Andrea Kuszewski is not a fan of a critique of some concepts in Chris Mooney's latest book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality.

Give it a read. Once she gets rolling, her defense of psychology is pretty good, the piece just gets a little tangential because she seems more interested in defending a friend (and slamming the authors of the piece she does not like) than addressing the science issues, but some of her arguments have merit. I'll try and stay more on topic and address a few points I don't agree with but you can give it a look and decide for yourself.

From the looks of things, it appears to be conservative journalists.

Being an election year, heated debates and dramatic name-calling are to be expected on both sides of the political fence. However, two political writers, Hank Campbell and Alex Berezow, have sunk to a new low in their recent article

Oh, looky. One of the authors being slammed is me.

For starters, while I am conservative (for California, anyway) on money I am liberal or libertarian on social issues. I am not and have never claimed to be a journalist - I have never once been paid to do journalism, I am a member of no journalist organizations (because you have to be a journalist to get in them) and I can't get journalist access from press release services because I am not a journalist. Alex does have a lot of mainstream media credits to his name, though he is an editor by trade, so perhaps journalist applies to him. I am, of course, an outsider who created Science 2.0 and a blogger but I can't be considered a conservative science blogger, since few of my articles are on politics and even those are as often as not slamming conservatives and Republicans.  But if your prism is left, the middle looks right, I certainly get that. John Tierney writes for the New York Times and has slammed both sides enough he is considered conservative in a 'you are with us or against us' science world.  I do track audience sentiment and 52% of the audience has called me an oil-guzzling neo-con shill for the right while 48% call me a commie fag junkie for the left.  Andi may feel like co-authoring that article puts me in the former but she hasn't read 2,000 of my articles so we have to give her a break there.  Generally, being criticized by both sides makes me feel like I am right where I need to be and no 'conservative journalist' argued for raising the minimum wage, increasing science funding and nationalizing American health care completely but I did.

So, on that part no harm done, people write for the audience that will be reading it and readers of that site expect 'conservative' to be used as an insult. I have never once used 'liberal' as a slam but I do go after progressives because they are, basically, anti-science kooks. Liberals, however, are generally not.

But sunk to a new low?  What is the old low?  I did write one other piece debunking using social psychology surveys of drunk college students but that was hardly low. It was shoddy science, plain and simple.  I have been at the front of the line cheering on social psychologists who want to make the field more rigorous scientifically. It needs it but I am not the one saying it the most. Psychology legend Paul Ekman said at the Being Human conference, "We basically have a science of undergraduates" - and he is right.  Surveying college students is not going to lead to a meaningful theory and that is what is required to be rigorous science. Ekman is just old enough and his legacy is secure enough he can lay it out there and he doesn't think his own area is great now but I think it will get better; young researchers are getting charlatans like Diederik Stapel thrown out of the field and that is a good thing.

Prof. Massimo Pigliucci is as qualified as it gets to discuss science and cultural issues and wrote of the research Chris took used, "the history of this type of research is fraught with sloppy experiments and hasty interpretations on the part of scientists themselves, and has the potential to lead to disastrous social attitudes and policies" and then discusses eugenics - so perhaps he has sunk to a new low as well.  As you'll see, every scientist discussing this has apparently 'sunk to a new low' because they all say the same thing.

Berezow and Campbell claim that Mooney is ‘not a scientist’ and therefore unqualified to have a valid opinion on this topic. 

I agree with her here, that was not a good argument to use just because other scientists do it all of the time about him.  He can have any opinion he wants, he is a talented writer and we need those.  If every science journalist were required to have a PhD, we would have a lot of terrible writing.  I'm not a scientist and have never been one so it would be silly for me to contend that anyone else is unqualified just because they do not have a degree in biology. Biology scares me because it's difficult - I have never written a piece on biology that I did not run by a biologist first because I basically do not feel like I am qualified.  If Mooney does feel qualified, more power to him.

But that lack of qualification is the attack a lot of actual scientists use against Mooney.  They say he doesn't know what he is talking about.  It's odd to be writing about an article Andi wrote about an article Alex wrote about a book Chris wrote, and I dislike making pieces about individuals rather than issues, but since I am lumped into some really personal attacks, I guess I can itemize just a few of the people claiming Mooney is not qualified. Larry Moran wrote, "He's a supporter of evolution but he's only interested in American politics—he doesn't actually understand evolution." Jerry Coyne wrote, "This is all typical Mooney-ism, where he, like Elaine Ecklund, draws unwarranted conclusions from scientific data. It’s opinion perfumed with the odor of science without that science really supporting it." Pigliucci above had criticisms too, but you get the point.

