more recent edition. Here is the url for the version that I used: [18]. It shows very plainly that Fox is the author. If you go through her introduction to the book, she talks about criticisms of some of the methods that had been used by Keen in earlier editions, and how she has tried to make fixes for those things. Therefore, I believe that the more recent edition by Fox is the one to cite. As for 2,500, it's possible that I counted the pages incorrectly, because they are not labeled in the online view, so I had to count from the beginning, so it would be very helpful if you or someone else would double-check it. But if you go to the url that I linked, and scroll through the introduction until you get to the paragraph that begins "In their study, Lazarsfeld and Thielens found that...", the number is right there. But your drawing my attention back to it makes me realize that it actually says "two-thirds of the approximately 2,500"! I'm dope-slapping myself for missing "two-thirds". Sorry! I'll fix that right now. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:12, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
I do not think that the mass revisions are an improvement. And there is too much new material to effectively evaluate. And I still have concerns about why high quality sources are being removed. – Lionel(talk) 00:44, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
I've been repeatedly inviting editors to discuss, specifically, what they would like to add back, but I just think that we have to consider due weight. And this is now at WP:AE. But if other editors besides me don't feel strongly about it, I think I'll probably just walk away and let Netoholic write the page however he and Lionelt want. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:15, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
In fact, I'll go one better than that. I've completely reverted the page back to what it was before. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:27, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
Tryptofish, I don't see how this reversion back to June 1 is a positive outcome for anyone. Both you and I have made progress on the article in the last few days. I never thought the June 1 version was the best it could be, I only disagreed that making so many changes on June 5 (30 edits in about 4 hours), so fast, with such little minimal communication of what was being changed was the best approach. I felt like the pace we'd settled on after your big change was more correct. On June 9th, though, you made another big batch of edits (18 edits over 4 hours), especially affecting sections we were still discussing. I get how it can feel when reverted (even partially) after spending so long, but that's why big edits are a big risk. Sometimes you have to slow down a bit and give other editors the chance to keep up with what's being changed. I can assure you, while my revert only presents as one edit, I spent a lot of time tracking down each of your 18 changes and preserving many, while noting in my edit summary the ones I disputed and that need more discussion. -- Netoholic @ 05:54, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Netoholic, I appreciate the tone of this comment from you, and I wish that it had been the tone all along. I actually agree with you that the early version is not the best, but I made the edit as a good-faith effort to take off the table any appearance that my concerns at WP:AE were content-driven – in the spirit of Wikipedia:Writing for the opponent and meta:The Wrong Version. If you would like to restore anything written after that time, go ahead. But I'm not going to touch it unless other editors step up and take some responsibility for fixing the things that I had tried to fix. If those other editors cannot be bothered to do that, I'll just leave the page to you. On the other hand, if what I believe to be the consensus turns out to actually be the consensus, I will expect you to work with it politely and cooperatively. But all of that, ultimately, is not going to be my problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:09, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
I'm happy to help, just have limited time right now. Have made a few trial edits just now - in general I think between you you've made lots of progress improving the article, although it still obviously needs work. A lot has changed since I last took an in-depth look at the article, it will take me a while to catch up. One question I have right off the bat is why do we only afford Gross/Simmons one sentence right now? Seems massively under-weighted to me. As others have said above, there's a lot more to weight than citation counts, the PAP survey was a major, peer-reviewed study that deserves much more coverage in the article than it's currently given. Fyddlestix (talk) 04:21, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
Believe me, I appreciate anything that other editors can offer, beyond it just being me and one other editor. Based on earlier discussion, I believe that it is unencyclopledic, in the sense of writing for the general public, to have detail after detail about every later study, so I'm in favor of emphasizing the original Ford and Carnegie studies due to their historic importance, but keeping things briefer for the later studies, and presenting the later material more in the form of the subtopic being surveyed instead of listing each study on its own and expecting readers to compare them. But I entirely agree that devoting so little emphasis to Gross and Simmons, while giving slavish detail to Abrams, does our readers no good, unless the goal is to push a POV. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:17, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
Tryptofish regarding the author of Stalking Sociologists... Taylor and Francis list the 2017 edition as being by Mike Forrest Keen. Amazon lists that edition as being by Renee Fox and Mike Forrest Keen. I suspect that's an error? You may note that the link you sent me to is a shot of the cover of the book, and Keen is listed on the left hand side. The Library of Congress lists Keen as the author <https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=TALL&searchArg=Stalking+Sociologists&searchType=1&limitTo=none&fromYear=&toYear=&limitTo=LOCA%3Dall&limitTo=PLAC%3Dall&limitTo=TYPE%3Dall&limitTo=LANG%3Dall&recCount=25> If I had to choose reliability, I would go with the Library of Congress over Amazon ;)AnaSoc (talk) 02:30, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
AnaSoc, I suspect that you know more about that than I do. Please just correct it as you see fit, no argument from me. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:52, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
Will do, Tryptofish. Thanks for your work.AnaSoc (talk) 00:56, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Revert

