Maybe you’ve heard of this study that the usual suspects have latched onto as “proof” of their superior virtuousness, or something to that effect.  I suspected something wasn’t quite right; with these sorts of things, it usually isn’t.  Then this turned up this morning:

Don’t blithely believe the study that allegedly “proves” that religious kids are not nice people

Suspicion confirmed.  “Bull…shit…bull…shit…it all sounds like bullshit to me, to me…”

[Regressives] are tremendously excited about a study that purports to show that kids raised religiously are less nice than atheist children:

[quote snipped]

Please, please let me count the ways in which I part ways with what I perceive as a ridiculous excuse for science.

First, I distrust any sociological study that proves conclusively that conservatives and religious people are mean, stupid, selfish, cruel, etc. As a starting point, we know that the vast majority of these sociological/psychological studies can’t be reproduced, which is one of the basic requirements for the validity of any purportedly “scientific” study. That means that the findings here are inherently suspicious.

Second, these lab studies are suspicious when their results run counter to the real world. For example, endless lab studies from Leftist institutions show that conservatives are dumb and ill-informed.  The problem is that actual data derived from real world subjects reveals that they’re better informed than their Leftist peers. And with specific regard to religious people, the reality, outside of children in the psychologist’s lair, is that religious people give much more generously to charity than their non-religious peers, something shown, not by little games, but by the hard numbers of actual donations.

Third, the “dictator game” the kids played had nothing to do with the real world because kids understand the difference between real and pretend.  Here’s an example:  when my cousin and I were little, we loved playing poker. We’d wager tens of thousands of imaginary dollars and cheat like crazy. Those behaviors, however, were not predictive of our actual approach to the world. In real life, my cousin and I are, and always were, both honest and financially conservative.

There’s more at the link.