I've discovered why there aren't any right-wing sociologists. Lefty academics are biased.

****

Well pretty close to that - these are social psychologists:

Inbar and Lammers (2012) found that most social psychologists who responded to their survey were willing to explicitly state that they would discriminate against conservatives. Their survey posed the question: "If two job candidates (with equal qualifications) were to apply for an opening in your department, and you knew that one was politically quite conservative, do you think you would be inclined to vote for the more liberal one?" Of the 237 liberals, only 42 (18%) chose the lowest scale point, "not at all." In other words, 82% admitted that they would be at least a little bit prejudiced against a conservative candidate, and 43% chose the midpoint ("somewhat") or above. In contrast, the majority of moderates (67%) and conservatives (83%) chose the lowest scale point ("not at all").

And the same went for assessing grants and reviewing papers. What really saddens me in all this is that these biased lefties - 'liberals' in American-speak - are completely destroying the relevance of their discipline. When reviewing anything written by most social scientists (economics being the possible exception), you have to assume that the the research is skewed by a prejudged left-of-centre ideology.

I've said before that the sociology department that sets out to recruit a group of centrist or right-of-centre thinkers is going to clean up on breaking new ground in the subject.

....

The BBC really is a joke....

****

...a cruel joke on all those poor folk in council houses coughing up for the license fee (and filling up magistrates courts when they struggle to pay it):

The BBC sent 140 crew members to cover Nelson Mandela's memorial despite receiving more than 1,000 complaints over its 'excessive' coverage of his death. The number of staff dedicated to the iconic leader's death was far greater than its rivals, including ITV which reportedly despatched just nine staff to South Africa.

I'll grant it's a leading news story, I concede that it merits high profile coverage but this scale of indulgence - it has cost the BBC over £1m to cover just this one story - is an insult to all the people who fund the BBC.

Apparently this degree of coverage was justified because Mandela was:

 “the most significant statesman” of the last 100 years. 

Seriously - not Churchill who led Britain through the war, not Kennedy who started the space race, not Gandhi who help create the world's biggest democracy, not Thatcher and Reagan who with Gorbachev brought the 'Cold War' to an end, not Roosevelt who led America through depression and war, not Kohl who unified Germany, not any of these people.

I give up with the BBC. And so should the rest of us, it doesn't serve us, it just exploits our credulity and indulges its own bias. At an unnecessary cost in taxation.

....