AI Political Compass

Compressed one-entry-per-proposition retellings of the dossiers and review reports. The answer chip is the evidence answer (first group) or the evidence direction whose premise you may reject (second group).

Evidence-supported answer, near-universal premise (20)

#1 “If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.” Agree About 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens (Tørsløv, Wier & Zucman), trade shocks imposed concentrated decade-long losses on exposed workers, and investor-state arbitration gives corporations asymmetric legal rights - so corporate and human interests demonstrably do diverge. High-quality reviews also confirm trade openness raised growth and helped cut extreme poverty from about 35% to about 10%, which is compatible with agreeing: globalisation delivers broad gains and needs governance to keep serving people. The adversarial review confirmed all seven citations and found no credible source defending corporate interests as the proper priority. Premise: human welfare, not corporate profit, is the proper end of economic arrangements - near-universal, endorsed even by the WTO and World Bank.

#4 “Our race has many superior qualities, compared with other races.” Strongly disagree Consensus bodies - the National Academies (2023) and the AAPA/AABA (2019) - conclude that race is a social category misused as a genetic one and that superiority claims are unfounded, and adaptive traits are clinal and discordant, so races fail standard biological criteria (Templeton 2013). The adversarial review verified all thirteen citations and found that even the dossier's own opponents - Risch, Sesardic, Spencer, Rushton - disclaim general racial superiority, which would require aggregating discordant traits into a single ranking that no literature performs; hence the grade is 'settled'. It did flag that two supporting arguments (the within-versus-between genetic variance split, and the narrowing of IQ gaps) are more contested than the dossier let on. Premise: human populations have equal inherent worth and cannot be ranked on one general scale - near-universal.

#8 “People are ultimately divided more by class than by nationality.” Disagree Milanovic's peer-reviewed decompositions show more than half of the variation in individual incomes worldwide is explained simply by country of residence, and over two-thirds of global inequality is between countries rather than between classes within them; survey work (Shayo, APSR) finds people, especially the poor, identify with their nation far more than with their class. The adversarial review confirmed every citation and left the direction standing, while noting genuine dissent that class politics persists (Hout et al.; Evans & Mellon) - which is why the grade is 'the evidence clearly leans', not 'settled'. This is the one evidence answer that maps to the right-authoritarian side of the compass. Interpretive premise: 'divided' is read as today's measurable divisions in life chances, identity and politics, not as a metaphysical claim about which division is ultimately more fundamental.

#10 “Because corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily protect the environment, they require regulation.” Agree The best available meta-analysis (Flankova et al. 2024; 103 studies across 23 voluntary environmental programs) finds participants perform no better than non-participants unless the program itself has regulation-like monitoring and sanctions, and the landmark study of chemical-industry self-regulation (King & Lenox on Responsible Care) found no improvement without sanctions. Mandatory regulation, by contrast, is credited with most of the 60% drop in US manufacturing air pollution, and the EPA puts Clean Air Act benefits at roughly 30 times costs. The adversarial review confirmed every load-bearing citation and surfaced real voluntary successes (ISO 14001, FSC certification), which is why the grade is 'the evidence clearly leans', not 'settled'. Premise: substantial environmental protection is a goal that justifies mandates on firms when voluntary action falls short - near-universal.

#20 “Governments should penalise businesses that mislead the public.” Agree Deception causes real harm - Akerlof's Nobel-winning 'lemons' economics shows it degrades whole markets, and quasi-experimental work (Rao 2022) shows false claims steer consumers into inferior purchases - and penalties can work: Italy's increase in advertising fines measurably cut deceptive advertising (Mangani & Pacini 2025). The adversarial review confirmed the load-bearing citations and the main caveat: systematic reviews of corporate-crime deterrence find fines alone inconsistent, so the live dispute is about enforcement design, not about whether deception should be penalised. This item is direction-uncertain on the compass - it sits on the left-lib/right-auth diagonal, and essentially every political stripe answers it the same way. Premise: if business deception harms people and penalties can reduce it at acceptable cost, governments ought to impose them - near-universal.

#21 “A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies.” Agree Mainstream economics supports the substance: an OECD evidence review finds the competition-productivity link robust, Kwoka's meta-analysis shows unchallenged mergers typically raised prices, a QJE study documents sharply rising US markups since 1980, and in 2020 expert panels 73% of leading US and European economists favoured stronger action against dominant platforms. The adversarial review verified every citation while noting real dissent - Crandall and Winston find little evidence that actual antitrust enforcement has helped consumers - so the grade is 'clearly leans', and the 'predator multinationals' framing overstates what research shows. Interpretive premise: a 'genuine free market' means one with effective competition, so state action preserving competition is market-supporting rather than market-violating; read as 'absence of intervention' the statement is self-contradictory.

