Science and Politics : Do People Support the Conduct and Dissemination of Politicized Research ?

Three studies investigated how ethical people believe it is to suppress politicized research findings and how strongly they support research on politicized topics. In general, participants reported that it is unethical to suppress research findings and that they support the conduct of politicized research, regardless of whether the findings or topics supported or opposed their views. Even so, liberals and conservatives reported that it is less unethical to withhold the publication of research findings that challenge vs. support their views and stronger support for research aligned with their ideology. Politically active participants were especially likely to demonstrate partisan support for science. Together, these findings suggest that although people explicitly endorse the conduct and dissemination of politicized research, their politics still influence their support for research consistent versus inconsistent with their views.

topics consistent with their political beliefs are more worthy of investigation than topics inconsistent with their views.
Although research on confirmation bias has consistently shown that people more readily accept ideologically congruent vs. incongruent evidence, it is unknown whether people believe researchers should only examine research topics consistent with their views and should refrain from publishing findings opposing their beliefs.Do people think only research topics congruent with their political ideology are important to study, or do they support the investigation of all topics, even when the research question challenges their ideological stance?If people are more likely to trust results from ideologically congruent than ideologically incongruent studies (Anglin, 2016;Ditto & Lopez, 1992;Ditto et al., 1998;MacCoun & Paletz, 2009;Munro, 2010;Munro & Ditto, 1997), they may favor investing resources in ideologically congruent research over ideologically incongruent research.From a Bayesian perspective (Fischhoff & Beyth-Marom, 1983;Koehler, 1993;MacCoun, 1998;Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), supporting the conduct of research consistent with one's prior views over research inconsistent with one's prior views may be defensible; though in an ideal world, people would support non-directional research, in which researchers attempt to falsify hypotheses (Popper, 1934) and test competing hypotheses, rather than a single directional hypothesis (Jussim, Crawford, Stevens, Anglin, & Duarte, 2016;Tetlock, 1994).However, even if doubting belief-incongruent findings can be justified, endorsing the suppression of such findings after they have already been obtained is more extreme, less justifiable, and threatening to the integrity of the scientific enterprise.Do people believe it is ethical to refrain from publishing results that oppose their views but believe it is unethical to withhold publication when the findings support their views?Or do people think it is unethical for researchers to refrain from publishing findings, regardless of the political implications of the results?The present research tested these questions by assessing liberals' and conservatives' (1) judgments of the ethicality of suppressing left and right-wing research findings and (2) support for the conduct of left and right-wing research.
By examining whether people uphold the advancement of knowledge or their political values when pitted against each other, this research has potential to advance theory and research in several domains, including motivated reasoning, political psychology, moral decision-making, public opinion, and science and politics.Furthermore, researchers have argued that resistance toward certain research findings and uncritical acceptance of others adversely affects decisions and practices in every sector of society, leading to ineffective laws, policies, educational programs, and medical treatments (Lilienfeld, 2012;Teo, 2012).Believing that particular topics should not be studied and that certain findings should not be published poses an even greater obstacle to the progress of science.Such beliefs may influence the topics that get studied and the results that get disseminated, limiting the scope of knowledge, biasing education and training, reducing funding and support for particular research topics, and further compromising the development of effective applications in the public domain.Moreover, failing to support diversity of perspectives and ideas may foster negative attitudes toward science among particular individuals and groups, discouraging them from pursuing scientific study and reducing trust in science.

Motivated Reasoning, Science, and Politics
Research from various literatures (e.g., motivated cognition, moral psychology, political psychology) has repeatedly shown that liberals' and conservatives' judgments are influenced by their value motivations to similar degrees (e.g., Crawford, 2012;Ditto et al., 2016;Kahan, Peters, Dawson, & Slovic, 2013;Lord et al., 1979;Taber & Lodge, 2006;Uhlmann, Pizarro, Tannenbaum, & Ditto, 2009).Across party lines, affect often guides reasoning in moral domains, such that people automatically judge information based on whether it is congruent with their morals and values and then seek to justify their affective response with objective arguments and facts (Haidt, 2001;Munro & Ditto, 1997).Based on prior studies demonstrating similar levels of motivated reasoning bias among liberals and conservatives, we expected that conservatives would endorse the ethicality of suppressing left over rightwing research to a similar extent as liberals endorse the ethicality of suppressing right over left-wing research, and conservatives would support right-wing over left-wing research to a similar extent as liberals support left over right-wing research.
Although studies in the motivated reasoning literature repeatedly demonstrate symmetric bias in liberals' and conservatives' evaluation of evidence (Ditto et al., 2016), liberals and conservatives have different attitudes toward and experiences with science that may affect whether they both exhibit partisan support for the conduct and dissemination of politicized research.For example, research has shown that conservatives distrust science more than liberals (Gauchat, 2012;YouGov, 2013), possibly because scientists are overwhelmingly liberal (Gross & Simmons, 2007;Klein & Stern, 2009), and in some fields, biased against conservative ideas (Inbar & Lammers, 2012;Redding, 2013) in favor of liberal narratives (Duarte et al., 2015).Indeed, conservatives are more likely than liberals to worry that results from scientific studies are influenced by researchers' political views (YouGov, 2013).Conservatives attribute liberal findings to the researcher's liberalism, whereas liberals and conservatives do not always attribute conservative findings to the researcher's conservatism (MacCoun & Paletz, 2009).Because conservatives distrust science more than liberals, conservatives may believe it is more ethical to suppress left than right-wing research and favor the conduct of right over left-wing research, whereas liberals believe it is equally unethical to suppress left and right-wing research and support the conduct of left and right-wing research equally.

