When Data Meets Belief: Can Scientists’ Political Views Skew Research?

Science likes to present itself as a cathedral of objectivity, built from clean lines of evidence and polished with peer review. Yet the architects of that cathedral are human. They vote. They argue. They hold values. And increasingly, the question is being asked in newspapers and academic journals alike: can scientists’ political views influence the conclusions they draw from data?

Recent coverage has pointed to a striking experiment. Groups of social scientists were given the same dataset and asked to answer the same research question. The results varied. In some cases, conclusions appeared to align with the researchers’ prior ideological leanings. The divergence did not arise from falsification or misconduct. It emerged from choices about which variables to emphasise, which statistical controls to apply, and which framing to adopt. In other words, from judgment calls.

That is where the issue becomes both more subtle and more interesting.

Scientific research involves hundreds of decisions. How to define a variable. Which outliers to exclude. What model to use. These decisions are rarely neutral in effect. A different modelling approach can shift the magnitude or even the direction of a result. When research addresses politically charged topics such as immigration, inequality, crime, climate, or public health, the interpretive stakes are high. It is in this interpretive space that personal values may quietly exert influence.

This does not mean scientists fabricate data to suit ideology. The evidence for widespread fraud driven by politics is thin. The concern is narrower and more human. Confirmation bias is not a partisan invention. People are inclined to see patterns that confirm what they already believe. Scientists are trained to resist that instinct, but training does not erase it.

Some critics argue that the growing overlap between academia and political activism intensifies the risk. In areas such as climate policy or public health mandates, researchers have sometimes stepped beyond presenting findings and into explicit advocacy. Supporters say this is responsible citizenship. Opponents say it blurs the line between evidence and policy preference. When the public sees a scientist speaking not only as an expert but as an advocate, trust may shift from confidence in method to suspicion of motive.

Public trust itself is politically filtered. Surveys consistently show that people are more likely to trust scientific claims when they believe the scientist shares their political identity. That dynamic complicates matters further. The perception of bias can erode credibility even if the underlying research is sound. In a polarised environment, neutrality is not merely a methodological virtue but a reputational necessity.

It is also important to distinguish between disciplines. In physics or chemistry, political ideology has limited relevance to the behaviour of electrons. In social science, where the subject matter involves human behaviour, institutions, and policy outcomes, values and assumptions are harder to disentangle. The very framing of a research question may reflect normative judgments about what is important or problematic.

Yet there is a countervailing force. The structure of science is designed to expose and correct individual bias. Peer review, replication studies, data transparency, preregistration of hypotheses, and open methodological disclosure all act as safeguards. A single researcher’s political leanings may influence an analysis, but over time competing scholars with different perspectives scrutinise, challenge, and refine the work. In theory, this adversarial collaboration strengthens reliability.

Moreover, diversity of viewpoint within academia can function as a balancing mechanism. If a field becomes ideologically homogeneous, blind spots may go unchallenged. If it contains a range of perspectives, methodological assumptions are more likely to be questioned. Some commentators argue that intellectual diversity is as important to scientific health as demographic diversity.

The issue, then, is not whether scientists have political views. They do, as all citizens do. The question is whether institutions acknowledge this reality and build robust systems to manage it. Transparency is central. When researchers clearly disclose their methods, assumptions, and potential conflicts of interest, readers can assess the strength of the conclusions independently of the researcher’s identity.

Humility is also essential. Scientific findings are probabilistic, not proclamations carved in stone. When scientists communicate uncertainty honestly and resist the temptation to overstate conclusions for political effect, public trust is more likely to endure.

There is a final irony. The very scrutiny of potential bias is itself a sign of healthy scepticism. Science progresses not by denying human frailty but by constructing procedures that account for it. The laboratory is not a monastery sealed off from society. It is a workshop filled with fallible minds striving toward clarity.

Political belief can shape perception. That is a fact of human psychology. But science, at its best, is a collective enterprise that recognises this vulnerability and compensates for it through structure, transparency, and contest. The risk is real, but so are the safeguards. The task is not to pretend that scientists are above politics. It is to ensure that the method remains stronger than the mind that wields it.

Bias against feral cats and poor methodology

A second area of concern in scientific research, beyond political skew, is the quality of surveys and data collection methods. Surveys are often presented with the authority of numbers, percentages, and confidence intervals. Yet the strength of a survey depends entirely on how it was designed and conducted.

Poor survey methodology can arise in several ways. Sampling frames may be unrepresentative, capturing only easily reachable or self-selecting respondents. Question wording may be leading or ambiguous. Response rates may be low, introducing non-response bias. In ecological research, surveys of wildlife populations may rely on indirect indicators such as sightings, spoor counts, or acoustic detection, each carrying assumptions and limitations.

