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.

Scientists want frozen samples of animal species stored on the moon (infographic)

This is a cross-post. I think it is very interesting but I am quite scientific. One reason why it is interesting is because the scientists who dreamt up this plan are concerned about the vulnerability of a storage vault on the Earth because of global warming and nuclear war. 

And they are genuinely concerned about ensuring that the planet's precious animal species are preserved for future generations if everything goes pear shaped and the Earth collapses with the loss of all life or the majority of animal species. They see the real prospect of this.

There is already a plant species vault in Norway - the Svalbard seed vault. This stores seeds of vital crops. And there is the UK's Frozen Ark project which has stored more than 48,000 samples of genetic material from about 5,500 species of endangered animal. The problem as stated is that it could all be lost in a nuclear war or through catastrophic global warming.

Here is the infographic explaining the concept.

The report is called: Safeguarding Earth's biodiversity by creating a lunar biorepository. Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae058

Scientists want frozen samples of animal species stored on the moon by Michael Broad

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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.

Do you believe scientists who say that smelly clothes don't reassure domestic cats?

This is a cross post - click this for the earlier post. Three scientists conducted an experiment as to whether the scented i.e. unwashed clothes, of domestic cat human caregiver's provided what they describe as a "secure base effect" (SBE) for their cats. To cut out the technical language, they wanted to see whether cats obtained reassurance from the unwashed clothes of their owners when their owners were absent; away from the home or perhaps asleep at night. Are smelly clothes a substitute for the presence of cat owners in terms of reassuring the domestic cat companions?

Do you believe scientists who say that smelly clothes don't reassure domestic cats? Image in public domain.

I would expect that nearly all cat owners would say that they are at least a second-best substitute. Many cat owners place an unwashed item of clothing in a cat carrier to help to reassure their cat when they take them to a veterinarian for instance. Or they leave an item of clothing with their cat when they are boarded at a cattery when they are away on holiday.

And of course you see thousands of pictures on the Internet of cat sleeping on beds which contain copious amounts of body odour from their owner or domestic cats sleeping on their owner's favourite chair. Domestic cat sleep on the laps of owners because it is warmer and because it smells of their owner. The scientist will say that these are all anecdotal forms of evidence.

They wanted to address the issue through science and provide a scientific, objective answer as to whether smelly clothes reassure domestic cats. And they say that they DO NOT! This runs counter to conventional wisdom on cat caregiving.

ASSOCIATED PAGE: 14 links between stress in domestic cats and health implications

They conducted the experiment in what was a strange place for the cats. The cats would have been brought there in carriers. The room would have been quite stark I expect and there would have been other interfering aspects such as strange noises and strange people. I believe that when you place a domestic cat into an entirely new place which might be perceived as being hostile to them, you cannot expect them to behave normally. And if you can't expect them to behave normally you can't measure natural behaviours.

The researchers found that when cats were left in a room without their owner being present but with the benefit of smelly clothing from their owner they did not use those clothes to seek reassurance. When their owner was in the room with them their stress levels went down but the clothes did not reduce stress levels as judged through their behaviour when their owners left the room.

ASSOCIATED: Study says that cats are prone to separation anxiety in homes with two female residents

They concluded, firmly, that this was scientific evidence that cats don't obtain a "secure base effect" from scented objects belonging to their owner. I would argue, as mentioned, that the study is tainted by the abnormal behaviour of the cats brought about because they were out of their home range and placed in a strange place with can induce a mild sense of panic and anxiety which masks normal behaviours.

The use of scented clothes to help reduce a well-known condition called "separation anxiety" in felines appears to have been debunked by this study. You make up your own mind. I have made up mine as you can see. There is too much first hand experience to show that scented clothes are very important to domestic cat because the smell of objects is a vital part of their lives. The use their sense of smell as much as they use their eyesight. Humans rely far more heavily on their eyesight.

Note: The scientists are: Alexandra C.Behnkea, Kristyn R.Vital and Monique A.R.Udella who, I believe, conducted the study at Animal Health & Behavior, Distance Education, Unity College, 49 Farm View Drive, Suite 201, New Gloucester, ME 04260, USA.

Domestic cats don't evaluate people who interact with their owner unlike dogs

A study carried out by Japanese scientists at the Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Japan, in 2015 found that domestic dogs evaluated people who interact with their owner. If these third parties were not helpful towards their owner they treated them in a way which indicated that they felt the person was hostile or less than friendly. This indication came from the fact that the dogs were less willing to accept food from the person who had failed to help their owner when help was requested.

Dogs evaluate third parties and cats don't. Pic in public domain. Words added
by MikeB on PoC.

I DISCUSSED THE STUDY IN A DIFFERENT WAY IN ANOTHER ARTICLE. CLICK HERE TO READ IT IF YOU WISH.

In 2021, the same or similar team of scientists headed by the same scientist, Hitomi Chijiiwa, carried out the same test on domestic cats. In summary, they found that "cats might not possess the same social evaluation abilities as dogs". The cats did not react as dogs had to people who did not help their owner by refusing to take food from them.

I will explain the study again and further comment on it below. They say that humans evaluate other humans based upon their interactions between third parties. I interpret this as meaning that people can look at two other people interacting with each other and by those interactions they can assess the character and behavioural traits of those people.

Dogs were also able to assess in a less sophisticated way (in my view) the character traits and behaviour of third parties. For both the cat and dog experiments they used the same procedure. They had the cats watch their owner try and unsuccessfully open a transparent container to take out an object inside and request help from the person sitting nearby. This person was told to either help when requested or not help when requested.

There was a third person sitting nearby who they describe as "passive (neutral) person". This person sat on the other side of the owner under both circumstances i.e. when the other person helped and when they did not help.

