[galactus]

I think it's reasonable to assume that generally people who are more familiar with political figures are also more familiar with government policies, party platforms, etc. Knowledge in one field is generally strongly correlated with knowledge in others. Level of knowledge is also strongly correlated with intelligence.

What you think is reasonable doesn't really matter, you have to argue that it is reasonable and you have to be more specific: how strong is this correlation, how strong is the correlation between ignorance of politicians and ignorance of politics? It would be simpler just to ask people questions about government policies, party platforms and any other number of politically related questions than to try to deduce these things from questions about politicians' home states and Tony Blair. It would also be more prudent to not assume anything about such a correlation before such a survey has been done.

Also, the authors of the article didn't think that intelligence could be used to explain the difference in political knowledge, they say so in the beginning of the article. Plus, there is an issue with rational ignorance; people can have quite good reasons to remain ignorant of politics, for example considering that any individual contributes so little to any election by their vote, and considering that acquiring knowledge costs a lot of time, it might be rational for many people not to acquire political knowledge before any election. So maybe there is a strong correlation between ignorance of politics and intelligence?

It's not difficult to rationalize the PC world view of gender identicalness if you really want to. All you need to do is play the skeptic whenever dissonant facts like this come up, and demand certainty/more thorough studies before you make a judgment.

I personally think an honest review of the facts -and not just from this study, but from others that show men have higher levels of general knowledge- would make one conclude that generally men are more politically knowledgeable, and make more informed votes.

I am not rationalizing any view(and certainly not a view that I do not have!), I am showing some rather serious problems with the methodology of this article*. The quantitative part of the social sciences have these kind of methodological issues, and I doubt that this comes as a surprise to anybody. It is demonstrated by the rather weak assertions that the authors make. Their conclusion in the end of the paper was something like: "There seems to be a gender gap in these two surveys when it comes to political knowledge, but there is no good explanation as to why this is. We have considered factors X, Y, Z, and made statistical models on them, but there seems to be a gender gap left even after these factors have been considered. More research should be done on this subject." That would have been a better abstract. The authors have considered quite a lot of ways in which their study could go wrong(for example they spend some time considering the effect the interviewer have on the respondent), but I didn't see them considering the rather weak conceptualization and operalization of "political knowledge". That critique remains, and I think it is a serious critique, especially considering(which the authors also do) that there are other ways of engaging in politics than voting, and there are other forms of political knowledge than knowledge of politicians and their home states.

If you want to be brave and conclude all sorts of things from this - and the plethora of other articles I am sure you have read on this subject- , I cannot stop you. But you cannot force me to take your conclusions seriously either. There is only one article in this thread, so it seems bad form to support your assertions on other articles.

I could for the sake of argument grant you that there is a gender gap in political knowledge(at least in the U.S.), just to see how you would like to explain this. So, do you have any good theories?

*If you want a motivation, I am doing this because my knowledge of social science methodology is rather rusty and this is good practice since the article isn't very good

[RonPaulalways]

You're never going to have certainty in the social sciences, yet people make judgments based on the data. Feminists for example look at wage differences between men and women and conclude it's due to institutionalized sexism:

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/censusand ... pgrows.htm

“To address the continuing disparities in pay between women and men, we need to raise the minimum wage, improve enforcement of Equal Employment Opportunity Laws, help women succeed in higher-paying, traditionally male occupations, and create more flexible, family friendly workplace polices."

^ All of this implies of course that wage disparities between men and women are due to sexism, which is a huge assumption.

So you can be as skeptical as you want about this study, but it'd be nice if this skeptical attitude didn't rear itself only when the data in question points to a politically incorrect conclusion.

[galactus]

I don't see how the interpretation of a rather well-established gap in wages(in some countries) has anything to do with this. My criticism would not be applicable to statistics about wages, since the gathering of that is in a sense very easy, and it is easy to go back and check if you got it right. Telephone-surveys are a different matter, and so is research designed to examine concepts that are as abstract as "political knowledge". When dealing with wages there is of course considerations on how exactly you are supposed to measure wages, and how you are supposed to gather or compare wages across different profession. But that is a different matter, and not very comparable to the difficulties with the method in the article.

Also, the data in question in this study does not point to any conclusion. A set of facts may support any number of different theories, but not any single theory more than another; facts underdetermine choice of theory. You can use the data in the article as you see fit, but don't think that you can draw any conclusions or make any inferences from it without additional theories or observations. I mean, even if you had already established that men and women are of unequal intelligence, it would take other pieces of knowledge to establish that this would be a good explanation as to why they score different on a test of political knowledge.

[RonPaulalways]

I don't see how the interpretation of a rather well-established gap in wages(in some countries) has anything to do with this.