I feel that I should explain this revert: Netoholic's edit appears to be largely an attempt to restore their preferred version of the page, overwriting numerous constructive changes,and restoring material that has already been removed - some of it more than once, by more than one editor - without consensus. Please ensure that you're seeking consensus before restoring stuff that's already been removed, and that other editors have already voiced opposition to including. Trypto's version is, Imo, unequivocably better, and I am opposed to restoring petty, pov crap like the bit about gross and Simmons being "then assistant professors." Fyddlestix (talk) 04:59, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I do not have a preferred version of any article. That's not the wiki-way of thinking. My edit was not a full revert, I kept in several of the recent changes, and my edit summary details the reasoning. The point about them being assistant professors was explicitly mentioned in the secondary source ([19]), and if they consider it important, we should. In fact, its likely they mention it as a compliment that assistant professors have caused such a stir with this particular line of research. There is no POV in stating their positions. In fact, in that same section I changed the Lawrence Summers mention to point out he was a former Harvard president, rather than just an "economist", because the article mentions that as well and surely his position of president is more significant to the nature of his comments with regards to the professoriate (his resignation from the position being very fresh in the minds of readers in 2006-7). Did you also notice that I fixed the 2013 book attribution from "the authors" to "Neil Gross" since Simmons didn't actually co-write it? Did you have a problem with my alteration of the ref name from Gross1 to Gross2013 to keep consistent with other refs? Do you disagree that it is POV to include only praising reviews when the breadth of the reviews express criticism, so much so that Gross had to write a lengthy response to several of the critics? Frankly, I dislike having so many reviews part of this, but if glowing praise reviews and self-puffery, primary-sourced quotes by the author are being pushed into this article, then to balance it we need criticism (not just because, but because that is the preponderance of reviews). Have you accessed the reviews I have brought here? Would you say they are glowing praise?
I have to ask, how could you have fully evaluated my edit when you reverted via undo only 12 minutes later? I can assure you it took me longer to make the edit, because I made sure to preserve the unrelated changes I see agreement on. So what's the rush? -- Netoholic @ 05:43, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
I agree of course with Fyddlestix, and I think it would be fine to put this on an RfC after the current one has closed or at least gotten near to closing. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:01, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
The point that Gross wrote the first of the two books himself, and the second with Simmons, is a good one, and I have corrected it. About faculty ranks, the source that says they were assistant professors simply identifies them as such, which is different than saying that they were "then assistant professors". Nowhere else on the page do we identify academics by their rank; for the most part we just say that they were sociologists or political scientists or whatever. But pointing out Gross' and Simmons' junior ranks (at that time), while also going to lengths to point out how senior Summers is, has the effect of creating a POV against the former and for the latter. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:01, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that is probably why the source noted all their positions. Its very common in academic articles to do so, and its why we should retain the intent of the source. In fact, to downplay their positions is the POV-pushing, not an accurate summarization of the source's context. If there are any other sources that make such a point of using positions, we would naturally use them elsewhere. By your same standard, in contrast, it is inappropriate to describe Steven Pinker as an Academy member, since neither his tweet nor the Jacoby source article mentions that, and "sociologist Neil Gross" is also POV labeling. -- Netoholic @ 21:29, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Also, the independent, secondary, review by Hermanowicz is important to quote, because it provides an expert opinion that, first, the original Ford and Carnegie surveys are now looked back upon as landmarks, and second, that subsequent surveys are not considered as significant when taken individually, but that the way that Gross and Simmons assembled their compilation made it approximately equal in importance with the first two surveys. That's a very important historical perspective, and one that is consistent with other neutral scholarly analyses. And that's an important reason for this page to group the later studies together, instead of giving each one a higher-level section header. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:06, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
"important to quote" and "important reason for this page to group the later studies together" is WP:OR/WP:UNDUE based on your opinion of what is important, and it doesn't reflect the majority of reviews on these three surveys. -- Netoholic @ 21:29, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
And one more thing. The revert by Netoholic that was then reverted by Fyddlestix did a lot more than described above. For one thing, it put back the quotes by Ames et al. and by Gross and Simmons – the very ones that Netoholic has been complaining about as being undue. I had removed those quotes [20], [21], which I would have thought would please Netoholic, but apparently he reverted those quotes back: [22]. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:17, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
That was a copy and paste error I was in the process of fixing, along with other updates, but I was edit-conflicted by the insta-revert. -- Netoholic @ 21:29, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
[23], second paragraph. Twelve minutes after having already been careful. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:50, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Synthesis under "Later surveys"

