Inductivist

According to a popular textbook on race and ethnicity by Joseph F. Healey, 62% of white Americans are racists, meaning people who harbor hostile feelings toward minority groups. He concludes this based on General Social Survey (GSS) data which indicate that 50% of whites believe that blacks are poorer than other groups because they are not trying hard enough, plus the 12% who feel that blacks are less intelligent. The latter answer is a measure of traditional racism, while the former is the modern, covert type. Both are ways that whites express the hostility they have for minorities.

It's strange that these race scholars choose the "reason for poverty" question as a measure of hostility. Why not use the GSS question that actually inquires abouts one's feelings?

GSS respondents were asked, "In general, how warm or cool do you feel towards African Americans?" Answer-choices range from "very warm" (1) to "very cool" (9).  

The problem with this question is that only 1.2% of whites answered "very cool." That's not nearly enough white racists to warrant calling America a racist country. Well, maybe a 7 or 8 indicates a dislike of blacks too. 2.1% gave a 7 and 0.6% gave an 8, giving a grand total of 3.9%. Heck, let's be generous and say those who gave a middle-of-the-road six are haters too. Add 3% to 3.9%, and you're still left with an uninspiring 6.9% of whites being bigots.  

I can see why sociologists stick with the "reasons for poverty" question. Because they're impartial scientists, I mean.

Suckiologists III: A genetic twin study on impulsivity (and other traits) by Eaves, Martin, and Eysenck was published in 1977 which showed very small shared environmental effects. Loehlin et al. (1987) reported zero shared environmental influence for impulsivity in a study of adoptees. A Swedish study (1988) found that the correlation for identical twins raised together was almost the same as that for identical twins raised in separate families indicating no effect of shared environment.

These methodologically powerful studies persuaded sociologists in the early 90's to drop their interest in the role of parenting in causing impulsivity.

Oh I'm sorry, in 1990, sociology started for the first time in forty years to focus on disciplinary styles. Sociologist Travis Hirschi and his colleague Michael Gottfredson published a book called A General Theory of Crime. In it the authors claimed that all crime is caused by a failure to punish children when they behave badly. Permissive parents raise kids who never learn to check their impulses and end up as career criminals. The theory is so powerful, the authors said, it even explains white-collar and organized crime.

Then, in 1998, the world of social science was rocked with Judith Rich Harris' The Nurture Assumption. She echoed these earlier studies--and many, many others--that pointed away from parental influence, and she suggested that peer influence was important instead. Sociological criminology naturally followed suit by turning its attention to peer influence.

Oh, I'm sorry, what actually happened is that Hirschi and Gottfredson's "self-control" theory went red hot and quickly became a leading criminological theory. Peer influence was so 80's. So now scads of studies are coming out showing a correlation between erratic parenting, impulsivity, and crime. Do they investigate the possibility that the correlation is due to genes? (I mean, broad heritability is .4 or.5, after all.) Of course not, only racist Neanderthals do that (when they're not opposing Obama).

Sociologists are classic examples of academic SWPL-hood. Their discipline is driven by fads. People jump at a new idea, get tired of it, and then jump to the next thing. Data has little to do with it. What a friggin' joke.

Suckiologists: Isn't it funny that much of the skepticism about the validity of IQ tests has come from sociologists? These are people who often take ONE question from a survey as their measure of whatever it is they are studying, and then don't make any more effort to validate that it captures what they think it captures.

Psychometricians, by contrast, have obsessed for a very long time about questions of reliability and validity. IQ is typically measured with many, many items, each of which hase been tested extensively. There are subtests on top of subtests, and sophisticated statistical techniques like factor analysis and structural equation modeling have been developed to address these kinds of questions.

Psychologists have a reputation of going crazy over measurement issues on a puny sample of, say, 30 subjects. Sociologists, on the other hand, will measure their concept with one survey question asked of 10,000 respondents. And these jokers are complaining about IQ measurement?