Ok, lets do this one more time for those in the back. Political preferences for those who select into a science are not a basis for assuming that affects how they do science. Most of us spent 6-7 years learning to put aside our priors 1/
For most of higher ed, their political preferences are irrelevant, since there is no direct political implications to how to design a bridge. Which is why STEM gets a partial pass from conservative attacks on universities 2/
This blog is based on an anecdote: two papers with similar designs and topics fared differently, with the implication that top journal editors screen papers for liberal and conservative findings. If we are doing anecdotes now, I've got one... 3/
Just published a paper in a journal that examined how political ideology causes politicians to weight their policy priors - the ideas is that they change some policy priors to accommodate what data tells them about public or private organizations 4/ academic.oup.com/jpart/article-… 
We found that the effect was driven by liberal politicians, i.e., they were more willing to alter their policy preferences in ways that protected public schools. Why would liberal academia and journal not bury such an unflattering result? Because thats what the data told us. 5/
Its a small example, but it shows that most of us have intrinsic and professional norms to get the science right. We also work in a competitive field. Doing highly ideological research makes no sense since it gives other researchers a chance to take you down. 6/
H/T to @douglasnharris for bringing these tweets to my attention. Doug is a model of a research scientist trying to use data to get the most accurate read of the effects of policy changes in charter schools, so worth a follow
