Tyler Cowen links without comment today to a paper that estimates whether immigration research is tainted by bias:
Our analysis exploits a rare opportunity where 158 researchers working independently in 71 research teams participated in an experiment. After being surveyed about their position on immigration policy, they used the same data to answer the same well-defined empirical question: Does immigration affect the level of public support for social welfare programs?... We find that research teams composed of pro-immigration researchers estimated more positive impacts of immigration on public support for social programs, while anti-immigration research teams reported more negative estimates.
Technically this description is true. But check out the amount of bias:
It's tiny! There are some smallish bumps in the tails, but overall the teams produced very similar results regardless of whether their personal sentiments were pro, anti, or neutral. This should increase our confidence in the honesty of immigration research.
Now, for what it's worth, I'm skeptical that this paper represents the real world very well. One of the co-authors, for example, is George Borjas, and I'm not sure I've ever seen his name on a paper that has anything good to say about immigration. Likewise, more lefty economists almost always conclude that immigration is beneficial in one way or another. They might all come to similar conclusions in an artificial environment where they know they're being graded, but real immigration research has always seemed considerably more biased to me.
Why ask that particular question, which is not even the question the public especially cares about.
Why not ask, eg Do immigrants commit more crimes? Or cost the state more? (Answer in Denmark is clearly a strong yes. US I don't know.)
Or Whether substantial immigration causes problems in schools (discipline, time spent redoing basics, cost)? Or whether immigration AS CURRENTLY PERFORMED BY THE WEST (so no melting pot) results in lack of assimilation and problems downstream.
etc etc etc
Seems like the whole thing was a fake, designed to get the answer they wanted.
+1
Yeah, that isn't where you look for bias to the detriment of one's finding. It even comes after.
No doubt, though, that people everywhere are prone to insist that whatever they believe personally is good or right is also the way to win over Americans. The post-election commentary is full of this.
OR, you're not being objective. But we already knew that.
You're right about Borjas -- he's almost never reported a positive effect from immigration (when, in fact, there are many). Some of the negative results he reports require a very tortured reading of the data (or restricted use of the data).
The results you report suggest very little bias indeed. To the extent it's there, it looks like the effect is much stronger for the restrictive, anti-immigrant teams. This is not at all apparent in the abstract of the paper.
Because a capitalistic society is not a zero-sum game.