Alternatively, bias
i may be observed among liberals but not conservatives.Because scientists are overwhelmingly liberal, they disproportionately study topics with liberal themes (Jussim et al., 2015;Redding, 2001).Not only is science biased toward the left, but increasing evidence supports the existence of a hostile environment toward conservatives in academia.Many non-liberal researchers have reported experiences of discrimination against their ideas from their liberal colleagues (Stevens et al., 2017), and researchers in some fields have admitted that they would discriminate against conservatives and conservative ideas when making publication, grant, hiring, and symposia decisions (Inbar & Lammers, 2012).Because liberal laypeople may also believe that science should continue to operate as a liberal enterprise, liberals may believe it is more ethical to suppress right than left-wing findings and support the conduct of left over right-wing research, whereas conservatives believe it is equally unethical to suppress left and right-wing research and support the conduct of left and right-wing research equally.
At the same time, results may partially support both the symmetric bias hypotheses and either the right or leftwing bias hypotheses.For example, both liberals and conservatives may show partisan endorsement of research suppression and partisan support for science, but conservatives may exhibit more partisan bias than liberals because of their lower support for science.Alternatively, both liberals' and conservatives' judgments may be biased by their political views, but liberals may show more partisan bias because they are motivated to maintain science as a liberal enterprise.
Finally, it was also possible that the present research would find no evidence of ideological bias.Liberals and conservatives value fairness equally (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009), and although people are motivated to defend their beliefs and values, judgment is not completely impaired by motives and goals.In fact, people are also motivated to be accurate (Hart et al., 2009), and many people recognize the complexities surrounding sociopolitical issues and the pros and cons of various political policies (Howard-Pitney, Borgida, & Omoto, 1986;Tetlock, 1986).
Moreover, participants in this research were explicitly asked whether they believe it is ethical for researchers to refrain from publishing politicized findings and how strongly they support research on various topics.When asked directly, participants may report that it is unethical to refrain from publishing results and support for all research topics, regardless of their true attitudes, as a result of social desirability biases (Paulhus, 1991).

Hypotheses Primary Alternative Hypotheses
Based on previous research demonstrating similar levels of motivated reasoning among liberals and conservatives, we expected to find evidence of symmetric bias in this research.We predicted that conservatives would more strongly endorse the ethicality of suppressing research favoring left than right-wing political goals to the same extent that liberals more strongly endorse the ethicality of suppressing research favoring right than left-wing goals (Hypothesis 1a).Likewise, we predicted that conservatives would support right over left-wing research to about the same extent that liberals support left over right-wing research (Hypothesis 1b).
In addition to testing for symmetric bias, we examined five plausible alternative hypotheses stemming from the other research and theory reviewed above.Because conservatives distrust science more than liberals (e.g., Gauchat, 2012), the right-wing bias hypothesis predicted that conservatives would more strongly endorse the ethicality of suppressing research favoring left than right-wing political goals, whereas liberals would be equally unwilling to endorse the ethicality of suppressing research favoring either left or right-wing goals (Hypothesis 2a).
A second right-wing bias hypothesis predicted that conservatives would support right over left-wing research, whereas liberals would support both types of research equally (Hypothesis 2b).
Because liberals may desire for science to continue to operate as a liberal enterprise (Inbar & Lammers, 2012;Redding, 2001) Lastly, the no ideological bias hypotheses predicted that liberals and conservatives would oppose suppressing research favoring left-wing goals to the same extent they oppose suppressing research favoring right-wing goals (Hypothesis 6a), and would support left-wing research to the same extent they support right-wing research (Hypothesis 6b).