After both interactions by the actor who helped and didn't help with the owner, the actor and the passive person offered a piece of food to the cat. The scientist wanted to record from which person the cat took the food. They carried out four trials and noticed that the cats "showed neither a preference for the helper nor avoidance of the non-helper".

On this basis, they considered that cats "might not possess the same social evaluation abilities as dogs" as mentioned above. They do suggest that 'further work on cats' social evaluation capacities needs to consider ecological validity, notably with regard to the species' sociality'.

My comments and thoughts

My comments: I'm not going to read the entire study but simply pass my comments on these findings as stated in the study abstract. You might like to comment yourself. I would really like that actually.

The argument is that dogs have been bred to work with and associate with people. This has occurred for perhaps up to 30,000 years. This is when dogs were first domesticated, it is believed. And dogs have often been working dogs. And in the dog-human relationship they work with people so there is this naturally close, working connection which has allowed the dog to read people and evaluate them.

Conversely, the domestic cat has been domesticated for about ten thousand years, it is believed. It may be longer, as much as fourteen thousand years but this is still work in progress. The cat's role is as a companion although initially at the point of domestication they were working cats rooting out rodents and keeping the population down on farms. However, for many thousands of years their role is to entertain and provide companionship.

Further, the domestic dog is essentially a pack animal because their wild origins are the grey wolf. Pack animals look after each other and communicate with each other. The domestic cat, in contrast is essentially a solitary creature, living and surviving alone. Although their evolution during domestication has resulted in them becoming more sociable. Notwithstanding that advance in sociability, they still lack the skills to read behaviour patterns and traits of humans when watching them interact with their owner.

Ultimately, it comes down to the length of domestication of cats and dogs and their role in the lives of humans. This background has created the differences in results from this study in my opinion. What do you think?

Details of the study:

Cats (Felis catus) Show no Avoidance of People who Behave Negatively to their Owner Hitomi Chijiiwa1, Saho Takagi1, Minori Arahori, James R. Anderson, Kazuo Fujita, & Hika Kuroshima. Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University 2 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Corresponding author (Email: chijiiwa.hitomi.5m@kyoto-u.ac.jp)

Published online: Animal Behavior and Cognition journal.

Covid-19: potential human-cat-human transmission chain

Research needs to be carried out to look at in detail the potential for a human-cat-human transmission chain with respect to Covid-19. This is because recent research studies published from Kansas State University has confirmed that domestic cats can be asymptomatic carriers of the virus. We actually know this already but as I understand that this is more recent research.

Cats and people wear facemasks in 1918 during Spanish Flu pandemic. Picture: Dan Eskenazi.

LINK TO STORY BEHIND IMAGE ABOVE.

The researchers say that Covid-19 is being transmitted, and can be transmitted, from human patients to cats both domestic and captive large cats such as lions and tigers. Because of the obvious close association between humans and companion cats there is a question to be answered about whether cats can transmit the disease to people. Logic dictates that it does happen. This is been a question, actually, for quite a long time and until now and even today nobody can answer that question with any conviction or in any detail.

Jürgen A. Richt, the Regents distinguished professor at Kansas State University in the College of Veterinary Medicine, said that, "This efficient transmission between domestic cats indicates a significant animal and public health need to investigate a potential human-cat-human transmission chain".

He is referring to the fact that their research indicates that cats transmit the disease between themselves through the nasal, oral and rectal cavities and this transmission can take place within two days.

Scientists Developing a Bad Reputation in their Relationship with Cats

Of course scientists are people and within a group of people you will find some who don't like nature, don't like wildlife and don't like cats.  Within the past week there has been a spate of stories about scientists and their relationship with domestic cats and the scientist does not come out of the stories in a good light.

Just yesterday there was a story of a talented and well-known scientist in the UK.  He developed new light equipment in order to treat cancers.  We are told that he "inadvertently" or carelessly killed a neighbour's cat.  He put poison down to get rid of the rats on his land in Cheshire.

He put down a mixture of bacon, tuna and slug pellets.  The trouble is almost any animal could eat this poisonous concoction so if he intended to target rats he did it very, very carelessly indeed.  It is difficult to believe that a pioneer in cancer research and invention was that careless.  It makes me think that he put the poison down deliberately, knowing that it might well kill animals other than rats.

His name is Colin Whitehurst (54).  His neighbour is David Furness (41).  David found his cat dying, foaming at the mouth having eaten Mr Whitehurst's poison.

What David says is important:

“The chap would openly say to me he didn't want any wildlife living in the area-but what I can't understand is why he bought a property with all that land."

Mr Whitehurst had a two acre parcel of land adjacent to his property and apparently put the poisonous mix on that.

Mr Whitehurst was prosecuted and taken to the criminal court where he admitted causing unnecessary suffering under the Animal Welfare Act 2006.  He was handed down a 12 month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £2493.03 in costs.  The magistrate said that he had a disregard for wildlife.  He certainly did.

I must also refer to an animal testing facility at London University in which the scientists conducted Frankenstein-like experiments on domestic cats, cracking open their brains and inserting electrodes. Also, opening up the spinal-cord and inserting electrodes in that as well.  All in the name of some sort of vague benefit to people.  We don't quite know what it was about.  It doesn't really matter because it is totally unacceptable.

These are scientists who are highly educated many to Ph.D. level.  They should know better.  They should have a high level of morality and ethics built into their work and their behaviour.

Then we have the New Zealand Ph.D. economist who wants to exterminate all cats on the islands.

There have been cases reported in the past of scientists demonstrating bias in their work.  This is in relationship to the impact of the domestic cat preying on native species.  There's no doubt in my mind that there are many scientists who dislike cats in the same way that there are many people who dislike cats.  However, fortunately there are probably many more people who love cats.