
Liberals outnumber conservative academics - Unbiasing Academia - acconrad
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/02/unbiasing-academia/70955/
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jellicle
Already well addressed:

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/ideas-are-not-
th...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/ideas-are-not-the-same-as-
race/)

Conservative ideology is inherently anti-science. It's deeply unsurprising to
discover they don't go into scientific fields. Next you'll be telling me that
atheists are underrepresented in the clergy.

~~~
bradfordw
Agreed. We should file this under "knock me down with a feather" -- waste!

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jacques_chester
I think this can be explained by a simple model introduced by Thomas
Schelling.

Most people do not particularly like to be in a minority, for whatever reason.
At cocktail parties, groups often begin to sort themselves into male and
female groups. While everyone may have a total preference for mixed groups,
they also have a steadily increasing preference not to be in a group dominated
by the other sex.

Hence, when a woman leaves a group of 5M / 5F, the remaining 4 women feel
slightly outnumbered. Then another one leaves. Before long the last 3 women
have dried up entirely. A similar spiral can occur if a man joins the group in
the first instance.

The same model can explain racially polarised neighbourhoods and politically
polarised professions. Conspiracy is not required.

