Found the silver lining.

“The number of researchers who openly admitted to anti-immigration views was small compared to those with pro-immigration views. This imbalance makes it difficult to draw definitive conclusions about the magnitude of bias on the anti-immigration side.”

No surprise at all. But, they’ll claim no conflict every time. Not that I expect a scientist to be any more self-aware than anyone else, but it would be nice.

So, these scientists were asked to evaluate a political question, “Is there a link between immigration and welfare support?” using a large survey dataset. Not like they were asked whether temperature data supported anthropogenic climate change. The 158 scientists were in 71 teams and did, collectively, of 1200 statistical tests.

An overwhelming majority of all analyses found no link between immigration policies and support for welfare programs, regardless of investigator ideology. A handful of outlier models, where an effect could be found, show effects that correlated with the team’s politics, but it’s hard for me to look at the mountain of “no effect” conclusions and agree with the statement “politics predicted the results.” “Politics predicted the outliers,” OK.

Actual study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz7173

I believe it. Especially when science is so often funded by private companies with specific agendas.

So a portion of scientists are largely subservient to status quo hegemonic norms? Or are bad at disguising their agendas?