A Different Kind of Brain or the Same Old Biased Research?

A a href=”http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2007/09/the-tendency-of.html”number/a of a href=”http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/09/there-are-two-cognitive-styles-liberal.html”bloggers/a are discussinga href=”http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,5982337.story” this new “study”/a that finds that the liberal and conservative brain is different: br /br /blockquoteThe differences between liberals and conservatives may run deeper than how they feel about welfare reform or the progress of the Iraq war: Researchers reported Sunday that their brains may actually work differently.br /br /In a study likely to raise the hackles of some conservatives, psychologist David Amodio and others found that a specific region of the brain’s cortex is more sensitive in people who consider themselves liberals than in self-declared conservatives.br /br /The brain region in question helps people shift gears when their usual response would be inappropriate, supporting the notion that liberals are more flexible in their thinking./blockquotebr /br /In yet another of their “objective” studies, New York University professors draw conclusions that make liberals look good and conservatives look bad, although the authors attempt to make themselves look objective about the new study when one of them, John Jost, a href=”http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2006/10/liberal-says-liberals-are-more-open.html”whom I have blogged about/a before, a href=”http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-politicalbrain_bothsep10,1,6328755.story”states the following:/abr /br /blockquote”It’s wrong to conclude that our results provide only bad news for conservatives,” he wrote on Aug. 28, 2003. “True, we find some support for the traditional ‘rigidity-of-the-right’ hypothesis, but it is also true that liberals could be characterized on the basis of our overall profile as relatively disorganized, indecisive and perhaps overly drawn to ambiguity.”/blockquotebr /br /I might be more persuaded by Jost’s defense of his research as objective if he wasn’t a href=”http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?key=2A5ZPtxtName=josttxtState=NYtxtEmploy=new%20york%20universitytxtAll=YOrder=N”forking money over to Hillary Clinton/a–isn’t that a conflict of interest? If not, it should be. br /br /I wonder if this study could be duplicated in a a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-blind”double-blind study/a using researchers who weren’t liberals as well as subjects who weren’t college students? Somehow, I doubt it.