Two university psychologists have retracted their study published last year in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), because its politically-incorrect findings have been cited in some pro-law enforcement articles.  The  study:  Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings,  by Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland, analyzed 917 fatal police shootings in 2015 to determine if racial bias played a role in who got shot.  The study concluded that it did not.

In a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal,  Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald notes that after she referred to the study in testimony before Congress last year and cited it in articles in the City Journal and the Wall Street Journal, all hell broke loose at Michigan State.  Progressive academics attacked Professor Stephen Hsu, the Vice President for Research at the university, until was forced to resign for authorizing funding for the study.  The university’s ultra-progressive Graduate Employees Union apologized for the harm the study had caused.  Finally, recognizing the impending threat to their livelihood,  last Monday the study’s authors took the extraordinary step of retracting their paper claiming that it had been misused.  Misused how?  Because it was cited?

Hans Bader in Liberty Unyielding cites David Bernstein, law professor at George Mason University, and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, for his conclusion that the only reason for the retraction was politics, quoting one commentator saying the “request for retraction resulted from a sustained attempt to discredit politically unpopular research,” rather than anything being wrong with the research.

The progressive mob that rules the national media, and our colleges and universities has obviously taken its cues from Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler.  Anyone or anything which even suggests a point of view which differs from their narrative must be publicly humiliated, silenced or destroyed.