Academic bias is the bias or perceived bias in academia shaping research and the scientific community. Academic bias can involve discrimination based on race, sex, religion, ideology or protected group. One study sent a questionnaire to students and staff in a range of American universities. 44% of undergraduates and 27% of professors claimed that they had witnessed overt biases within the classroom. Respondents claimed that bias was directed at individuals because of their sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, sex, religion and class. The types of bias witnessed involved stereotyping, offensive humour, social isolation, slurs and insults. Academic bias can result in a citation bias, suppress scientific dissent and prevent the discovery of scientific truth.
By politics or ideology
Conservative activists such as David Horowitz have argued that there is a bias against Christians and conservatives in academia. Barry Ames et al., John Lee and Henry Giroux have argued that these claims are based upon anecdotal evidence that would not reliably indicate systematic bias, and that the divide is due to self-selection due to conservatives simply being less likely to pursue an academic career. Russell Jacoby has argued that claims of academic bias have been used to push measures that infringe on academic freedom.
One study of academic philosophers found that while half of respondents believed that ideological discrimination was wrong, a significant minority believed discrimination against individuals with opposing ideologies was justified.Peters, Uwe, Nate Honeycutt, Andreas De Block, and Lee Jussim. Ideological Diversity, Hostility, and Discrimination in Philosophy. A 2017 paper argued that left-wing ideologies had taken over criminology in the 1960s and 1970s, observing a massive increase in research around fields such as radical, Marxist and feminist criminology. The paper's authors argued this resulted in bias, as the ideology of scientists within the field influenced both the acceptance of certain theories and the rejection of others; criminologists of this period came to regard criminology as being about criticising the social structure of society and those who supported the status quo. The authors also argue that even in the modern day, much of the writing in criminology remains primarily political in both origin and purpose.Wright, John Paul, Kevin M. Beaver, Jamie M. Gajos, and Catherine Sacarellos. "Three Strikes and You're Out: A Short but Modern History of Biosocial Criminology." The Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Criminologyyou (2018): 237.Walsh, Anthony, and Lee Ellis. "Ideology: Criminology's Achilles' heel?." Quarterly Journal of Ideology (2004). A 2018 study argued that since groups seen as deviant from the norm are frequently seen as in need of explanation, if bias against conservatives existed, then conservatives and conservatism should be seen as more in need of explanation than liberals and liberalism, as a liberal-biased science would see them as deviant and that they would be described more negatively. This was confirmed by the results of the study.Eitan, Orly, Domenico Viganola, Yoel Inbar, Anna Dreber, Magnus Johannesson, Thomas Pfeiffer, Stefan Thau, and Eric Luis Uhlmann. "Is research in social psychology politically biased? Systematic empirical tests and a forecasting survey to address the controversy." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 79 (2018): 188–199.Michael Shermer, Is Social Science Politically Biased?, Scientific American, 01.03.16 Other researchers also argue that political bias manifests in scientific research, influencing how ideological groups are described, what measurements are used, the interpretation of results and which results are published.Jussim, N.H.L., Equalitarianism as a Primary Source of Scientific Bias.Chan, Linus, James D. McFarland, and Lucian Gideon Conway. "Political Contamination of Social Psychology: A Review of Crawford and Jussim’s (2017) Edited Book on The Politics of Social Psychology." Social Justice Research 31, no. 3 (2018): 323–333.Becker, Howard S. "Whose side are we on?." Social problems 14, no. 3 (1967): 239–247.Duarte, José L., Jarret T. Crawford, Charlotta Stern, Jonathan Haidt, Lee Jussim, and Philip E. Tetlock. "Political diversity will improve social psychological science 1." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 38 (2015).Harper, Craig A. Ideological measurement in social and personality psychological science. (2020).Tetlock, Philip E. "Gauging the Politicization of Research Programs." Psychological Inquiry 31, no. 1 (2020): 86–87.Clark, Cory J., and Bo M. Winegard. "Tribalism in war and peace: The nature and evolution of ideological epistemology and its significance for modern social science." Psychological Inquiry 31, no. 1 (2020): 1–22.
A 2018 study found bias amongst criminal law students, with students engaging in motivated reasoning favourable to their political in-group and demonstrating bias towards their political in-group.Pietenpol, Annelise M. "Political Self-Identity and Views of Higher Education: A Study of Criminal Justice Graduate Students." PhD diss., University of Cincinnati, 2018. Mark Horowitz also argues that researchers' political views can bias their research.Horowitz, Mark, Anthony Haynor, and Kenneth Kickham. "Sociology’s sacred victims and the politics of knowledge: Moral foundations theory and disciplinary controversies." The American Sociologist 49, no. 4 (2018): 459–495.
