It's Not the Size of the Tent; It's How It's Constructed

By Finbarr Curtis

Elections are in the air.  Alongside the far more colorful contests for the American presidency, the American Academy of Religion put forth David P. Gushee and R. Kendall Soulen as candidates for the vice presidency of the organization.  While lacking controversy of Trumpic proportions, the AAR did face criticism here and here from scholars who noted that the two candidates both advocate for more theological reflection in the study of religion.  In his statement, Gushee expresses concern that the "AAR is seen as not particularly hospitable to, say, confessional or constructive theology, or more conservative religious viewpoints."

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Gushee and Soulen reopen some old debates in religious studies and appeal to American senses of fair play and inclusion.  In their view, the AAR should be a big tent that includes lots of different perspectives.  I am not persuaded that their tent building requires any changes in organizational direction, however, because it strikes me that the AAR is a big tent right now.  Ironically, this means that everyone feels excluded.  Evangelical theologians lament that secular approaches to religious studies have squeezed out faith while critical theorists see Christian theological categories everywhere.

Kind of a Big Fake

Some cool looking data from LaCour and Green's study

By Finbarr Curtis 

In a scene from The Legend of Ron Burgundy, the journalist Brian Fantana anoints himself with a special cologne made with "bits of real panther." The cologne's pungent gasoline aroma does not shake Fantana's confidence in its seductive powers.  As he explains, "They've done studies, you know. 60% of the time, it works every time."  Fantana's data make no sense, of course, but this is beside the point.  What matters is that "they" have done "studies."

The seductive magic of studies hit the interwebs this past week when it was revealed that a graduate student named Michael LaCour faked the data in an article entitled "When Contact Changes Minds: An Experiment on Transmission of Support for Gay Equality."  The study showed that canvassers working on behalf of marriage equality could change people's minds after relatively short conversations.  The essay also compared the persuasive power of straight and gay activists, suggesting that contact with gay canvassers produced longer and more sustainable changes in political attitudes.

LaCour co-authored the article with a professor of political science named Donald Green.  While Green helped to write the study, LaCour gathered all of the data and snookered his co-author into thinking it was real.  Green was not the only one fooled.  The findings made their way to Ira Glass's This American Life, which discussed the article in a story entitled "The Incredible Rarity of Changing Your Mind." The study was appealing because it confirmed liberal ideas about the sources of social conflict: that social divisions are caused by personal prejudices that can be dispelled if only people could get to know each other.  In addition, LaCour's data assured us that people are persuadable.  The takeaway from the study is that voters might be a lot nicer and reasonable then we might have thought.

None of this necessarily means that the findings have been proven wrong.  Ironically, activists who worked to pass a recent referendum for marriage equality in Ireland used the LaCour and Green study as a template for their own political strategy.  If LaCour had not been a quantitative social scientist, he could have simply written the study without the data.  If he was delivering a TED talk or writing an op-ed column, he could have said the same thing and possibly received critical acclaim and invitations to lucrative speaking engagements.

But LaCour inhabits an academic universe in which faking data is a cardinal sin.  Some have concluded that the current scandal proves that the system worked and confirms the importance of reliable data gathering.  As David Brookman, one of two UC Berkeley graduate students who discovered to the fake data when they tried to craft a similar study, explains:

The nature of the work that we do as quantitative researchers is that you allow the data to tell you what you think the truth should be. You don’t take your views and then apply those to the data; you let the data inform your views.

Brookman's faith in data is itself an interesting datum.  The LaCour affair seems to show that data themselves aren't what persuade people.  LaCour recognized that he just needed to have some data, that if he could produce sophisticated charts, graphs, and numbers it was unlikely that anyone would check.