Conservatives are biologically different from the rest of us; they are fearful creatures who sweat when shown gruesome images. This is the finding published in Science, once America’s premier peer-reviewed scientific journals.

This article in London’s Daily Telegraph sums up the results.

The study is the work of gaggle of scientists from across the country: professors Douglas Oxley, Kevin Smith and John Hibbing and others at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, alongside  professor John Alford at Rice University, Matthew Hibbing at the University of Illinois, and Peter Hatemi at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics.

But don’t be fooled. This is, at best, pseudo-science. While bloggers Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse seem to be giving the study some smidgen of credence, here is why you should not:

Sample Size. There were only 46 people tested. Hardly enough for a statistically valid sample. Assuming half of the sample was made up by the non-conservative control group, that suggests only 23 “conservatives” were tested.

Selection bias. Next, the subjects were not randomly selected; they were volunteers. This is elementary selection bias.

Definition of Conservative. Researchers labeled as “conservative” any one who believed this set of things, according to the Telegraph: “support for military spending, warrantless searches, the death penalty, obedience, patriotism, the Iraq War, school prayer and Creationist views, and opposition to pacifism, immigration, gun control, foreign aid, compromise, premarital sex, gay marriage, abortion rights and pornography.”

This a stereotype cross-dressing as an objective definition. I know of many conservatives who oppose all of the things that this gaggle of scientists thinks would define them as conservatives. How can obedience be a key conservative trait, when most conservatives favor deregulation, a smaller state and fewer govenrment orders in their lives? Some elements of the definition are tendentious: no one favors warrantless searches, what many favor is warrantless surveillance of non-citizens often who are outside the United States. (Since the call is connected through network inside the U.S., lawyers have argued that FISA warrants are necessary. Whatever the legal merits of that view, listening in on enemy communciation is a well-established practice in war time–even if some civilian chatter is intercepted as well.)

The other half of definition is equally silly. In practice most conservatives oppose premarital sex and pornography only for their daughters, not themselves. And they can be right both times.

And what about the many conservatives who are immigrants? Or the children of immigrants? Are they supposed to be opposed to immigration to join the Conservative Club?

We could pick on both sides of this definition all day long, but would just be shooting fish in a barrel. The point is established: researchers defined a conservative as a Moral Majority yokel from 1979, someone who even at the dawn of the Reagan Revolution made up a part of a broad and variegated movement.

And mistaking a part for a whole is a key blunder that contaminates the study.

Imagine if one defined as a liberal someone who favored communal farms over cities, wanted to see the abolition of cars and other private transportation, wanted free love and legal marijuana, wanted to abolish the department of defense and replace it with a department of peace, believed that police and poverty cause crime,  that religion is a cunning trick practiced by televangelists and so on. Many conservatives would chuckle at this definition and insist that there is some truth to it. But any sophisticated observer would note two things: most liberals do not hold these views and this collection of views sounds like a 1971 hippie, not a contemporary adult.

The study contains an obvious problem. What about liberals who become conservatives or vice versa?  Do their impulses change? If so, by how much? Why wasn’t this studied?

Finally, the whole study is naive. The main author, Hibbing, believes that the study can eliminate political conflict. Again, from the Telegraph: “If political beliefs do run as deep as we suggest, it becomes easier to understand why political conflict is so persistent. It’s not that those who disagree with us politically are being intentionally stubborn but rather that the world seems very different to them. Perhaps recognition of the deep physical nature of these differences will increase political tolerance and understanding…”

Translation: it is not that conservatives are unwilling to see the light, they may be biologically incapable of seeing the light.

Smug, isn’t it?

A less naive approach would say something like this: people differ politically because they do not value all goods equally and rank goods differently than others do. Some value liberty more than order; others value self-development over hierarchy. The list of political goods to rank is long and the order of them varies as much as people do, though people seem to cluster around election day.

Political disposition does not seem to emerge from biology (any more than a preference for scotch over bourbon does), but it does appear to be mildly heritable. No one is destined to be a Republican or a Whig or a Democrat or a Monarchist, but parents are part of cornucopia of causes that influence one’s politics.

How did this study come about? Eliminating the numerous unnamed graduate students and other drones employed, the study suggests a ratio of 7.6 subjects per scientist.  While this ratio alone tells us nothing of scientific value, it reminds us of an old rule: large idiocies require committees.