In the case of feral cat predation studies, survey issues frequently intersect with modelling. Researchers may begin with field observations drawn from relatively small groups of cats in specific regions. They then combine these findings with population estimates derived from separate surveys of feral cat density. If either dataset is weak or regionally skewed, the resulting national extrapolation can magnify the initial uncertainty.

For example, if predation rates are measured in areas where prey density is high, applying those rates to regions with different ecological conditions may overstate overall impact. Conversely, studies conducted in prey-poor areas could understate impact. Survey design therefore plays a central role in shaping conclusions, even before interpretation enters the picture.

Beyond methodology, bias can take forms that are not overtly political. Personal attitudes toward particular species can influence research emphasis and framing. In countries such as Australia and New Zealand, feral cats are often portrayed as invasive predators threatening unique native fauna. This framing is supported by historical evidence of biodiversity loss linked to introduced species. However, strong conservation narratives can sometimes create an environment in which research highlighting severe impacts gains more traction than research presenting moderate or context-dependent effects.

Bias in this context does not necessarily involve data fabrication. It can appear in more subtle ways: choice of research question, emphasis in abstracts, selection of worst-case modelling assumptions, or press releases that foreground dramatic mortality figures without equal prominence given to uncertainty ranges. When headlines announce that cats kill billions of animals annually, the underlying confidence intervals and modelling assumptions are rarely given equal attention in public discussion.

At the same time, it is important to recognise that conservation biology often deals with precautionary principles. When species are already vulnerable, researchers may reasonably emphasise potential risks. The difficulty lies in distinguishing between cautious risk assessment and inadvertent amplification of worst-case scenarios.

The broader lesson is that scientific authority should not shield research from critical examination. Lay readers need not dismiss expertise, but they should feel entitled to ask informed questions about sampling methods, extrapolation techniques, and uncertainty reporting. Scientific literacy includes understanding that statistics can be both illuminating and fragile.

Ultimately, science advances through debate and replication. Strong claims invite scrutiny. Over time, exaggerated findings tend to be moderated, and underestimated effects are corrected. The health of the scientific enterprise depends not on the absence of bias, but on the presence of transparent methods, open data, and a culture that welcomes methodological challenge rather than resisting it.

In that sense, sceptical engagement from the public is not hostility toward science. It is participation in its central principle: that claims must withstand examination.

Whose fault? House cat brought to remote Island (1894). A year later a species was extinct.

This article is a reminder that we should not blame the domestic or feral cat, as an invasive species on the continent of Australia and New Zealand, for the destruction of a part of the wildlife of those countries. At root, this is not the fault of the cat. 

Lyall's Wren. Image credit at base of page.

In fact, the cat is an innocent victim as much a victim as the wildlife that they kill. It is the human who is the creator of invasive species by transporting animals across the globe. We must remind ourselves of that. It may help us treat the feral cat more humanely. 

This is not happening in Australia where they blame the feral cat as a horrible invasive species attacking and killing their vulnerable, native small mammals and marsupials which are ideal prey animals for feral cats.

So why have I addressed this problem again today? Well, Forbes have an article about a "house cat" brought to a remote island in 1894 and a year later a bird species was extinct.

That species was a charming bird - adapted to life on an island - called the Lyall's Wren. Because there was an abundance of food on Stephens Island they never evolved to fly. 

This was a small, flightless bird once native to Stephens Island, New Zealand, known for its unique adaptations to a predator-free environment. It relied on its agility and camouflage rather than flight to get around its habitat but once the domestic cat was imported into the island by a lighthouse keeper in 1894 to keep them company in the solitude and monotony of that job, the bird rapidly became extinct through incessant attacks by this domestic cat and the cat's offspring.

The cat brought to the island was called Tibbles and she was pregnant! An instant family of cats brought to the island where they were allowed to roam outside of the lighthouse, into the habitat of this sweet flightless bird who suddenly became catastrophically vulnerable to predation, something they had never experienced before.

It was a unique set of circumstances but the fault lies firmly at the feet of the lighthouse keeper. The cat didn't make their way to the island by themselves. The lighthouse keeper allowed the cat to out into the habitat of this bird as mentioned. Back in the day they didn't understand the problems of conservation and predation by domestic cats.

But this single act has stained the international reputation of the domestic cat ever since. It's one more reason why the Australian authorities go diligently about their business of slaughtering hundreds of thousands of feral cats on the continent. The authorities there constantly recite this story of the destruction of an entire species of bird at the hands of a ravaging predator; the humble domestic cat.