In the section "Later surveys", we have a couple lines which begin "Later studies became increasingly politicized" which mentions methodology problems and politicization. This section is broadly-speaking WP:SYNTH. It gathers several concerns about specific studies whereas the section header is about surveys. The HERI survey data, for example, is used in some capacity in several studies, and I'm not aware of any major criticisms of it other than natural mentions that its single question doesn't necessarily have a lot of applications. Gross's survey is generally not found as having major problems, the criticisms are about his study conclusions. Instead of this preface, specific concerns should be linked with specific studies based on what the sources are talking about. This section should just list the major surveys and their immediate released studies associated with it, with any criticisms of those studies brought to those specific sections. Phrasing it so broadly is painting all 3 surveys in an undue and negative light, which is clearly not supposed to be the case. -- Netoholic @ 07:12, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I think it would be fine to put this on an RfC after the current one has closed or at least gotten near to closing. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:02, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
  • That's synthesis. I removed it. Don't know really why we need an RfC on this, unless someone was actually being quoted saying "later studies became increasingly politicized"--"politicized" is not a notion that is value-free and can be mentioned as a basic fact as if this were plot summary. Drmies (talk) 18:25, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Your edit is fine with me. I made a small adjustment because some of the cited comments are from comments on the surveys, rather than the surveys themselves. In my opinion, the previous version of the sentence was simply a summary sentence for the paragraph, and was substantiated by the following two sentences, but I'm pointing that out primarily by way of explanation, and I'm not objecting to or arguing about the revision. What I do object to was the wholesale reverting that was going on, and I would object to removing the paragraph entirely. Those earlier reverts were the reason I said there could be an RfC, because that would have been better than battleground-y arguments going around in circles. But if the current revised introduction is OK, I see no need for an RfC on this issue, and I would hope the template could now be removed from the section. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:36, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Oh I'm totally with you on the concept of the summary sentence--it's a very academic thing to do, of course. BTW I have some faith in your work here since I know you know the business as well as the business of Wikipedia. Drmies (talk) 20:23, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. If anyone just asks me nicely, I'm perfectly happy to correct any mistakes that I make. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:25, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Alright, I can do that. Hey, my dear Tryptofish, can you please correct your mistakes? And when you're done, correct mine? There's coffee and cake in it for you! Drmies (talk) 21:12, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
LOL. You're not the one who hasn't been asking nicely. It will take me so long to correct my own that I'll probably never get to yours – and I'll need something a lot stronger than coffee! --Tryptofish (talk) 16:54, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
Despite the small change, the section still conflates the surveys with the later studies and is still SYNTH. There is no source which groups HERI, NAASS, and PAP together or makes broad comments about their value relative to Ford and Carnegie, and no source which talks about those three broadly in terms of methodological errors, politicization, etc. This is why this is WP:SYNTH - its you constructing a narrative about these three surveys from disconnected sources (and worse, sources that are criticizing the studies not the surveys). This whole narrative should be removed, and the three "later surveys" should be at the same header level as Ford and Carnegie. -- Netoholic @ 21:32, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
There is no synth in recognizing that the later studies happened later in time. Hermanowicz clearly places the original Ford and Carnegie studies above the later ones, in terms of importance. And beyond that, it's a matter of due weight, not synthesis. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:50, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

