Constructing unnecessary barriers to constructive scientific debate: A response to Buss and von Hippel (2018).

In her commentary on Buss and von Hippel (2018), Fine (2020) makes 2 primary claims. First, she argues that Buss and von Hippel’s methods and data do not support their conclusions. Second, she argues that Buss and von Hippel made unsubstantiated accusations of ideological bias regarding Fine (2017), thereby creating unnecessary barriers to constructive scientific debate. In this rejoinder, we acknowledge some of her methodological criticisms but provide additional analyses of our data that support our original conclusions. We also expand on Buss and von Hippel’s criticisms of Fine (2017) to clarify why we regard her work as ideologically biased and why we think concerns about bias should be more commonplace in scientific debate.