The lighthouse keeper was David Lyall. The bird was named after him. He brought his family, his wife and at least one son and their cat to Stephens Island. He was an amateur natural history enthusiast. He was delighted to be sent to the island. He knew there would be species to study and discover. He didn't understand the dangers of bringing his cat Tibbles.

Tibbles was equally delighted because all around her was wildlife to be attacked and eaten. She would bring this small bird subsequently called Lyall's Wren back to her owner who would perform amateur taxidermy operations on the deceased animals.

By the time the catastrophic conservation problem of Tibbles had been realised, it was too late. The last known sighting of a live Lyall's Wren was in 1895, just a year after Tibbles was brought to Stephens Island.

Image credit: By John Gerrard Keulemans - Ibis 1895, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11097962

---------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

To save birds should we kill off cats (National Geographic)?

A National Geographic author, Noah Strycker, titled their recent article: "To save birds should we kill off cats?"

What kind of title is that? I don't think you could write a more absurd title about domestic and stray cats than that. I guess you know what the article is about; it's about the predation of birds by domestic, stray and feral cats all over the world. This topic comes up all the time. And my response comes up all the time because what they say annoys me.

They rely on numerous studies about cat predation on wildlife and they come to the general conclusion that domestic cats and stray cats kill billions of wild animals including precious birds which are more precious to humans than mice (speciesism).

But the studies are in quite small areas and you can't conclusively decide that bird populations are under threat or that anyone bird species is currently under threat of being made extinct by domestic and stray cat predation. The studies don't conclude that. In fact, in the UK, the RSPB, some time ago, said that there was no evidence that bird species where under general threat of extinction by cat predation.

We don't like to see it cats killing birds. It is an aspect of domestic cat ownership which is unwanted. We wish that all domestic cats were cuddly, furry non-predator creatures who kept us company and never had any desire to kill but unfortunately they are top predators and we domesticated them with their approval.

They are our responsibility. We created all the feral cats on the planet. We created all of stray cats on the planet. As mentioned we domesticated the cat. We are responsible and if we don't like the fact that they kill birds then we don't just kill all cats to resolve that problem we look to ourselves to resolve it humanely and responsibly.

And on that topic, you will find one very firm conclusion about the loss of bird species and the overall threat to wildlife in general. It all comes from humans. Human activity. Global warming caused by human activity. The building of human settlements destroying habitat.

There are no studies which compare the number of birds indirectly or directly killed by humans and the number of birds indirectly or directly killed by cats. But if there was such a study I would like to propose that humans kill far more birds than cats. Most of it indirectly but sometimes directly like building tall buildings into which migrating birds fly and die en masse.

But even if you go to the studies which conclude that a particular bird species on an island somewhere has been made extinct by domestic cats turned feral, you have to go to the human and their behaviour to find blame. These people imported domestic cats to an island and set them free where they procreated and became feral. But for that they would have been no predation of birds on those islands.

All invasive species including the feral cat, for example, in Australia, have been created through human activity. Humans create invasive species because they transport them from one continent to another. From one country to another.

How do you think hippopotamuses arrived in South America and started to procreate? Because a drug baron in that country decided to import hippopotamuses into his private zoo. When this drug baron was captured and put into prison for life, the zoo was abandoned and the hippopotamuses were freed and procreated. South America now has a very peculiar invasive species: hippopotamuses. Point made. Humans have created invasive species because humans are the only animal that can travel so widely and freely across oceans and bring other species with them either deliberately or accidentally.

So to blame the cat for devastating bird predation is incorrect anyway and it is a distortion of the truth to imply that cats kill birds and humans don't. If we are to kill any predator to protect birds it should be the top predator on the planet: the human. That would be equally absurd. Nobody is proposing that we kill humans to protect birds.

What we should be proposing is that human behaviour should be altered to protect wildlife in general including birds. At present there is no attempt whatsoever to do this at scale. There will be small projects in various countries but the general trend or tenor of human activity is to destroy nature and therefore animals that live within nature and that will go on for the indefinite future.

So this article on the respected online magazine National Geographic is idiotic and the headline is click bait. That's why I am addressing it. It needs to be counteracted with a counterargument. What's your argument?

You may know, incidentally, that in Australia they do think and believe that they can exterminate all feral cats by shooting them or poisoning them! So on that continent they actually agree with this National Geographic journalist. They think it's feasible to wipe out the feral cat population in Australia. However, they don't know how many feral cats there are. They don't know exactly where they all are. In killing feral cats with poison they kill other animals. Their task is impossible. As they don't know how many feral cats there are they can't assess how many birds are killed by cats. They say they can but they can't. More idiotic behaviour in my opinion. And it's cruel and inhumane. It's entirely wrong. Because, as mentioned, it totally ignores the origin of the feral cat problem: people.