Potential Moderators
Political activism -Some research suggests that individuals with greater knowledge and expertise on a topic are more susceptible to motivated reasoning biases (e.g., Kahan, 2013;Liu, 2016).Therefore, participants higher in political activism may show greater partisan endorsement of research suppression and greater partisan support for research than those lower in political activism.To test this prediction, we examined the possible moderating effect of political activism on ideology in predicting responses to the left and right-wing research suppression and support for science measures.
Right-wing authoritarianism -Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a construct correlated with but distinct from conservatism (Crowson, Thoma, & Hestevold, 2005).Research has shown that right-wing authoritarians readily submit to authority figures and tend to favor right-wing politics, particularly on sociocultural issues (Altemeyer, 1988(Altemeyer, , 2006;;Cornelis & Van Hiel, 2006;Duckitt, 2006).The research suppression questions in this study describe people in positions of power suppressing science to advance political goals on social issues.Therefore, right-wing authoritarians may endorse the ethicality of suppressing research findings, especially results advancing left-wing goals.In addition, because right-wing authoritarians favor right-wing politics, we expected them to support right over left-wing research.The present research tested these predictions.To explore possible differences in

Power
The symmetric, left-wing, and right-wing bias hypotheses were tested using mixed-model ANOVAs, comparing liberals' and conservatives' responses to the left and right-wing measures (i.e., a within-between subject interaction).
A total sample of N = 34 (liberals and conservatives) is necessary to detect medium size effects (f = .25)at 80% power, and N = 200 (liberals and conservatives) to detect small effects (f = .10)at 80% power.Given the unequal number of liberals and conservatives in the subsamples, Study 1 (n = 28 conservatives, n = 48 liberals) and Study 2 (n = 30 conservatives, n = 101 liberals) were underpowered to detect small effects.Study 3, however, was more adequately powered to detect small effects (with n = 73 conservatives and n = 297 liberals).The asymmetric bias hypotheses were tested using planned contrasts comparing the magnitude of the difference in liberals' and conservatives' responses to the left and right-wing measures.With unequal groups (i.e., a 3:1 ratio of liberals to conservatives), a total sample size of 170 is needed to detect medium size effects at 80% power, and 1050 is needed to detect small effects.Therefore, all three studies were underpowered to detect small asymmetric bias effects. v

Materials
See the Appendix to view the research suppression and support for science measures.Participants rated all items on 7-point scales.For the research suppression measures, low scores represented believing that suppressing politicized findings is unethical and high scores represented believing research suppression is ethical.On the support for science measures, low scores represented no support for the research topic and high scores indicated strong support.

Left-Wing Research Suppression
We developed three items assessing endorsement of the ethicality of suppressing research findings favoring leftwing political goals (e.g., "A group of researchers hypothesize that racial differences in income can be attributed to factors other than racism.How ethical is it for them to refuse to publish results from their study because the findings suggest that racism explains racial differences in income?").The reliability of this measure was high (α's > .80across all three studies).

Right-Wing Research Suppression
Three items were also developed to assess endorsement of the ethicality of suppressing research findings favoring right-wing political goals (e.g., "A group of researchers hypothesize that gender differences in income can be attributed to sexism.How ethical is it for them to refuse to publish the results from their study because the findings suggest that gender differences in income do not result from sexism?").The reliability of this measure was high (α's > .77across all three studies).

Nonpartisan Research Suppression
An additional three items assessed general endorsement of the ethicality of suppressing politicized research findings (e.g., "How ethical is it for scientists to refuse to publish results from their research that are inconsistent with their political views?").These items hung together well (α's > .83across all three studies).

Support for Left and Right-Wing Research
Five items were developed to measure support for left-wing research (e.g., "How important is it for a scientific journal to publish a research article on the need for alternative energy sources?"; α's > .83across all three studies), and five items were developed to measure support for right-wing research (e.g., "How important is it for a scientific journal to publish a research article demonstrating that racial profiling strengthens homeland security?";α's > .82across all three studies).

Ideology Measure vi
Participants reported their political orientation and affiliation on 7-point scales (1 = Very conservative/Strong Republican, 7 = Very liberal/Strong Democrat).These items were averaged to create a single measure of ideology (α's > .81across all three studies).

Political Activism
Participants also rated their level of political activism on a scale from 1 (Not at all politically active) to 7 (Very politically active).