A 2005 paper argued that, controlling for student ability, there was no evidence of any disciplines being biased against conservative students in grading. In contrast, the researchers did find some disciplines, such as economics and business, where conservative students achieved higher grades than would be expected by student ability. The authors concluded that this was unlikely to be due to any explicit or implicit bias in these disciplines, instead arguing that it was likely due to differences in student interest in subject matter, as well as possibly due to differences in discipline teaching methodology interacting with student personalities and values.Kemmelmeier, Markus, Cherry Danielson, and Jay Basten. "What’s in a grade? Academic success and political orientation." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31, no. 10 (2005): 1386–1399.
Justin Tetrault argues that research into hate groups relied too much upon stereotypes rather than rigorous analysis, likely because said stereotypes appealed to researchers' own beliefs.Tetrault, Justin Everett Cobain. "What’s hate got to do with it? Right-wing movements and the hate stereotype." Current Sociology (2019): https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392119842257.
It has been argued that apparent evidence of a "prejudice gap" between right-wingers and left-wingers—the idea that right-wingers are more prejudiced than left-wingers—was caused by researchers having not measured groups that left-wingers would be prejudiced towards. It has been suggested that this was because this was not regarded as prejudice or was not seen as worthy of investigation.Forgas, Joseph P., Klaus Fiedler, and William D. Crano, eds. Social psychology and politics. Psychology Press, 2015, pp. 94–96Brandt, Mark J., and Jarret T. Crawford. "Worldview conflict and prejudice." In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 61, pp. 1–66. Academic Press, 2020. Christine Reyna argues that ideological bias can affect how scales are constructed and interpreted in multiple ways.Reyna, Christine. "Scale creation, use, and misuse: How politics undermines measurement." In Politics of Social Psychology, pp. 91–108. Psychology Press, 2017. Lee Jussim argues that right-wing individuals were classified as "cognitively rigid", however he argues this label is misleading because what studies indicate is that right-wing individuals were less willing to change their beliefs and to be open to new experiences relative to left-wing individuals but this did not make them "rigid" in any absolute sense and that absent any absolute measure as to how cognitively flexible a person should be, labels such as "rigid" were meaningless.Honeycutt, Nathan, and Lee Jussim. "A model of political bias in social science research." Psychological Inquiry 31, no. 1 (2020): 73–85.Malka, Ariel, Yphtach Lelkes, and Nissan Holzer. "Rethinking the rigidity of the right model: Three suboptimal methodological practices and their implications." In Politics of social psychology, pp. 126–146. Psychology Press, 2017. A 2019 study by the researchers measuring "actively open-minded thinking" noted that the researchers' original scale was biased against religious individuals due to test items, skewing correlations, and that the team had not realised this error for almost two decades, requiring a new scale.Stanovich, Keith E., and Maggie E. Toplak. "The need for intellectual diversity in psychological science: Our own studies of actively open-minded thinking as a case study." Cognition 187 (2019): 156–166.
Some scholars, such as J. F. Zipp, have said that studies on the political orientations of professors are faulty, having focused on unrepresentative institutions and fields; when taken as a whole, they say that academia has become more moderate over time.
A 2019 study of European universities argued that while university professors were more left-wing and liberal than other professions, professors did not display a higher level of homogeneity in political views (aside from views on immigration) than other professions such as CEOs did, suggesting European universities are not exclusionary compared to other institutions.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative group, argues that course curriculums betray a progressive bias. However, John Lee argues that this research is not based on a probability sample and uses a research design that cannot rule out explanations other than political bias. Furthermore, research suggests little or no leftward movement among college students while they are in college.
Academic bias has also been argued as a problem due to discrimination against conservative students. Research has indicated that conservative Christians may experience discrimination on colleges and universities, but these studies are anecdotal and rely on self-reported perceptions of discrimination. For example, the Hyers' study includes "Belief Conflicts" and "Interaction Difficulties" as discriminatory events. However, other work suggests that very few students experience discrimination based on political ideology.
Phillip Gray argues that ideological bias in political science risks creating "blind spots", whereby certain ideas and assumptions are just accepted as normal and not challenged. Gray argues that this could mean that issues that concern the ideology of the dominant majority could receive a lot of focus, while issues that concern less prominent ideologies could be seen as less worthy of investigation and thus be consequently understudied. This risks resulting in a fairly ideologically homogenous field whereby certain "givens" are just accepted and thus not examined. In addition, Gray argues that this means that certain studies are not given adequate examination if they confirm the dominant group's ideological priors, even if the studies are flawed. Gray further argues that ideological bias in academia risks portraying other political groups not as another group of actors with their own beliefs but rather as a threat (too ignorant or prejudiced to know what is good) or menace (inherently inclined towards destructive acts and policies). This results in these groups being portrayed as dysfunctional and requiring diagnosis rather than understanding; while Gray does not believe political science blatantly "otherizes" its ideological outgroups, he does argue that there is an implicit "diagnostic" attitude towards groups that disagree with the majority's view.
Politicization of science