--------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Human destruction of animals versus cat destruction of animals

This is going to be short because I don't have a lot of reference material on it but I would like to remind people that when humans criticise the feral and to a lesser extent the domestic cat for the destruction of native animal species, they are forgetting that humans destroy far more through their activities.

Humans destroy animals through habitat destruction and on a much lesser scale through the destruction of prey animals which support native species. There are three ways that humans destroy habitat. For the sake of clarity, I'm referring to the habitat in which wild animals live and without which they cannot live. The three ways are (1) exploitation of resources and (2) pollution and (3) the introduction of exotic species. Habitat destruction by humans is considered to be the most important cause of species extinctions in many studies.

Habitat destruction includes deforestation primarily. Many wild cat species live in forests and depend upon the forests. Across the globe there is massive deforestation. The island of Borneo was pretty much covered in forests but thousands of square miles have been erased over the last 50 years. The Borneo Bay cat lives in this forest. An elusive cat which is highly endangered now because of deforestation. That is just one example.

Bornean Bay Cat. Photograph copyright Jim Sanderson, Ph.D – Please respect copyright.

Other ways that humans have destroyed habitat is through water quality deterioration, drainage of wetlands, mining, agricultural use of prairies, and fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides all change the environment of a variety of bird habitat which led to declines in populations. I don't have hard data but these environmental changes negatively impact birds far more than feral cat predation.

And the experts say that it is "crucial to view cat predation within the context of habitat destruction, since cats have not been shown to be the primary cause of the loss of native species on mainland continents (Mead 1982; Mitchell and Beck 1992). MR Slater says that "unfortunately, evidence regarding extinction is often anecdotal, circumstantial or historical."

I am quoting from MR Slater's section in the book The Welfare of Cats. This section deals with the extinction of native species. It is highly relevant today because global warming is putting pressure on nature and the animals that live within it. Global warming is due to human activity but humans in reaction to that knowledge are reluctant to curb activities which create global warming and instead they criticise the feral cat in Australia for decimating wildlife species.  Humankind is myopic in respect of endangering wild species. Humankind wants to deflect attention away from their anti-conservation behavior.

And MR Slater states something which I like to read, and I'll say it again; habitat destruction by humans is the most important cause of species extinctions. It was and it is and it will be the major cause of the extinction of species because the world relies on economic growth. In relying on growth, you have to rely on increased population size and inevitably economic growth leads to the destruction of habitat.

Until politicians and economists totally adjust their ideal model for society which as stated is economic growth there will be more wild animal extinctions.

Extinction of mammals on islands by introduced domestic and feral cats

When the predation of wildlife by feral and domestic cats is raised as a topic the devastating impact of cats on islands is invariably a major issue. Wildlife species on islands are particularly vulnerable because they are isolated from many of the diseases, predators and parasites that plague mammals on the mainland.

Stewart Island - Photo: Getty Images / tsvibrav

Dr. Bradshaw states that island species account for 83% of all documented extinctions of mammals. However, scientists can only implicate feral cats in the destruction of wildlife on these islands in about 15% of such extinctions. And further, within that 15% of such extinctions to which the blame is only the feral cat, other introduced predators should take their share of the responsibility according to Bradshaw in his book Cat Sense.

He says that mongooses, cane toads and especially rats are equally if not more devastating than feral cats on wildlife predation. Black rats a.k.a. ship rats, it is claimed, can do more damage than any other introduced predator. It is ironic, therefore, that it may be beneficial or there are at least some benefits to not slaughtering feral cats because cats are reasonably effective hunters of black rats according to Dr. Bradshaw.

If you attempt to exterminate feral cats (as is currently the objective of Australian legislatures) you might find that the outcome is far worse than imagined in terms of the population of black rats. He cites the example of Stewart Island off the coast of New Zealand. On that island feral cats have existed for more than 200 years with an endangered flightless parrot called the kakapo (owl parrot Strigops habroptilus). The cats mainly fed on the introduced species of the brown and black rat. Those species of rat have been held responsible for the extinction of several other species of birds in the same area.

Removing the cats in these places might lead to an increase in the rat population which in turn might lead to the extinction of the kakapo.

That's just an example because sometimes eradicating cats from an island can lead to a dramatic recovery in the population of certain vertebrate species. Bradshaw cites examples such as iguanas on Long Cay in the West Indies. Also, deer mice on Coronado Island in the Gulf of California.

Although, there is no doubt that the sheer number of feral cats in most places must have a significant impact on wildlife. The difficulty, as I see it, is quantifying that impact and the way that ornithologists and their organisations latch onto biased or estimated predation rates in rather poor studies to further their agenda which is to in effect kill large numbers of cats.