Procedure Study 1
This study was advertised as a survey on science and politics.Participants first completed the nonpartisan research suppression questions, presented in randomized order.Next, participants completed the left and right-wing research suppression items.These items were randomly presented rather than grouped by subscale.After the research suppression items, participants responded to the support for left and support for right-wing research questions.
These items were also randomly presented rather than grouped by measure.Last, participants provided their demographic information and indicated the extent to which they found the questions in the study difficult to understand and believed their responses reflected their honest attitudes and opinions.

Study 2
The following procedural changes were made in Study 2. First, we changed the order of the questionnaires to reduce social desirability concerns.The nonpartisan research suppression questions pit science against politics most blatantly.Answering the nonpartisan questions first may have increased participants' reluctance to endorse the subsequent left and right-wing research suppression items.Therefore, we presented the nonpartisan items after the left and right-wing research suppression questions to eliminate any tendency for responses to the nonpartisan questions to influence responses to the left and right-wing suppression items.
Second, we grouped the items from each measure together rather than randomizing the order of presenting left and right-wing items in order to increase ease of understanding, reduce satisficing, and improve response quality (Krosnick, 1999).The order of presenting the left and right-wing research suppression measures was counterbalanced, as was the order of presenting the support for left and support for right-wing research questions.
Third, we inserted an attention check midway through the study to permit us to determine whether there were differences in responses among participants who seemed to be paying more versus less attention to the questions.
Modeling Oppenheimer, Meyvis, and Davidenko (2009), participants were instructed to answer '4' to a series of three questions ("In what year were you born?", "What is the current year?", and "How tall are you?"), even though this response would not make sense in the context of the questions.Participants were explicitly told that we were checking to see if they were paying attention.Participants who answered 4 to these questions passed the attention check; those who provided actual responses did not.
Finally, in Study 2, we added two questions assessing general support for scientific research ("To what extent do you support scientific research?"and "How often do you trust the results of scientific studies?").Participants rated these items on 7-point scales, with higher numbers indicating greater general support for science (α = .74).

Study 3
Study 3 methods were identical to Study 2, except that we included a measure of RWA.Participants completed the RWA scale (Altemeyer, 2006), which contains 22 items assessing the degree to which individuals submit to authority figures, adhere to conventions, and seek to punish those who do not adhere to conventions (e.g., "The 'old-fashioned ways' and the 'old-fashioned values' still show the best way to live").Participants rated items on a 9-point scale ranging from -4 (very strongly disagree) to +4 (very strongly agree); higher numbers indicated stronger authoritarianism (α = .96).

Factor Structure Preliminary Analyses
Skewness and kurtosis estimates were nonsignificant for all indicators, except for one indicator in Study 3 with a kurtosis value > 2 (though < 3).Because this value was close to the cutoff, and because Kline (2011) does not recommend transforming variables with kurtosis values < 10, no transformations were applied.There were no missing values.

Measurement Model
The measurement model was assessed with confirmatory factor analysis using SPSS AMOS.(Hu & Bentler, 1999).CFI and TLI values range from 0 to 1, with values close to 1 demonstrating very good fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999).CMIN/df values < 2 represent good fit, and values between 2 and 3 represent moderate fit.Individual parameters were considered significant at α < .05.
Across all three studies, estimation of the full predicted model demonstrated good overall model fit.Although the model χ 2 was significant across all three studies (see Table 2), the values for the other fit indices indicated moderately good to very good model fit (across the three studies, RMSEA = .05-.07, CFI = .94-.96, TLI = .93-.95, CMIN/df = 1.51-2.52;see Table 2).See Table 3 for parameter estimates and the Supplementary Materials (Table S2) for factor loadings for each study.

Measurement Model Comparisons
Several additional models were examined as alternative models.and 4).   2 and 4).
Because the predicted five-factor model had good overall model fit across all three studies and better model fit than the alternative models, the five subscales were retained to test the alternative hypotheses.

Descriptive Statistics
Table 5 presents means and SDs for each variable, and Tables S3, S4, and S5 (Supplementary Materials) report correlations among all variables included in each study.Overall, participants reported that it is unethical to suppress (nonpartisan, left-wing, and right-wing) research findings and moderate support for left and right-wing research (see Table 5).vii