The cause of the wage gap is theorized by feminists to be institutionalized sexism. Their claim is mostly unchallenged in the mainstream. In contrast, when a study claims something politically incorrect, like for example that a gender disparity in test scores on a political questionnaire is a sign of disparity in political knowledge, you can be sure there will be people who will question this claim and find other possible explanations (like you are doing).

Also, the data in question in this study does not point to any conclusion.

It draws some basic conclusions, like men being more politically knowledgeable than women.

[galactus]

The cause of the wage gap is theorized by feminists to be institutionalized sexism. Their claim is mostly unchallenged in the mainstream. In contrast, when a study claims something politically incorrect, like for example that a gender disparity in test scores on a political questionnaire is a sign of disparity in political knowledge, you can be sure there will be people who will question this claim and find other possible explanations (like you are doing).

What is your point?

It draws some basic conclusions, like men being more politically knowledgeable than women.

I think you misread what I wrote here. The data doesn't point to anything, the authors do think the data suggest some things but the data in itself can lend support to any number of different interpretations.

[RonPaulalways]

I'll recap my argument:

Feminists look at the wage gap and conclude it's due to institutionalized sexism. Hardly any one questions them.

Researchers look at the disparity in tests scores on a political questionnaire and conclude it's due to a difference in the level of political knowledge between men and women. Scores of people on this forum question them.

I'm saying people are selectively skeptical to support politically correct positions.

[galactus]

I don't agree with your description about what "feminists" say, there are several different theories about the wage gap, and they all routinely criticize each other.

But that doesn't really matter, since what you are saying isn't really an argument against anything I am saying. Just because "people are selectively skeptical to support politically correct positions" doesn't mean that those positions are wrong, or that they are wrong to be sceptical, or that we have any good reason to think that they are wrong to be sceptical. That people are more sceptical towards one thing than another doesn't say anything about the truth of the matter.

[RonPaulalways]

Affirmative action policy is predicated on the institutionalized sexism theory being correct. It's the predominant view politically given affirmative action is widespraed.

That people are more sceptical towards one thing than another doesn't say anything about the truth of the matter.

You can be skeptical about any opinion on social matters, and you would be justified since the social sciences deal with highly complex systems that cannot be modeled precisely. When only politically incorrect social views are subject to extreme scrutiny though, then that's going to have a net political effect, and that's what I'm concerned with.

[galactus]

This really doesn't relate to anything I said.

[RonPaulalways]

What I'm saying is that you're fully justified in being skeptical about any social science position, including this one. I'm making the tangential point that in my opinion people are biased against politically incorrect theories and their skepticism towards them compared to other social science theories is out of proportion to their plausibility.

I don't agree with your description about what "feminists" say, there are several different theories about the wage gap, and they all routinely criticize each other.

In response I wrote:

Affirmative action policy is predicated on the institutionalized sexism theory being correct. It's the predominant view politically given affirmative action is widespread.

In other words, the 'institutionalized sexism' view is mostly unopposed to academia and popular culture.

[galactus]

I'm making the tangential point that in my opinion people are biased against politically incorrect theories and their skepticism towards them compared to other social science theories is out of proportion to their plausibility.

It isn't even a tangential point. You are implying that I have no good reason to be more sceptical towards this study than any other study, or that I am somehow biased towards being critical towards certain kinds of studies. That's fine, you can imply whatever you want, as long as you realize that it is totally irrelevant to me being correct or not. If you want to claim that I should be as critical of for example theories explaining the gender gap, then you have to demonstrate that those theories or studies have equal methodological flaws to the article I criticized. You can't just make a blanket statement that all social science is uncertain, and then lament that I am somehow biased for thinking some more uncertain than others. I have good reason to think this article flawed, and these reasons are more than some general methodological criticism of social sciences; they are specific reasons pertaining to the specific methodology of this article.

In other words, the 'institutionalized sexism' view is mostly unopposed to academia and popular culture.

I don't think there is one view, or that it is unopposed, but this is off-topic. I have no interest in discussing the wage gap, because I really don't have much to say about it.

[RonPaulalways]

Quote:
I'm making the tangential point that in my opinion people are biased against politically incorrect theories and their skepticism towards them compared to other social science theories is out of proportion to their plausibility.


It isn't even a tangential point. You are implying that I have no good reason to be more sceptical towards this study than any other study, or that I am somehow biased towards being critical towards certain kinds of studies.

It is tangential, and yes, that's what I'm implying, although my main point was to make a generalization, and not make a direct accusation against your critique.

That's fine, you can imply whatever you want, as long as you realize that it is totally irrelevant to me being correct or not.

Yes I realize/acknowledge that.