Category: Research
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Invitation to Commit Scientific Fraud
I’m probably just naive and am definitely far too idealistic, but the email I just received crushed my spirit. I need to share it. Here’s the email with contact information removed but the website still intact so everyone can see who is doing this: Dear Professor, I’m XXXXX, a researcher at Well-online, the flagship editorial…
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Qualitative Analysis Using LLMs on a Local Machine
While most of my research is quantitatively oriented, I am a mixed-methods researcher and periodically use qualitative sociological methods for research projects (typically interviews). I have used a variety of software packages to analyze qualitative data over the years, from NVIVO to Taguette to an abandoned R package to just coding text in word processing…
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Sociologist: It’s called ‘culture war’ for a reason
On May 2nd, 2022, the Haven, Kansas city council voted to remove decals from police cars that said “In God We Trust.” They did so in a sensible effort to recognize the separation of church and state. Sixteen days later, after an intense backlash from conservative citizens in Haven, the city council reversed that decision.…
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Maybe religion isn’t dying, but it’s definitely not well
In their recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Byron R. Johnson and Jeff Levin, referring to a paper they recently published in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (IJRR), argue that religiosity is not declining in the US but rather, “Americans are becoming more religious, and religious institutions are thriving.” This claim is incredible in…
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A bridge too far: The failure to capture ‘spiritual fitness’ in the US military
After massive resources have been spent trying to assess spiritual fitness in the military, scholars now admit it is not a meaningful concept.
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Does religion really improve educational outcomes?
Horwitz makes the claim that religiosity is beneficial for working-class young men when it comes to their educational attainment. The claims in the article are clear illustrations of two logical fallacies – faulty generalization and cherry-picking.