The Jury's Still Out on What Constitutes a Microaggression

In "Microaggressions: Strong Claims, Inadequate Evidence," Scott Lillenfeld argues that, despite a decade of scholarship, the Microaggression Research Program (MRP) continues to suffer serious analytic and evidentiary problems. After walking through these shortcomings, he provides 18 suggestions to help improve the reliability and utility of the MRP. In "Microaggressions and 'Evidence': Experimental or Experiential Reality?" Derald Wing Sue responds. This chapter provides background on the origin of the MRP, and referees the dispute between Lillenfeld and Sue about its contemporary status

A Lack of Ideological Diversity is Killing Social Research

The lack of ideological diversity in social research, paired with the lack of engagement with citizens and policymakers who come from other places on the ideological spectrum, poses an existential risk to the continued credibility, utility and even viability of social research. The need for reform is urgent

On the Philosophy of Conservativism

A brief primer contrasting conservativism from progressivism, and outlining the major schools of conservative thought

Race and the Race for the White House: On Social Research in the Age of Trump

As it became clear that Donald Trump had a real base of political support, even as analysts consistently underestimated his electoral prospects, they grew increasingly fascinated with the question of who was supporting him (and why). However, researchers also tend to hold strong negative opinions about Trump. Consequently, they have approached this research with uncharitable priors about the kind of person who would support him and what they would be motivated by. Research design and data analysis often seem to be oriented towards reinforcing those assumptions. This essay highlights the epistemological consequences of these tendencies through a series of case studies featuring prominent and influential works that purport to explain the role of race and racism in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It demonstrates that quality control systems, which should catch major errors, seem to be failing in systematic ways as a result of shared priors and commitments between authors, reviewers and editors – which are also held in common with the journalists and scholars citing and amplifying this work – leading to misinformation cascades. Of course, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, prejudicial study design, and failure to address confounds are not limited to questions about Trump – however they seem to be particularly pronounced in this case due to the relative homogeneity and intensity of scholars’ views about this topic as compared to other social phenomena. “Trump studies,” therefore, provides fertile ground for exploring how social research can go awry – and the consequences of these failures -- particularly with respect to work on contentious and politically-charged topics

Resistance as Sacrifice: Towards an Ascetic Antiracism

Often described as an outcome, inequality is better understood as a social process -- a function of how institutions are structured and reproduced, and the ways people act and interact within them across time. Racialized inequality persists because it is enacted moment to moment, context to context -- and it can be ended should those who currently perpetuate it commit themselves to playing a different role instead. This essay makes three core contributions: first, it highlights a disturbing parity between the people who are most rhetorically committed to ending racialized inequality and those who are most responsible for its persistence. Next, it explores the origin of this paradox – how it is that ostensibly antiracist intentions are transmuted into ‘benevolently racist’ actions. Finally, it presents an alternative approach to mitigating racialized inequality, one which more effectively challenges the self-oriented and extractive logics undergirding systemic racism: rather than expropriating blame to others, or else adopting introspective and psychologized approaches to fundamentally social problems, those sincerely committed to antiracism can take concrete steps in the real world – actions which require no legislation or coercion of naysayers, just a willingness to personally make sacrifices for the sake of racial justice

The Case for an Unprincipled Foreign Policy

Drawing from Dancy's notion of ethical particularism, we explore why foreign policy doctrines are counterproductive in terms of crafting sound responses to complex, fluid and dynamic events. However, despite their horrible track record, foreign policy dogmas remain ubiquitous--a phenomenon which is largely a function of how useful they are in the political sphere

Cardiovascular disorders in patients with different ways of hiv transmission

Background. Cardiovascular disorders (CVDs) occur in each 10th patients infected with HIV. Emergence of this group of diseases related to direct action of the virus and opportunistic infections, exposure to antiretroviral drugs, smoking, heredity, age. CVDs associated with HIV include atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease, vasculitis, pulmonary hypertension, heart tumors, dilated cardiomyopathy, pericarditis, myocarditis, endocarditis. Heart diseases are more common in persons with HIV, develop in younger age and occur aggressively compared to the general population. However, CVDs in HIV-infected patients with different ways of virus transmission are not specified

ANALISIS FAKTOR YANG MEMPENGARUHI TINGKAT KEMISKINAN PROVINSI-PROVINSI DI INDONESIA

This study analyzes several factors that affect poverty rates in Indonesia in the period 2007 to 2012, and then identify the difference poverty rates between provinces by making one of the province as a base of comparison. The data used in this study is a panel data from 2007 to 2012 with a total study sample of 33 provinces in Indonesia that Province Jakarta become research base. Panel model used in this analysis is the approach of Fixed Effect Model (FEM) using the Least Square Dummy Variable (LSDV). Panel regression model used in this study has been tested classical assumption, panel regresion model is not affected by multicollinearity, autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity, and the data were normally distributed, with R-squared of 0.098. the results of the research in this paper shows PDRB ADHK significant negatively affect on poverty rate, Average Length of School significant negative effect on poverty rate, the minimum wage significant negatively affect poverty rate, unemployment significant positive affect poverty rate, and inflation has significant positive effect on poverty rate. Based on this research, all independent variables significantly affect overall and in accordance with the existing theory, so it can be driven through government programs to reduce the level of poverty there