There is an overwhelming body of evidence to support that there indeed are some differences between the two parties–completely without bias–yet for some reason, many conservatives vehemently reject this scientific data and take it as a personal insult. People like Berezow and Campbell are only making things worse, showing their absolute lack of journalistic integrity by purposely stirring the hornet’s nest with huge exaggerations and outright falsehoods, just to drum up a little publicity of their own. They come marching with pitchforks and torches in a Nazi-esque hysteria, screaming about group extermination, trying to convince the public that liberals have some secret plan to create a uber-race of political Aryans.

I don't know what any of this is about.  For some reason it was bad to invoke eugenics - the last time progressives tried to science up their political beliefs and the exact same complaint every scientist had about his claims - but it is okay to call me a Nazi?  I had a co-author who wrote the bulk of that piece.  Here is hoping she did too.

Which I find ironic, considering the guys from Real Clear Politics are struggling to comprehend it.

I am not sure I understand that sentence. Does she literally mean that people at RealClearPolitics are trying to comprehend it, or is she saying that because Alex is an editor at RealClearScience, the whole company (and presumably Forbes and their majority ownership) is trying to comprehend it? Obviously I have no relationship with RealClearPolitics so she may have been slamming us both in the interests of fairness. It reads strangely, especially coming from someone who knows the history of Science 2.0 pretty well by now. 

While claiming he himself only wrote a paragraph or two of the article in question (perhaps even he knew it was overstepping bounds?)

This is an odd thing for a psychologist to write.  What if I wrote that she 'claims' to be a psychologist? Isn't that vaguely insulting?  I know exactly how much of it I wrote so that is unnecessarily emotional verbage; why imply I lie about not making a meaningful contribution?  Don't most people do just the opposite and exaggerate their input? But she is calling me a liar and then says  "perhaps even he knew it was overstepping bounds?" - well, I wouldn't have written it at all, but not for the reasons she thinks.  My comment to Alex was that scientists have already beaten him to death, nothing else needs to be said.  To me, the entire thesis was long ago shown to be irrelevant scientifically. On mentioning that when progressives talk about their politics and biology, it has gotten weird before (eugenics again)

Throwing around that kind of loaded term along with the mention of Kanazawa’s famously bigoted study (which is totally irrelevant here and has nothing to do with Mooney nor his book) is just their way of taking cheap shots at him because they don’t like his politics.

Okay, that bit about Kanazawa I did write.  He is a reference in Mooney's book and has made the claim that liberal brains are different. What's the complaint? My dismissal of him was derived from Andi's article debunking Kanazawa.  Why was it a cheap shot?  Kanazawa also came up with the liberals drink more alcohol 'study', which was the other time I discussed Mooney's book.  Maybe she feels like discussing his book twice was too much. I agree completely. Now I am discussing it a third and I basically feel like I want this 45 minutes of my life back.

This part is good stuff:  

Here’s a question to consider: Why is the idea of psychological differences between liberals and conservatives so distasteful? We readily accept that other groups of people have different thinking and processing styles, so why the resistance to political party differences?

We've all wondered about that.  If you talk to truly political people, they fundamentally feel like there is a clear difference psychologically but they don't find that idea distasteful, they find the opposing psychology distasteful.   But she is contending he is not claiming a biological difference and then she is dismissing concerns about obvious psychological differences as 'distasteful' to people. So why did he claim he was in Huffington Post, writing "And maybe we can look to science itself — albeit, ironically, a body of science whose fundamental premise (the theory of evolution) most Republicans deny – to help understand why it is that they view the world so differently."

I can find a neural correlate for 100% of human behavior so if the topic were truly examining differences in people, it wouldn't have had 'Republicans' in the title. She says he is not writing about biological differences and he says he is.  I guess we can believe him, since he simply wrote the entire book.

Andi levels the guns on me again, as if calling me a conservative and a Nazi didn't make the point for the ClimateProgress audience that you'd better not criticize a writer with the proper voting record:

I find it troubling that someone who runs a science communication blogging network is so quick to mock real attempts at improving science communication by utilizing psychology and neuroscience.

...which sounds like the book was written to improve science communication. It most certainly was not.  I get that titles of books need to be a little bombastic but calling something The Republican Brain is not an effort to increase science communication.  It is an effort to sell books to Democrats who want to science-y up their confirmation bias.  I hope it succeeded.

In closing, I have a message for Berezow and Campbell, and any other conservative political writers who fear this discussion: Since there is clearly a lack of understanding here that is causing unnecessary tension, I will be happy to answer any specific questions or concerns you have. This is an important conversation to have, and one that is critical to get right and not distort for personal gain. So please, bring it on. I’m ready and waiting…

Obviously, I don't fear the discussion, since I am writing about it again, despite having little interest in it.  But why didn't Chris write this himself?

I fail to see how calling someone a Nazi is promoting 'understanding', which shows how little journalistic sense I have.