Attention Check
An attention check was included in Studies 2 and 3 to assess whether responses to the study measures differed between participants who appeared to be paying more versus less attention.In Study 2, 74% of the sample passed the attention check; in Study 3, 85% of the sample passed the attention check.When excluding participants who failed the attention check, one analysis dropped to nonsignificance (i.e., the analysis testing for differences in liberals' and conservatives' endorsement of left and right-wing research suppression in Study 2).However, the overall sample size was smaller in Study 2 than in Study 3, and a greater percentage of the sample failed the attention check in Study 2 than in Study 3. Therefore, excluding participants who failed the attention check more strongly reduced the power in Study 2 than in Study 3. In addition, participants who failed the attention check were more likely to identify as conservative than were those who passed the attention check in Study 2, t(198) = 2.03, p = .04,and thus excluding participants who failed the attention check may have also weakened the results of this study by reducing the number of conservatives in the sample (from 30 to 19).Participants who failed the attention check did not differ in ideology from those who passed the attention check in Study 3; in fact, the results appeared to be stronger when excluding participants who failed the attention check in this study.Because the analyses testing the alternative hypotheses produced the same overall pattern of results, regardless of whether participants who failed the attention check were included or not, all participants in each sample were included in the analyses.

Main Analyses Ideology and Left-Wing vs. Right-Wing Research Suppression
To test the hypotheses concerning differences between liberals' and conservatives' responses to the left and right-wing research suppression measures, we performed a series of mixed-model ANOVAs, with research suppression (left-wing vs. right-wing research suppression) viii as a within-subjects factor and ideology (left-leaning vs. right-leaning vs. moderate participants) ix as a between-subjects factor.
Study 1 -In Study 1, there was a main effect for ideology, F(2, 120) = 3.31, p = .04,η = .07.Moderates (M = 2.66, SD = 1.44) reported that it is less unethical to withhold the publication of left and right-wing research findings than did left-leaning participants (M = 2.01, SD = 1.14); however, moderates' and left-leaning participants' endorsement of research suppression did not significantly differ from right-leaning participants' overall endorsement (M = 2.10, SD = 1.32).The main effect for research suppression was nonsignificant, F(1, 120) = 1.87, p = .17,η = .03,but there was a research suppression x ideology interaction, F( 2 6 and Figure 1).Note.Scores on each measure ranged from 1 to 7. Those with ideology scores below 3.5 were identified as right-leaning, between 3.5 and  Right-Wing Authoritarianism -A second GLM was performed to examine overall differences in responses to the left and right-wing research suppression measures as a function of RWA, along with a possible interactive effect between RWA and ideology in predicting responses.In this analysis, ideology and RWA were included as between-subject factors and research suppression (right-wing vs. left-wing) was included as a within-subjects factor.This analysis only included Study 3 participants because RWA was only measured in Study 3.
As noted above, ideology interacted with research suppression, F(2, 395) = 4.31, p = .01,η = .06.RWA also interacted with research suppression, F(1, 395) = 4.12, p = .04,η = .04.To explicate the RWA x research suppression interaction, a difference score variable was computed, suppression difference, by subtracting left-wing research suppression from right-wing research suppression; positive scores on this variable indicated believing it is less unethical to suppress right-wing than left-wing research, negative scores indicated believing it is less unethical to suppress left-wing than right-wing research, and 0 represented equal endorsement of left and right-wing research suppression.RWA was weakly negatively correlated with suppression difference, r = -.17,p = .001,indicating that higher RWA was associated with believing it is less unethical to suppress left-wing than right-wing research.
Although RWA was associated with stronger endorsement of left vs. right-wing research suppression, RWA was positively correlated with both left, r = .42,p < .001,and right-wing suppression, r = .30,p < .001;individuals higher in right-wing authoritarianism reported that it is less unethical to suppress both left and right-wing research findings than did individuals lower in RWA.

Ideology and Support for Left-Wing vs. Support for Right-Wing Research
Mixed-model ANOVAs were also conducted to examine liberals' and conservatives' responses to the support for research measures.In these analyses, support for research (support for left vs. support for right-wing research) was included as a within-subjects factor and ideology (left-leaning vs. right-leaning vs. moderate participants) as a between-subjects factor.

Ideology and General Support for Science
In both studies that assessed general support for science, ideology was positively correlated with general support for science, r's > .40,p's < .001,indicating that left-leaning participants were more supportive of scientific research in general than were right-leaning participants.RWA was negatively related to general support for science, r = -.49,p < .001,indicating that higher RWA was associated with lower general support for science.

