The purpose of reproducibility is to be able to properly analyze the quality and accuracy of a study. The purpose is to support critical thinking and objective facts.

However, this paper isn't a study. It's just an essay. And while, yes, the paper in question does highlight numerous issues in reasonable and rational ways, it also uses this as the breakout quote on page 36:

> Scientists readily accept results that confirm liberal political arguments, and frequently reject contrary results out of hand.

Now, there's a couple problems with this statement. The most obvious is that it implies blame on liberal politics. On the same page they detail that the percentage of self-identified liberal psychologists at a conference (~800 of 1,000) wildly outnumbers the number of self-identified conservative psychologists at the same conference (3 of 1,000). Well, this conference is the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, which is based in southern California. Would that bias attendance? However, even if we assume that distribution is correct, the quoted statement doesn't say anything about the conservative scientists. Would it also be correct that conservative scientists readily accept results that confirm their political arguments? We don't know. Maybe it would be more correct to say this:

> Scientists readily accept results that confirm pre-existing personal political arguments, and frequently reject contrary results out of hand.

Instead, this paper chooses to imply that scientists who are more liberal are somehow inherently more biased. If we assert that good scientists are those who don't allow political arguments to influence their acceptance of their results, then the natural conclusion to draw from that is that being liberal is incompatible with being a good scientist.

Don't get me wrong, this paper makes a lot of legitimately good points with good examples, but the whole section on groupthink comes across a little bit biased itself. However, it's existence means I can't shake the feeling that maybe I'm missing something.

So having show that there's a reproducibility problem, the paper concludes. Then very end of the paper, the afterword lists these points introduced seemingly out of the blue:

> Symptoms of Pathological Science:

> 1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.

> 2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.

> 3. Claims of great accuracy.

> 4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience.

> 5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.

> 6. Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion.

These are from Irving Langmuir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Langmuir) and his criticisms on research conducted with unconscious biases or subjective elements. He meant it as a criticism of research like cold fusion.

Now, there's not any real one-for-one discussion of these items or how they relate to what came before. They're just presented basically as-is as the final portion of the essay with few notes that they correlate to what came before. You'll notice, however, they they all call into question the credibility of the scientist as well as the credibility of the scientific community, and not the quality of their research or data.

However, let's say you're politically conservative, and you're reading this essay. Maybe you don't believe in climate change. You get to the end of this paper, and it tells you that in spite of the claims of accuracy of the data, in spite of the consensus of the community, in spite of all the evidence, if it's contrary to [your] experience or if the defenses to criticism feel invented on the spot or if you keep hearing claims that support is waning, and apparently especially if it's liberal, then you've found a legitimate case of bad science.

I don't think that's necessarily the point they're trying to make here, but I really don't like the way this afterword is presented. It's introducing new concepts and arguments and then handwaves away having to justify them or explain their relevance.