Ok, so this is being somewhat misunderstood here, I think. A few observations:<p>- The sentence pg quoted ("Roughly one-third of students are also in favor of banning controversial books from their university library.") is verbatim from the study.<p>- However, this study must be seen in context. It was deliberately and openly <i>designed</i> to detect anti-free-speech sentiment by looking at a specifically chosen probable "worst case", namely social science students at a traditionally left leaning university in Germany (which houses the "Institut für Sozialforschung" that gave rise to the "Frankfurter Schule" (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse) of critical theory, a predecessor of (among other things) CRT). That this is the case is revealed <i>right in the title</i> of the study: "Is Free Speech in Danger on University Campus? Some Preliminary Evidence from a Most Likely Case", and further emphasised in the text: "We are certainly not under the impression that our sample is representative of university students in general (or the wider public, for that matter). <i>On the contrary</i>, we <i>purposefully</i> consider the social science studentship at Frankfurt as a <i>most likely case</i>." (my emphasis).<p>- So, the study succeeded in detecting some moderately illiberal attitudes in a quarter or so of students at one deliberately chosen "worst case" faculty in Germany.<p>- All the hubbub here about the statistical limitations is overblown, n=501 is not bad for social science and gives a error margin of around 5%, which means the results stand unless there was massive sampling bias.
> The target population of our study are all current social science students at GoetheUniversity of Frankfurt<p>> Participation was voluntary and incentivized with a lottery of three Amazon gift vouchers to the value of 50 euro each.<p>> However, the actual net response rate dropped from 14% to 7.5% when we consider only those who completed at least80% of the survey (n= 501), which is clearly poor and has to be kept in mind whendrawing conclusions from the data.<p>Not really a great sample. All participants are from a rather specific demographic, and a small sample size at that.
> We were able to collect a total of n=932 responses in the period from 16 May to 2 July 2018. However, the actual net response rate dropped from 14% to 7.5% when we consider only those who completed at least 80% of the survey (n = 501), which is clearly poor and has to be kept in mind when drawing conclusions from the data<p>So clickbait BS. Is nobody reading the linked study?
Well "from their university library" is a pretty important qualifier.<p>Certainly, curating which books are placed in the university library is detrimental to diversity of thought and exposure to various views (even knowing what extreme views are out there is important if you wish to counter them). But it's not really the same as say a government ban of controversial books.<p>Also, this survey was done in Germany, where you can already go to jail for claiming the holocaust didn't happen.
My very least favorite horseshoe effect example is, as always, <i>Huck Finn</i>.<p>It is an absolutely stellar novel. “All right then, I’ll go to Hell” is one of the more courageous bits of writing that young Americans are exposed to about ourselves. How dare we try to pretend otherwise. It is beyond me.
Apart from the poor methodology that others have commented on, pg's scare statistic appears to come from just one row of Table C on page 12 (numbered 482), related to one topic.<p>Looking at all of the other topics paints a different picture: approximately 75% of student are consistently against banning books. But that's significantly less easy to hand-wring about.
"Roughly one third of 501 students at a single university in Frankfurt, in Germany where certain publications are required by the constitution to remain prohibited, are in favour of removing controversial books from a single named library" presumably -- while rather more accurate -- didn't quite make the weaksauce point we were looking for.
Does pg get automatically recommended to all twitter users or something? The replies to his post are pretty low-quality; I'm guessing few people in it have read any of his books (technical or the essay compilation). Why'd he get cursed with such a following?
Well, the summary is of course extremely condensed, and it helps a lot to read the paper. Some very quick observations:<p>- These are data from social science students in Frankfurt, Germany. The city and university is traditionally left-leaning, so not at all representative for anything (not for students, not for Germany, not internationally)<p>- The total population is ~6600, and the sample is N=501, which is further reduced by some missing values. Note that very few people actually identify as political leanings, espeically hardly anyone on the conservative spectrum. So I would argue that this study <i>has not enough power to draw any serious conclusion</i> (power in the statistical sense as sensitivity to reject a H0 given it is false)<p>- The measured variables were many more than merely banning books. Some restrictive attitudes were not supported.<p>Finally, it is immensenly important to remember that countries must pick one of roughly three approaches to dealing with harmful political attitudes (see Ziblatt's "How Democracies Die" for a longer review of this):<p>- Have all attitudes compete equally (this is the US model of free speech)<p>- Contain bad attitudes by shunning them and rendering them a taboo<p>- Exclude bad attitudes by prohibiting them legally (this is the German model, which criminalizes expression of some opinions such as denial of the Holocaust).
Well I am in favor of banning misinformation, clickbait, and “studies” conducted against an extremely small sample size intended to promote outrage and justifying bad behavior.
It should come as no surprise that the right-leaning students who ideologically agree with the stated "controversial books" or ideological viewpoints of the hypothetical speakers do not want to remove them from the university library.<p>Also, it's a third of SOCIAL SCIENCE students, not overall student population, and the study has a terrible response rate of 7.5% which they themselves admit in part 4.1. Also, because it seems like bad faith editorializing by the OP, it's about banning books from the university library, not in general.<p>In other words, the study is awful and it doesn't prove any point, but because it's easy to spin it into an anti-woke censorship narrative, HN is going to eat this up.
Why not link to the original paper?
<a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11577-020-00713-z.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11577-020-007...</a><p>> However, the actual net response rate dropped from 14% to 7.5% when we consider only those who completed at least 80% of the survey (n= 501), which is clearly poor and has to be kept in mind when drawing conclusions from the data. All analyses are based on pair-wise deletion of missing values.<p>Divisive political issues attract people at the fringes of the political spectrum. If you're getting less than 10% of the sample filling the majority of the survey, it's likely that your sample is just those people interested enough to fill it out <i>because</i> they're on the fringes.<p>I am skeptical of the results, because in my experience at university (2007-2012, 2017-2020) I never observed "wokeness" or concern over microaggressions or many of the things right wing media reports on. It's a more likely explanation that Conservatives have victim complex, and "university wants to burn books and ban speakers" fills that complex well.<p>Why? Politics is just business in disguise. My theory is that conservatives don't want government to pay for education, and in the US they are succeeding in this goal [1]. Saying universities are hypocritical is a good excuse.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-higher-education-funding-cuts-have-pushed-costs-to-students" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig...</a>
Why would anyone ask students what their opinion on these matters are? The whole point of students is that they are still learning and studying. Should we ask a 2nd grader whether they should do their math homework or not?
Back in the day I joined evening classes just to get access to the technical college library. Reading books was a thing then.
I do see some value in erasing human history and starting again.
We have been so comprehensively vile to each other it might be better to erase it all.
By "controversial books" they likely mean CRT - it's the number 1 battleground in education facilities today. But banning the books is silly. We shouldn't ban knowledge, even if it's the infamous MeinCampf or CRT - only practicing of certain knowledge should be banned.
Wonder if that includes books about burning books, struggle sessions, or psychoanalysis within political sociology, and ...<p>how radicalized progressive movements develop — likely not a part of any curriculum anyway vs redefining them as new modern progressive study or hashtag.
If you live in any moderately large sized city, you’re just going to get your books from the public library anyway. No one used the school library at our school and we were fairly large and fairly successful.<p>If it’s in class, 99% of the kids were going to SparkNotes whatever book they ended up getting anyway.