Greetings, dear reader,
Not much time today, so let’s dive right in.
LITERALLY ZERO PERCENT
Anyone with a bit of interest in university scholarship might already suspect that the social sciences can be quite questionable. In fact, there are instances where, quite literally, invented datasets were passed off in studies as if they were legitimate.
The Grievance Studies Affair serves as a striking (and quite enjoyable) illustration of how fabricated some aspects of social science can be. Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose aimed to demonstrate the “lack of rigor” in social sciences — to put it bluntly, they wanted to show that much of it is just made-up nonsense — by concocting what they viewed as utterly absurd research and attempting to publish it.
Surprisingly, they succeeded in getting seven papers accepted, with one particularly notorious paper characterizing “urban dog parks” as “rape-condoning spaces” and “petri dishes” for “canine rape culture.”
A recent study, claiming to have more rigor, effectively validated the findings of the 2019 Grievance Studies experiment. Published on April 1 in Nature, the Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE) project attempted to replicate 164 studies and found that a staggering 49% of them could not be replicated.
The breakdown by field was telling: Economics and Political Science had around 60%, while sociology fell to about 25%.
The most astonishing finding? In the education sector, social sciences research achieved a dismal zero percent. Yes, absolutely none of the sampled education papers from SCORE were replicable.
This aligns perfectly with my thoughts after reading DOCTOR Jill Biden’s dissertation, which I’ve read — and I honestly wish I could get back those roughly 40 minutes.
I wouldn’t find it so shocking if I didn’t know that individuals with such dubious research go on to become superintendents and school administrators. It’s perplexing that those producing minimal value in their field are the ones shaping public education policy.
It does make one wonder: why are we investing in this? Oh, you didn’t know?
Between the summers of 2021-2022, taxpayers in the U.S. shelled out about $39 billion on graduate student loans. Some of that surely helped fund EdDs like DOCTOR Jill.
Ironically, one of the most consistently replicated findings in education research is that advanced education degrees have no impact on student test scores. It’s a bit surprising, given the extra studying, but just think about it: would DOCTOR Jill be more capable teaching high school English? Probably not.
In a more rational world, those billions could be better spent on creating a border fence, or maybe even just as a treat where everyone gets a free hot dog at the game. Anything but funding questionable credentials and spurious studies.
MORE LINKS:
Daniel Siad, Who Supplied Models to Jeffrey Epstein, Found Dead
What a situation.
Not So Fast: Software Company Blamed for Illegal Alien Voter Registration Says State Government Knew
It only gets worse.
OpenAI Admits Its AI Went Rogue During Cybersecurity Test
Sounds like something straight out of a movie.
