The impact of vocal minorities of researchers on the scientific state of the art. The case of the Racial Invariance Thesis in US criminology

This paper investigates the influence of the research produced by a vocal minority of researchers in a body of 48 articles regarding the differential effect of structural factors on racially disaggregated crime rates in the US. The computational social science analysis underlines the limited influence of methodological choices on the scientists’ conclusions. However, it is shown how a particularly productive research team has distorted the state of the art by systematically concluding that the racial invariance thesis is refuted, even though their raw quantitative findings differ from one study to another. In the absence of constraining scientific standards, this vocal minority is free to adopt interpretations that are consistent with its prior theoretical interests.