Correlations Among Measures
Surprisingly, across all three studies, nonpartisan, left-wing, and right-wing research suppression were all strongly positively correlated with each other, r's ≥ .69,p's < .001(see Tables S3-S5, Supplementary Materials).
These findings suggest that there are powerful individual differences in willingness to endorse research suppression, regardless of the political implications of the findings.In fact, considering the pattern of low means on the research suppression variables (see Table 5), it appears that most participants viewed withholding the publication of research findings as unethical.Similarly, in all three studies, support for right-wing research was positively correlated with support for left-wing research, r's > .44,p's < .001,suggesting that, to a large extent, participants' support for left and right-wing research co-occurred regardless of the political implications of the research.Across the three studies, the research suppression measures were negatively correlated with the support for research measures (see Tables S3-S5, Supplementary Materials), indicating that participants who opposed suppressing politicized findings more strongly supported (both left and right-wing) research.
The strong correlations among the primary measures indicate the presence of unmeasured variables accounting for such relationships.Education does not appear to explain these strong relationships (see Tables S3-S5, Supplementary Materials), but RWA was moderately correlated with all three research suppression measures, even more strongly than general support for science in Study 3 (see Table S5, Supplementary Materials).For further discussion of the relationships among the study measures and other demographic variables measured in this research, see the Supplementary Materials.

Endorsement of the Advancement of Scientific Knowledge, Irrespective of the Outcome
The present research investigated how strongly people endorse withholding the publication of research findings and support the conduct of research consistent and inconsistent with their political views.Across three studies, participants generally believed that it is unethical to suppress politicized research findings.Endorsing the (un)ethicality of suppressing left-wing research was more strongly correlated with endorsing the (un)ethicality of suppressing right-wing research than with political ideology.That is, participants' self-reported beliefs about how ethical it is to suppress politicized research findings influenced their responses to a greater extent than did political biases.Similarly, participants' support for left-wing research was strongly correlated with their support for rightwing research; those who reported stronger support for research on left-wing topics also reported stronger support for research on right-wing topics.In other words, participants tended to support the conduct and dissemination of politicized research, irrespective of the outcome.In addition, participants who more strongly opposed the suppression of politicized findings more strongly supported the conduct of politicized research.

Symmetric Political Bias
Although the results suggest that people support the conduct and dissemination of politicized research, irrespective of the outcome, they also provide support for the symmetric bias hypotheses.Overall, liberals and conservatives reported that it is less unethical to suppress research findings that oppose vs. support their views and partisan support for research on topics consistent with their beliefs (see Table 6).Tetlock (1986) has argued that in tradeoff situations, the relative importance of an individual's conflicting values determines which value he or she will sacrifice.Our results suggest that, explicitly, people generally uphold the advancement of scientific knowledge and objectivity over political motives and goals, though their values do influence the extent to which they oppose suppressing research findings for politics.
Drawing together multiple areas of research, our findings support previous research indicating that liberals and conservatives value fairness equally (Graham et al., 2009), but that their moral judgments are influenced by their political motivations, such that both groups display similar levels of ideological bias in their reasoning (Crawford, 2012;Kahan et al., 2013;Lord et al., 1979;Taber & Lodge, 2006;Uhlmann et al., 2009).Furthermore, previous research has shown that individuals' values bias their evaluation of research, such that people find research supporting their beliefs more convincing than research challenging their views (see Kunda, 1990, for a review).
Our findings suggest that people's values not only bias their evaluation of research but also influence the research they believe is important to conduct and disseminate.Politically active participants showed greater partisan support for science than less politically active participants, suggesting that politically active individuals may weigh the importance of advancing political goals relative to advancing science differently than less politically active individuals.

Moderates' Endorsement of Politicized Research Suppression
Although the main predictions in this research pertained to liberals and conservatives, an interesting pattern of results was observed among moderates.Moderates reported that it is equally unethical to suppress left-wing and right-wing research, but they believed it is less unethical to suppress politicized research findings overall than did liberals and conservatives.Participants classified as moderate likely included individuals with a range of political views, as research suggests that moderates vary in their views on social and economic issues and their degree of partisanship and engagement (Hawkins & Nosek, 2012;Klar, 2014aKlar, , 2014b)).Moderates in this research were significantly less politically active (M = 3.09, SD = 1.63) than left (M = 3.81, SD = 1.67) and right-leaning (M = 3.92, SD = 1.77) participants, F(2, 715) = 15.47,p < .001.Moderate participants may have been especially likely to believe that politicized findings are distorted by researchers' views, and that disseminating such findings will only increase political polarization and conflict, rather than advance scientific knowledge.