DuBois

Okay if we add the material about W.E.B. DuBois back into the article? The investigation into his political views predates McCarthyism by eight years, as the investigation into his political views dated to February 1942. This according to the book, Stalking Sociologists. Any objections to me adding a paragraph about DuBois?AnaSoc (talk) 02:33, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

I think that would expand the scope of the article too much, since we are focusing on the broad political tendencies within the institution of academia, not individual academics. This suggestion points to a flaw in the current article title. -- Netoholic @ 06:42, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
AnaSoc, I went back to Spring 2016 and didn't find anything about DuBois in the page history, so I'm unclear about what you would add back. I guess it depends on the extent to which whatever happened with him has a direct relationship to US university faculty as a whole. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:01, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
Netoholic and Tryptofish DuBois was only one of many academic sociologists who were investigated by the FBI for their political views. I just mentioned DuBois because he was the first to be investigated. Also that the investigation of American academics for their political views predates McCarthyism. Perhaps a short paragraph about the investigations that happened before McCarthyism? The lede currently says that "The political views of American academics began to receive attention in the mid-20th century, during the rise of McCarthyism", but the case of DuBois and other sociologists indicates that the investigations occurred BEFORE McCarthyism. Your thoughts on adding a (brief) paragraph of pre-McCarthy investigations?AnaSoc (talk) 00:53, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your work on this. I've checked the online version of the Keen book, [24], and I see that Chapter 2 is entirely about DuBois. I went through it, and this is what I think I'm seeing: It certainly talks about his college education and about honorary degrees that he got later on. It says that in the 1890s, he had a brief "disappointing appointment at Wilberforce University", and then he had a one-year, insultingly low-level appointment at the University of Pennsylvania, and he then worked for 13 years at Atlanta University. He left Atlanta U for a while and then came back, and was chair of the sociology dept. from 1934–1944. Unless I missed it, he was not a university faculty member after that. It also says that the first significant FBI investigation, by the Atlanta FBI office, began in February 1942 and was set aside in 1943, and the serious efforts by the FBI against him happened in the 1950s. There is nothing about the 1942–3 investigation affecting the last 3 years (1942–4) of his chairmanship at Atlanta U. So, unless I'm missing something (which is entirely possible!), most of the government scrutiny of his politics was in the 1950s, during McCarthyism, and that scrutiny was about him as a person, rather than about his employment at any university – with his faculty positions, and the FBI scrutiny, occurring at different points in time. That sounds to me like it's not really within the topic of this page, so I'm not sure that there is anything that would be valid to add. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:55, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Tryptofish, good point about whether DuBois was officially an academic when he was investigated. I argue that he was, and still think that a brief mention would be appropriate. DuBois was first investigated by the FBI in February 1942 (print version of Keen p. 15), and he was still a professor of sociology at Atlanta University until 1944 (print version of Keen p. 14). The FBI's investigation lasted a year, ending in April 1943 (print version of Keen p. 15). So even though that investigation was closed, the fact remains that the