From John Campion
A cry for academic freedom is often the last refuge of the intellectual charlatan. It appears that the article on political instincts by Jesse Graham and Sarah Estes (3 November, p 40) reports an example.
Born into a middle-class, Christian, Conservative family, I inherited my beliefs from the culture that surrounded me at home and school. Later, when I had experienced more and thought more, I flirted with atheist and left-wing views, before settling into a more conventional agnostic, Labour-voting clique. Now, married with a family, I find my beliefs do not map onto a left-right spectrum at all well.
If you really want to understand my political beliefs, you would be better served by interviewing me and observing my behaviour, than by considering how ordered my office is, or the structure of my brain.
The authors seem to hold that the brain is deterministic, but the mind is not. I suggest they do some work on the relationship between mind and brain.
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If conservatives feel liberal research puts them in a bad light they should do their own to level the field. Oh, I forgot, they are against such research.
Berkeley, California, US
Liphook, Hampshire, UK