Conservatism and Support for Science
Although liberals and conservatives demonstrated similar levels of partisan endorsement of research suppression and partisan support for research, consistent with public opinion polls (e.g., Gauchat, 2012), conservatives in this research reported lower overall support for science than did liberals.Future research is necessary to determine whether conservatives are less supportive than liberals of scientific research because there is something about a conservative ideology that conflicts with the philosophy of science, because conservatives see scientists as liberals with liberal agendas, or because some areas of science have a history of favoring liberal questions

Frequency
The ideology variable was created by averaging participants' self-reported political orientation (1 = Very conservative, 7 = Very liberal) and political affiliation (1 = Strong Republican, 7 = Strong Democrat) scores.Those with ideology scores below 3.5 were identified as right-leaning, between 3.5 and 4.5 as moderate, and above 4.5 as left-leaning.
First, a three-factor model was examined by specifying all research suppression items on a single factor and the support for left-wing research and support for right-wing research items on separate factors.Across the three studies, this three-factor model fit the data poorly (χ 2 's > 558.18,RMSEA = .15-.17, CFI = .57-.64, TLI = .50-.64, CMIN/df = 3.75-12.26;see Table 2).Chisquare difference tests indicated superior fit of the predicted model across the studies (see Table 4 ).To provide a more direct test of whether the left, right, and nonpartisan research suppression items were best specified on Science and Politics 152 a single factor or separate factors, a three-factor model including only the suppression factors was compared to a single factor model with all research suppression items specified to load on a single factor (the support for left and right-wing research items were not included in this model).The partial predicted three-factor suppression model had superior fit to the partial alternative single factor suppression model in all three studies (see Tables 2 develop items assessing how ethical people believe it is to suppress politicized research and their support for research on politicized topics.Although we defined research suppression and support for research as different constructs, it is possible that the right-wing research suppression items hung together with the support for left-wing research items and the left-wing research suppression items hung together with the support for rightwing research items.To test whether the data supported the consideration of the left and right-wing research suppression and support for research items as separate constructs, we compared a four-factor model specifying the left and right-wing research suppression and support for research items on separate factors to a two-factor model in which we specified the right-wing research suppression and support for left-wing research items on one factor and the left-wing research suppression items and support for right-wing research items on another factor (the nonpartisan research suppression items were not included in this model).The partial predicted four-factor model model had superior fit to the partial alternative two-factor model in all three studies (see Tables , 120) = 4.43, p = .01,η = .22.Consistent with the first left-wing bias hypothesis (Hypothesis 3a), whereas there was no difference in right-leaning participants' endorsement of left-wing (M = 2.08, SD = 1.42) and right-wing research suppression (M = 2.12, SD = 1.33), t(27) = 0.25, p = .81,d = 0.05, left-leaning participants reported that it is less unethical to suppress right-wing (M = 2.18, SD = 1.33) than left-wing findings (M = 1.83,SD = 1.08), t(47) = 2.92, p = .005,d = 0.44.There was no significant difference in moderates' endorsement of left (M = 2.71, SD = 1.49) and right-wing research suppression (M = 2.61, SD = 1.46), t(46) = -1.06,p = .29,d = 0.16 (see Table

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Endorsement of withholding the publication of research findings as a function of research suppression (left-wing research suppression vs. right-wing research suppression) and ideology (left-leaning vs. right-leaning vs. moderate participants).Higher values represent stronger endorsement of withholding the publication of research findings.Error bars denote one standard error above and below the mean.

