Some U of Chicago profs wrote responses to the sociology piece of the Vanderbilt report. When I heard this, I was intrigued as I’m always interested in serious exchanges on these matters by smart people. Then early signs indicated that serious exchange wasn’t really the point, which I thought was a bummer. So the response from Geoffrey Wodtke was a pleasant surprise. Doesn’t rely on ad hominem, invective, or sheer assertion of authority. Simply examines each piece of evidence and makes the case for why it isn’t sufficient to establish ideological distortion. Well worth reading for anyone who wants to understand this controversy. Yet I ultimately find it unresponsive to the concerns raised in the report as well as the circumstances that gave rise to them. He seems to treat the report like a peer-reviewed article that just wasn’t ready for publication. But it’s not that sort of document. Not only would the kind of test he calls for require years of effort from an entire research team, but I don’t think it would actually convince anyone not inclined to be convinced. If the authors had picked some bar for ideological compromise and designed a test showing the situation met that bar, U of Chicago profs would just have written responses claiming it was the wrong bar. The piece seems to assume the null hypothesis is that sociology is fine, and it should be treated as such until some clear and high evidentiary standard has been met showing otherwise. And for a lot of people whose opinions might matter, I don’t think that is the null. I expect I’ll write more about all this later. In the meantime, give it a read, and while you’re at it, check out my own essay on why proving that a discipline has been distorted by ideology is such a formidable (maybe impossible?) task. osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/zf… nextturtledown.substack.com/…