"Academics Spent Years Lending Their Institutional Credibility to Various Political Projects" ⁠97%

By Eugene Volokh⁠7%

7/19/2026, 8:42:57 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 26 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Biased Writer Voice, and False Dilemma, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 51.3% saturation with 99 hits. Analysis detected 921 faulty-reasoning hits from 193 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 95% and a BS Rank of ⁠97% (724 of 21,886 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 96.70% of the article peer group.

Now they are reputationally bankrupt. 
If they don't repair the damage, and convince people to keep writing the checks, many institutions will eventually be financially bankrupt as well. 
Wise words from Megan McArdle (Washington Post). 
A bit more from the same column: 
Academics need to sell the public on the value of their project. 
They must convince people that the radical pronouncements of the Great Awokening were a terrible mistake, now corrected, and that they are pursuing truth, not political agendas. 
Many people in academia do understand this, including the administrators who commissioned {the "Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences," commissioned by Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. 
Louis}. 
But many others are still clueless. 
Even if they grasp, dimly, that something is seriously amiss, they do not understand what it will take to fix the problem. 
Their idea of a solution is to imperiously inform Americans they are wrong: wrong that academia has let politics infect its work, wrong that reform is needed, and wrong that there are two sexes, male and female. 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 14.0%Eugene Volokh: 2.5%Reason.com: 4.6%Confirmation Bias14.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.2%Reason.com: 0.6%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 1.4%Reason.com: 2.4%Availability Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.5%Reason.com: 0.8%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.5%Reason.com: 0.7%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 1.1%Reason.com: 2.0%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 51.3%Eugene Volokh: 2.5%Reason.com: 6.4%Framing Effect51.3%This article: 11.9%Eugene Volokh: 0.2%Reason.com: 0.4%Loss Aversion11.9%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.7%Reason.com: 0.5%Status Quo Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.2%Reason.com: 0.2%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.1%Reason.com: 1.1%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 25.9%Eugene Volokh: 0.5%Reason.com: 1.7%Pessimism Bias25.9%This article: 44.6%Eugene Volokh: 5.9%Reason.com: 8.0%Negativity Bias44.6%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 1.5%Reason.com: 1.0%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 17.6%Eugene Volokh: 0.8%Reason.com: 0.8%Fundamental Attribution Error17.6%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.0%Reason.com: 0.1%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 3.1%Eugene Volokh: 0.5%Reason.com: 1.1%In-Group Bias3.1%This article: 18.1%Eugene Volokh: 0.6%Reason.com: 0.8%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias18.1%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.3%Reason.com: 0.7%Halo Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.2%Reason.com: 0.2%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.1%Reason.com: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.4%Reason.com: 1.0%Recency Bias0.0%This article: 3.6%Eugene Volokh: 0.2%Reason.com: 0.3%Primacy Effect3.6%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.1%Reason.com: 0.1%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 5.7%Eugene Volokh: 1.0%Reason.com: 1.6%Ad Hominem5.7%This article: 19.2%Eugene Volokh: 0.9%Reason.com: 1.1%Straw Man19.2%This article: 21.8%Eugene Volokh: 3.5%Reason.com: 3.9%Appeal to Authority21.8%This article: 33.2%Eugene Volokh: 1.4%Reason.com: 1.9%False Dilemma33.2%This article: 11.9%Eugene Volokh: 0.8%Reason.com: 1.4%Slippery Slope11.9%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.5%Reason.com: 0.4%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 3.1%Eugene Volokh: 2.6%Reason.com: 6.5%Hasty Generalization3.1%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.2%Reason.com: 0.3%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.0%Reason.com: 0.3%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 6.2%Eugene Volokh: 2.2%Reason.com: 4.2%Appeal to Emotion6.2%This article: 14.0%Eugene Volokh: 1.0%Reason.com: 1.4%Begging the Question14.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 1.5%Reason.com: 2.7%Post Hoc (False Cause)0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.2%Reason.com: 0.2%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 2.0%Reason.com: 0.8%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.0%Reason.com: 0.2%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 18.1%Eugene Volokh: 0.2%Reason.com: 0.4%Composition/Division18.1%This article: 14.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.8%Reason.com: 1.8%Anecdotal14.0%This article: 14.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.1%Reason.com: 0.2%No True Scotsman14.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.9%Reason.com: 1.1%Ambiguity (Equivocation)0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.0%Reason.com: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.0%Reason.com: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.0%Reason.com: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.1%Reason.com: 0.2%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.0%Reason.com: 0.3%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 19.2%Eugene Volokh: 2.3%Reason.com: 1.9%Unattributed Quote19.2%This article: 9.3%Eugene Volokh: 1.0%Reason.com: 1.4%Quote-first Misdirection9.3%This article: 39.9%Eugene Volokh: 2.3%Reason.com: 10.0%Biased Writer Voice39.9%This article: 20.2%Eugene Volokh: 0.7%Reason.com: 1.5%Indoctrination20.2%This article: 0.0%Eugene Volokh: 0.1%Reason.com: 1.4%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 19.2%Eugene Volokh: 0.5%Reason.com: 1.5%Politically Right Leaning Bias19.2%This article: 18.1%Eugene Volokh: 0.1%Reason.com: 0.3%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…18.1%

193 words analyzed.

Speakers

1speaker3.6%attributed speech186writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Writer's voice • 11 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 5 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 23 words • 100.0% coverageMegan McArdle • 7 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 7 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 12 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 27 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 35 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 1 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 6 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 22 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 37 words • 100.0% coverage
Selected voice

Megan McArdle

100%flagged-word coverage
7 attributed words100% of attributed speech99% writer coverage
0%50.0%100.0%Biased Writer Voice+62.4 ptsWriter: 37.6%Megan McArdle: 100.0%100.0%Indoctrination-21.0 ptsWriter: 21.0%Megan McArdle: 0.0%0.0%Unattributed Quote-19.9 ptsWriter: 19.9%Megan McArdle: 0.0%0.0%Politically Right Leaning -19.9 ptsWriter: 19.9%Megan McArdle: 0.0%0.0%Attempt to Sell a Product -18.8 ptsWriter: 18.8%Megan McArdle: 0.0%0.0%Quote-first Misdirection-9.7 ptsWriter: 9.7%Megan McArdle: 0.0%0.0%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.