"Laypeople view social scientific inquiry as (partly) a guided pursuit of evidence in favor of scientists’ personal ideology." Science describing how things ARE is often interpreted as the scientist talking about how things SHOULD BE.

This paper merely highlights what has been, (migration and pre-state violence for two examples) and continues to be, a serious and structural problem facing the social sciences: conformative ideologically based socio-political pressures contorting research. This has become a catch-22 scenario for researchers in the face of evidence ideologues don't want to hear, as the authors state: "This lay concept of social and behavioral science leaves researchers between a rock and a hard place when met with potentially uncongenial evidence: Should you look the other way and indirectly sustain ignorance and misinformation, or disseminate the evidence at a foreseeable risk to your reputation and persona?"

/r/science Thread Link - doi.org