FBI's investigation of DuBois predated McCarthyism. Additionally, the initial FBI investigation of DuBois included analysis of his 1940 book, Dusk of Dawn, (Keen print version p. 15), which was written while he was a professor at Atlanta University. Additionally, he was fired from Atlanta University in 1943, but due to public outcry, he was named professor emeritus in 1944. <http://www.atlantamagazine.com/civilrights/web-du-bois-legacy-deferred/> The Penn State archives state that he retired from Atlanta University. Finally one last point--you say that the FBI "scrutiny was about him as a person, rather than about his employment at any university." While I agree with your second point, I disagree with your first. The investigation was about his academic work, not about him as a person. I welcome further discussion about this.AnaSoc (talk) 00:53, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
Hey Tryptofish and Netoholic, one more point, and then it's time for my dinner. What about a brief paragraph just before the McCarthyism section about 1940s scrutiny? Then we could move this sentence: "Earlier, in the 1940s, the Rapp-Coudert Committee had investigated faculty of the City College of New York for communist involvement.[2] In 1951, Members of the American Legion began accusing various university faculty of being communists.[3]" to the new section, and mention DuBois as well. AnaSoc (talk) 01:19, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
Replying on both points, I have due weight concerns about adding any of that. I think that we need a secondary source that discusses topics like the original Ford and Carnegie surveys in the context of academic political views, that also says explicitly that what happened to DuBois was an early event in this same history. Otherwise, I think that if we place DuBois in that historical progression, it may be original research. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:01, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
@Tryptofish (talk OK good idea. I'm off in search of that secondary source.AnaSoc (talk) 02:18, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
After reading Chapter II, The Difficult Years, in Lazarsfeld and Thielen, I have concluded that we do not have to place DuBois into the same historical progression. We can just discuss the incidents (as Lazarfeld and Thielen call them) that predated the start of McCarthyism. Lazarsfeld and Thielen note that many of their respondents described incidents that occurred before 1945; these incidents were excluded from the study because the study focused on incidents that occurred during the time period 1945-1955, but the fact that they mention this allows us to write about the earlier events without this being original research. I will add a short section and use the term that L&T use, "post-war years". Then we can include the incidents of Rapp-Coudert Committee at City College, DuBois at Atlanta University, the UW terminations, and the UC loyalty oaths. If you don't like the new section, you can revert and we can discuss it further here.AnaSoc (talk) 00:34, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
I agree entirely. Using Lazarsfeld and Thielens as a secondary source commenting on what is, in effect, the lead up to the demographic surveys that they began, is a good way to go. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:03, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
On thinking further, I do have one concern. As it is written now, the new material only cites Lazarsfeld and Thielens inline a few times. If we are going to tie this together without SYNTH, it should be possible to cite Lazarsfeld and Thielens (in addition to the sources cited now) for pretty much every main point, or the existing sources need to explicitly describe what happened to the person as being part of the history that led to the later surveys. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:59, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Feedback