4. 5 Study 2 -
as moderate, and above 4.5 as left-leaning.Higher scores on the nonpartisan, left-wing, and right-wing research suppression measures indicate stronger endorsement of the ethicality of suppressing research findings to advance political goals.Higher scores on support for leftwing research, support for right-wing research, and general support for science represent greater support for research.Standard deviations are presented in parentheses.The aggregate scores represent mean scores on the research suppression and support for research measures across the three studies.Aggregate scores for general support for science represent mean scores across Studies 2 and 3. Effect size estimates (Cohen's d) represent the strength of the difference between scores on the left and right-wing measures for left-leaning, moderate, and rightleaning participants.a Subscripts indicate which pairwise mean comparisons (between the left and right-wing measures) statistically differed (i.e., vertical comparisons, conducted separately for left-leaning, moderate, and right-leaning participants).b Subscripts indicate which means statistically differed among left-leaning, moderate, and right-leaning participants (i.e., horizontal comparisons).In Study 2, the main effects for ideology, F(2, 197) = 1.32, p = .27,η = .11,and research suppression, F(1, 197) = .01,p = .94,η = .00,were nonsignificant, but the interaction was significant, F(2, 197) = 3.86, p = .02,η = .06.In partial support of the first symmetric bias hypothesis (Hypothesis 1a), left-leaning participants reported that it is less unethical to suppress right-wing (M = 2.60, SD = 1.35) vs. left-wing findings (M = 2.39, SD = 1.30), t(100) = 2.38, p = .02,d = 0.24, whereas right-leaning participants tended to report that it is less unethical to suppress left-wing (M = 2.80, SD = 1.63) vs. right-wing findings (M = 2.49, SD = 1.43), t(29) = -1.66,p = .11,d = 0.31.There was no significant difference in moderates' endorsement of left-wing (M = 2.78, SD = 1.42) and rightwing research suppression (M = 2.90, SD = 1.57), t(68) = 1.14, p = .26,d = 0.14.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Aggregate scores on the research suppression and support for science measures across the three studies as a function of measure type (left vs. right-wing) and ideology (left-leaning vs. right-leaning vs. moderate participants).Error bars denote one standard error above and below the mean.
). Moderates did not differ in their support for left (M = 4.91, SD = 1.27) and right-wing research (M = 4.87, SD = 1.22), t(46) = 0.31, p = .76,d = 0.05.Although the ANOVA revealed partisan support for research among both left and right-leaning participants, one group may have exhibited more partisan support for research than the other.The asymmetric bias hypotheses were tested using the linear contrast [Left-leaning participants' support for left-wing research -Left-leaning participants' support for right-wing research) -(Right-leaning participants' support for right-wing research -Rightleaning participants' support for left-wing research)].This contrast was nonsignificant, F(1, 75) = 0.10, ns.Leftleaning (5.35 -4.78 = 0.57) and right-leaning (4.94 -4.31 = 0.63) participants did not significantly differ in the extent to which they favored research supporting their politics.Overall, therefore, Study 1 demonstrated symmetric partisan support for research.

Figure 3 .Study 3 -
Figure 3. Support for research as a function of support for research measure (support for left-wing research vs. support for right-wing research) and ideology (left-leaning vs. right-leaning vs. moderate participants).Higher values represent stronger support for research.Error bars denote one standard error above and below the mean.
for right-wing research from support for left-wing research; positive scores on this variable indicated greater support for left-wing than right-wing research, negative scores indicated greater support for right-wing than left-wing research, and 0 represented equal support for left and right-wing research.Correlations were then examined between political activism and support difference for left-leaning, moderate, and right-leaning participants.Political activism was negatively associated with support difference for right-leaning participants, r(131) = -.19,p = .03,positively associated with support difference for left-leaning participants, r(368) = .14,p = .007,and unrelated to support difference for moderates, r(219) = -.05,p = .44.Consistent with research suggesting that individuals with greater knowledge and expertise are more susceptible to motivated reasoning, among right-leaning participants, greater political activism was associated with stronger support for right than left-wing research, and among left-leaning participants, greater political activism was associated with stronger support for left than right-wing research.RWA -A GLM was performed to examine overall differences in responses to the support for left and right-wing measures as a function of RWA, along with the possible interactive effect between RWA and ideology in predicting responses.In this analysis, ideology and RWA were included as between-subject factors and support for research (right-wing vs. left-wing) was included as a within-subjects factor.This analysis only included Study 3 participants because RWA was only measured in Study 3. As noted above, ideology interacted with support for science, F(2, 395) = 8.07, p < .001,η = .08.RWA also interacted with support for science, F(1, 395) = 42.81,p < .001,η = .14.To explicate the interaction, the correlation between RWA and support difference (support for left-wing research -support for right-wing research) was computed.RWA was strongly negatively correlated with support difference, r = -.51,p = .001;higher RWA was associated with stronger support for right over left-wing research.(The simple correlations between RWA and support for left-wing research, r = -.49,p < .001,and RWA and support for right-wing research, r = .00,indicate that RWA was associated with lower support for left-wing research but was unrelated to support for right-wing research; see Tables , the left-wing bias hypothesis predicted that liberals would more strongly endorse the ethicality

Table 1
Science and Politics 150 research suppression, support for left-wing research, and support for right-wing research), which were allowed to correlate in the model.See the Appendix to view the indicators specified on each factor.CFI, TLI, and CMIN/df) were examined to evaluate the goodness of fit of the measurement model.A nonsignificant χ 2 indicates good fit.RMSEA values ≤ .05indicate good fit, and values between .06 and .08indicate moderate fit Five factors were specified on the predicted model (left-wing research suppression, right-wing research suppression, non-partisan

Table 3
Parameter Estimates for Full Predicted Five-Factor Model

Table 4
Nested Model Comparisons

Table 5
Means and Standard Deviations for Measures

Table 6
Mean Scores on Measures forLeft-Leaning, Moderate, and Right-Leaning Participants