Discussion for article #229294
These guy look like frat boys.
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Anderson said in an emailed statement. âWe apologize if it was not clear that the intention of the mailing was entirely scholarly.â
Not even scholarly, no neutral political scholar would place President Obama that far left on the political scale.
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There goes a few academic careers. Iâm sure they can get jobs at a community college.
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Of course, had this mailer come from Karl Roveâs âCross Roadsâ or Kochâs âFreedom Worksâ it would simply be a 1st Amendment / Citizens United moment and no apology (or likely investigation) forthcoming.
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I was wondering what the legitimate point could have been, so I looked on the internetâŚ
Small type on the fliers disclose they were paid for by Stanford and Dartmouth researchers, and direct readers to a Stanford University webpage.The webpage says the fliers are part of a study âon the impact of information about candidate positioning on turnout and ballot roll-offâ in nonpartisan elections.The study sought to learn whether voters are more likely to participate in elections if they are provided more information about candidates, Stanford spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said.The study is nonpartisan and independent of state officials or candidates, and it was approved by the Dartmouth Institutional Review Board, she said.The mailers were sent to 100,000 voters in Montana. Two other states are also in the study: New Hampshire, where voters in one congressional district received 66,000 mailers, and California, where information was sent to 143,000 voters in two congressional districts.
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What I would like to know is how they got this past the committee which every university has which MUST according to Federal law sign off BEFORE AN EXPERIMENT begins on ANY research that involves human subjects.
If it was reviewed, and allowed, it is not just the professors, it is that committee and the whole school which is in deepest doo, because it could result in sanctions including prohibitions against human research by the school.
Just ask the Google about this phrase: âregulations at universities on human researchâ, and read through some of the top ranked universities web pages on this subject that top the results.
This is NOT treated casually by universities, and this is incident is a serious, pitiful lapse.
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Exactly. Obama is portrayed on Fox as being a hyper-liberal, but Nixon was further to the left. Who knows what Romney really believes, but he ran further to the right than what the scale shows. I smell shenanigans.
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Yeah, I noticed that too. Besides, once you compare candidates to known partisan personages youâve introduced a partisan element. Perhaps they should have replaced Obama with Albert Schweitzer and Romney with Heinrich Himmler. It looks like at least one of the candidates is to the right of Himmler and and all of them are clearly to the right of Schweitzer.
However, it all comes down to a common problem in science â and not just the social sciences â namely, how do you observe a system without interacting with and hence intervening in the system. Still it would seem that it should have been obvious to those responsible that anything that is going to measure increase in voter participation by supplying voters with something that they wouldnât otherwise have had has the potential to increase voter participation and thus effect the outcome of the election. That should have brought everyone up short right there.
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Seems to me the only people âoffendedâ by getting MORE information on candidates that may or not be accurate are people that are not interested in any information other than that which conforms to their comfort level. In other words, people who are against any information other than that which confirms their own biases. The campaigns put out plenty of misleading information. I suppose that is democracy, while scholars are suspect simply by virtue of them being scholars. What a world.
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As a full professor of political science I am absolutely stunned by this. How on earth did these colleagues come up with an absurd research methodology posing as a state agency, and how on earth did their universities approve of this scheme?
One could use this example in a methodology class and ask first year students about what is wrong with this procedure. Iâm sure that theyâd have some ideas about why this was a truly bad way to conduct research.
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Misrepresenting a state seal is forgery. Off to prison for these punks.
And you donât get to use fine print to say âhey, I forged thisâ.
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Morons. Not even qualified to teach high school poly sci. As to comparisons with what the Koch brothers do, so what? Anyone can set the bar so low that they look good next to it.
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Since itâs unquestionable that Obama is further left than Romney, and since thereâs no other metric in the scale, you canât really say that it places either too far in their respective directions. Itâs pretty simpleminded to imagine that either defines the furthest reach of conservatism or liberalism (however you define them), but in principle, thereâs not really an issue with that part of the charts. Now, how you place the justices on the scale needs explaining; if thereâs no methodology for their placement, then the charts are meaningless.
As an experiment with adding âinformationâ to an election, this whole thing is fraudulent and unethical. Both Stanford and Dartmouth are homes to right-leaning eponymous âReviews;â Iâm guessing that might have something to do with how they came up with this.
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How to take the âscienceâ out of political science in one easy lesson. Iâve a question though. How the hell were they going to determine that it was their âadditional informationâ that effected voter participation?
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I donât think it is unreasonable to ask what are the personal political leanings of these researchers. Itâs natural to wonder if this had an impact in their methodology.
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Kid on the left is what, 25?
Not likely. I teach at a community college. We get paid more because we teach heavier loads, and the application process is brutal. Last time we posted in my department was two years ago, and there were hundreds of applicants.
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The unnamed person justifying this outrage by bringing up the Koch brothers inadvertently explains the entire episode in one sentence.
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What difference could this possibly make? We are always being inundated with political flyers like this - the Koch brothersâ machine churns these things out in huge amounts before an election! Let this be a lesson to those who never read the fine print!
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