I'm not going to change anything on the page relating to this, but I will give feedback here about how I think the page looks now. The use of the word "disparity" in the lead sentence seems to me to be restoring the implication of "bias" that was rejected by the community when the pagename was changed. I also think that the repetitive presentation of the later Carnegie studies, the HERI studies, and the Duarte study, along with the graph of the HERI data, present a POV and UNDUE impression of a greater liberal tilt in recent years than is supported by the preponderance of studies. Yes, it's a conservative talking point, but there is also a large literature that challenges it, and that perspective is grossly under-represented here. It does not even include the director of HERI saying what she said about her own study being used in this way. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:28, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

"Disparity" is nothing more than "lack of parity" or "inequal". The state of the page is much more validated than it was during the deletion discussion. Now, of course, interpretation of the causes and effects is debated, but the broad numerical inequality is not. Its not a "preponderance of studies", its a universality of studies that show a disparity. Not one study presented even hints at a balanced population. The demographics are not a "conservative talking point", they are used pervasively - even authors that disagree that the imbalance is a problem still acknowledge the imbalance. Again, its important not to confuse demographics with interpretation of cause and effect. Explanation of these major demographic surveys is foundational to all the later studies. -- Netoholic @ 20:25, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
"Disparity" implies "something is wrong", like "bias". Another interpretation is this: Americans who vote for frauds are on average less smart (or at least easier to fool) than those who vote for their opponents and therefore underrepresented in academia. Or: People whose basic values are regularly viciously attacked by one party, such as scientists (whose basic value is truth), are less likely to vote for that party.
In any case, there is nothing wrong with different occupations having different opinions. --Hob Gadling (talk) 04:30, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
I tend to agree here - "disparity" brings to mind things like "racial disparity," or "gender disparity," implying discrimination/bias. "Disparity of political views" is also just incredibly awkward wording, especially when we go on to actually describe the difference in more concrete terms within the same sentence. Fyddlestix (talk) 04:48, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
I'm happy to see that other editors agree with me about "disparity". And I also think that the other points I raised here are important. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:19, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
Also, in the "Effects on students" section, I think that Buckley's book was primarily about acceptance of people of faith, and D'Souza's book primarily about affirmative action, as opposed to political beliefs per se. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:38, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
I haven't reviewed information on all of them yet, so can't speak to that. They are certainly on topic though, mentioned in several of the main studies we're using (Gross and Mariani off the top of my head), and if they think those books are important to mention, we should. I expanded the Buckley line because two of the sources (cited) each included a summary of it that was similar. -- Netoholic @ 20:25, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't understand the Cleanup tag. As we've made changes to grouping and headers, you've generally agreed with them in above discussions. Also, as far as "needing a trim", since we are at just under 25k, we're comfortably within the "Length alone does not justify division" category per WP:SIZESPLIT. -- Netoholic @ 20:25, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

When you said you didn't like edits I made, I responded by looking for a reasonable compromise and I supported keeping significant parts of what you wanted. Now, when I say I don't like edits that you made, you only argue and argue and WP:IDHT. This is a waste of my time. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:29, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
And just to be absolutely clear, I've already commented on pretty much all of this. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:31, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
(non-admin closure) The result is Include. It's not the numerical advantage of the Yes suggestions over the No ones, as much as the quality of arguments.


The question was whether or not to include the suggested text. One editor rejected the inclusion because the text is "too vague" and this ostensibly makes it unsuitable for an "encyclopaedic summary." Yet, for hopefully evident reasons, scientific opinions are often intentionally and unavoidably "vague," i.e. without the full, desired, precise answer. This does not make them any less quotable or less significant or having less encyclopaedic value.


The three other editors !voting No protested the "speculative" nature of the suggested text ("speculation"; "off the cuff musings"; "personal opinion not based on any solid research grounds"). Yet, we regularly include, as we must, "speculation" about scientific findings when scientists are doing the "speculation." Wikipedia even has a category for "scientific speculation." What to laymen may be "speculation," to a scientist may be a legitimate, even if unproved, hypothesis. This is, if nothing else, how conjectures are formed. Moreover, nothing on the record indicates that the remarks were done in a casual, less-than-serious context.


The scientist behind the text was a director of the organization that performed the survey (source), and directly involved with the survey. It cannot be reasonably argued that her views on specifically the survey's findings do not have informational and encyclopaedic value. What might possibly be missing from the article are opposite or different assessments of the survey's results. Editors are encouraged to locate different viewpoints, for balance, if they're out there. -The Gnome (talk) 15:17, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC about HERI survey

Should the page section about the HERI survey include the following sentence?

When asked in 2012 about the significance of the findings on political views, the director of HERI, Sylvia Hurtado, said that the numbers on political views attract a lot of attention, but that this attention may be misplaced because there may be trivial reasons for the shifts.[1]

--Tryptofish (talk) 17:24, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Jaschik, Scott (October 24, 2012). "Moving Further to the Left". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved June 9, 2018. Sylvia Hurtado, professor of education at UCLA and director of the Higher Education Research Institute, said that she didn't know what to make of the surge to the left by faculty members. She said that she suspects age may be a factor, as the full-time professoriate is aging, but said that this is just a theory. Hurtado said that these figures always attract a lot of attention, but she thinks that the emphasis may be misplaced because of a series of studies showing no evidence that left-leaning faculty members are somehow shifting the views of their students or enforcing any kind of political requirement.

