I am responding to an article that appeared to stray off your opinions page and landed in the Arts & Life section of your March 24 issue: Alex Nasarewsky's article criticizing the Blocks' study linking party affiliation with childhood personality traits ("Asinine, not academic"). Nasarewsky claimed that the research was "clearly advancing an agenda." Block's agenda was nothing but advancing science. If the author had bothered to read Block's actual article and not simply the Toronto Star's news McNuggets, he would have read that the study was simply an aside from a larger study with the 100 subjects.
He also would have realized that Block does not suggest that his study describes the nation well. If any group is clearly advancing an agenda, it is groups that assume that the study suggests that or try to discredit scientific research because they don't like the findings. One would find a great more objectivity (and value) in the annals of an issue of "Nature" than in a newspaper column written by an Arts & Life editor.