Yes

  1. Yes of course it should (assuming that the page section is not simply removed as undue weight). The HERI study is a major survey of university faculty views and experiences with undergraduate teaching, but it is not even about political views in any central way. The actual published study has a single question about politics in its faculty survey, and the authors of the survey never discuss the results of that question in their reports: [25]. There are multiple scholarly articles about methodological issues that raise questions about using the HERI data for evaluating political views. On the other hand, some authors, beginning at the American Enterprise Institute, have used the data to argue prominently that universities are slanted against conservatives and that the trend is getting worse. It is frankly preposterous to present the HERI study without including what the authors of the study say about their own study. The HERI director is not saying don't use our study, but just that she has concerns about using it for studying political views. The sentence is not cited to a primary source, but to an independent journalist who asked the HERI director and chose to report what she said in this way. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:24, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
    Add: Editors should feel free to suggest wording changes to the sentence. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:34, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
  2. Yes - The fact that she is the director of HERI, and that Inside Higher Ed chose to quote her on this means that her viewpoint on the subject is significant and worthy of inclusion. Her statement is also not at all controversial - This major academic study by an expert on the subject, for example, states that the HERI surveys "did not focus on politics and contained (and still contain today) just a single question about where professors fall on the political spectrum," further adding that "it proved difficult for researchers to leverage major gains in understanding from a single survey question." So the point Hurtado makes - that the HERI surveys don't go into enough detail for anyone to draw broad/sweeping conclusions about professors' politics from them - is one that others have made as well. As a result, the quote is relevant, DUE, and well-sourced. It's also just one sentence, and attributed to Hurtado. So I really don't see a valid argument for excluding this. Fyddlestix (talk) 23:45, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
  3. Yes – Considering her position, I fail to understand a reason for exclusion. This article has a great number of studies suggesting all manner of contradictions. Frankly, we should leave this to op-eds, think tanks, and political pols of both sides. But, if we’re to publish this, why ignore the director of the very study under discussion? O3000 (talk) 00:11, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
  4. Yes I think that if we're going to discuss the HERI survey, then obviously the director of HERI's view on the research run by her own organization is relevant. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 05:33, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
  5. Yes There is a book "How to Read a Study" by Trisha Greenhalgh. That book exists because normal people do not know how to do it and often draw wrong conclusions. Scientists need to explain the real implications of their work, sometimes outside the papers themselves. This is a rare case where the author does explain. To put a point on it: "No, we cannot conclude that academics are turning more and more into leftist weirdos who can be safely ignored. No, to do that would misrepesent my work." --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:58, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
  6. Yes This isn't speculation. The author of the study is pointing out the verifiable fact that this study, as well as others, did not find evidence that faculty are influencing the views of students. If we're going to include the results of the survey, we should include the analysis as well. –dlthewave ☎ 12:07, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
  7. Yes – If we're including in the article the speculations of William F. Buckley, Allan Bloom, Dinesh D'Souza, Roger Kimball, and others who are not subject matter expert statisticians, then it's certainly not a WP:WEIGHT issue to present the HERI director's analysis of their own study. Mojoworker (talk) 17:54, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
  8. Yes, per WP:DUE. Relevant to the article. --K.e.coffman (talk) 16:20, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
  9. yes, seems relevant to me. CapitalSasha ~ talk 04:48, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

No

  1. As one can read in the source article, Hurtado's view is personal opinion not based on any solid research grounds ("she didn't know what to make of", "she suspects", "she thinks"). In particular, "she suspects age may be a factor" is not a theory brought up on any of the peer-reviewed studies on this topic. It's pure conjecture. We only have this one source for her opinion on it, not enough to devote any WP:WEIGHT within the article - imagine if we included the personal opinion of every other professor on this topic which only had a single source. It is also not representative of the source itself, which devotes far more space to reporting the numbers in chart form and to more informed and published viewpoints like Klein. Lastly, the line in Wikipedia's voice fundamentally misrepresents the source by attributing a greater breadth and conviction of view to her than is presented in the source - "trivial reasons for the shifts" when she actually guesses exactly one reason, age. --Netoholic @ 19:42, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
  2. Wikipedia should not be publishing WP:SPECULATION (#4), no matter who is doing the speculating. Even if other publications see fit to publish that stuff, they are not encyclopedias, and Wikipedia is. ~Anachronist (talk) 05:50, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
  3. No: the study is fine but to include the off the cuff musings of the director without data to back her up is preposterous. – Lionel(talk) 10:53, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
  4. No as too vague: I suggest start another RfC with a precise sentence; otherwise the proposed text seems far too vague for encyclopedic summary text. For example, mention studies about whether/how teachers affect student views. This issue reminds me of a philosophy prof who demanded the class to read 10 more books by famous philosophers to "avoid bias" in the main textbook, which surveyed like 90 philosophers (not 10), and then years later I learned Albert Einstein showed how reality can only be understood by analysis with advanced math, such as re space warp bending of light. Write about more studies, not vague opinions. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:51, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

  • @Fyddlestix - Inside Higher Ed didn't quote her. Perhaps if it had, this might go a different way, but IHE summarized what she said. In effect we have a game of "telephone" which starts with her speculation, filtered through a single source, and rewritten by us. She is no longer the director of HERI (as of 2015), and her speculation is from 2012 while the latest HERI data is 2014. This Hurtado line is surely not going to age well. -- Netoholic @ 06:26, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
  • I am disappointed in this revert by this RfC opener. I had updated the text of the quote to more accurately match the source. This RfC should never have been started with a specific wording in mind, as that is not the wiki-way. This RfC should only be whether to include Hurtado or not. If special wording is at issue, then it should have afforded the opportunity to present several options to the participants. I firmly think the RfC suggested wording is seriously misleading and doesn't agree with the source. --Netoholic @ 17:36, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
The revert is fine, and I support it. The wording should remain as is until the rfc is complete, consensus on the wording is what we're trying to develop here, monkeying with the wording in the article while the rfc is ongoing is just going to confuse the issue. Fyddlestix (talk) 04:28, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
The opener should have gathered some input from involved users prior to opening the RFC, in which I would have pointed out the clearly misleading wording used above which doesn't even come close to matching the source. If we were then disputing over a wording 1, wording 2, and not including, then that also would have been presented in the RFC. -- Netoholic @ 04:57, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
For editors to see more conveniently than in the diff above, here is the version of the sentence that Netoholic prefers: In 2012, director of HERI, Sylvia Hurtado acknowledged a rise in left-leaning faculty and suspected that it was due to an aging professoriate, but didn't think it had an impact on student views.. I think it leaves out her perspective about the attention that the data get, and saying that she "acknowledged" it makes it sound like she only admitted it begrudgingly. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:37, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
"makes it sound like she only admitted it begrudgingly" I disagree that its what "acknowledged" implies, but even if it does, that's a fair read of the source, don't you think? Does the source give the impression she's particularly happy about the number? -- Netoholic @ 21:50, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
  • An editor comments above about speculation. I agree that we should not present speculation in Wikipedia's voice, but that is different than opinions that are attributed. And she is only speculating on the reasons why there was a shift, but not on her evaluation of how her survey should be interpreted. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:40, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
  • She also speculates as to the impact on students. The only points she acknowledges without speculation are that there is a major rise ("surge") to the left and that the numbers gain a lot of attention - everything else is speculation, and that's why I chose the word "acknowledged". If want to include the "attention" point, then In 2012, director of HERI, Sylvia Hurtado acknowledged the public attention that the "surge to the left" in faculty has received, but suspected that it was due to an aging professoriate, and didn't think it had an impact on student views. I'd be more happy with the line if we cut out the speculation at the "but" though, as this RFC wouldn't have been needed if we had left off the speculative parts entirely. Would you agree to reducing this line to In 2012, director of HERI, Sylvia Hurtado acknowledged the public attention that the "surge to the left" in faculty has received., to eliminate the speculative aspects, as a way to close this RFC and move on? Or do you continue to want to include her speculation, even though no formal studies have cited "age" (which makes her look somewhat fringe-y) and because we cover impact on students in another section. -- Netoholic @ 21:50, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
We're having an RfC. Let's see what the community decides. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:47, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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