#27 “All people have their rights, but it is better for all of us that different sorts of people should keep to their own kind.” Disagree Pettigrew and Tropp's meta-analysis (713 samples from 515 studies) finds contact between groups typically reduces prejudice rather than creating friction, and studies of actual separation point the same way: residential segregation is linked to worse minority health and economic outcomes, and school desegregation improved Black Americans' life outcomes with no detectable effects on whites (Johnson, NBER). The best case for the statement - a real but tiny negative link between neighbourhood diversity and trust (partial r about -0.03, largely US-specific) - survived the adversarial review, whose own counter-hunt (Barlow 2012; Enos 2014) showed contact can backfire but never that separation benefits everyone. Premise: whether separation is 'better for all of us' should be judged by measurable outcomes for everyone, not just majority comfort - near-universal.

#28 “Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.” Disagree The largest meta-analysis (Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor 2016; 160,927 children) finds spanking associated with worse outcomes on 13 of 17 measures and better on none; the AAP concurs. The adversarial review surfaced Larzelere's causal-inference critique, which is why the grade is 'the evidence clearly leans' (mild Disagree), not 'settled'. Premise: 'harming children is bad' - near-universal.

#29 “It’s natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents.” Strongly agree Developmental research is essentially unanimous that keeping some secrets from parents is a normal part of growing up: disclosure to parents normatively declines and concealment rises across adolescence as part of autonomy and individuation (Finkenauer and colleagues; Smetana), and even the best-adjusted adolescents keep some secrets. The adversarial review found no researcher or body disputing this - only one peripheral misattributed citation - so the grade is 'settled'. 'Natural' does not mean 'harmless', though: longitudinal work and a 137-study review show high secrecy predicts depression, loneliness and risky behaviour. Premise: 'natural' read as developmentally typical - near-universal.

#30 “Possessing marijuana for personal use should not be a criminal offence.” Agree Systematic reviews in The Lancet Psychiatry and the Milbank Quarterly (both 2026) find little evidence that removing criminal penalties for personal possession increases cannabis use or psychiatric problems - rises in use, potency and addiction track commercial legal markets instead - while a 2025 systematic review finds decriminalisation cuts cannabis arrests by roughly 13.5-78%. Every major US medical body that has taken a position, including the American College of Physicians and even the legalisation-opposing AMA, backs removing criminal penalties for personal possession. The adversarial review found no rival review or body defending criminal penalties, but kept the grade at 'clearly leans' because the decriminalisation-specific literature is genuinely thin. Premise: criminal punishment should be used only where it measurably reduces harm enough to outweigh the damage it inflicts - near-universal.

#32 “People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce.” Strongly disagree The consensus against coercion is closed: the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Article 23), a joint statement by seven UN agencies, and the American Society of Human Genetics all reject coercive reproductive control, and the audit found no expert body, court or named bioethicist advocating prohibition. The genetics also undercut the policy's premise - 42% of severe developmental disorders arise from brand-new mutations in children of unaffected parents (Deciphering Developmental Disorders study). The adversarial review confirmed the settled direction while flagging that the 'it would not work' argument fails for fully penetrant dominant conditions such as Huntington's, where most cases are inherited. Premise: judged universal by the panel - people with disabilities retain their fertility on an equal basis with others.

#33 “The most important thing for children to learn is to accept discipline.” Disagree The statement conflates two things research separates: self-discipline, which genuinely matters (Moffitt's Dunedin cohort; Duckworth & Seligman found it beats IQ for grades), and obedience to imposed discipline, which is what the item asks about. On that, Pinquart's meta-analysis of 1,435 studies finds obedience-focused authoritarian parenting predicts worse behaviour than authoritative parenting combining warmth and reasoning, and meta-analytic work on parental autonomy support (Vasquez et al. 2016) finds children develop better self-regulation when autonomy is supported rather than compliance demanded. The adversarial review confirmed all seven citations; live dissent over the causal strength of the spanking literature is why the grade is 'clearly leans', not 'settled'. Premise: what children should most importantly learn is judged by their long-term wellbeing, competence and adjustment - near-universal.

#34 “There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.” Agree The 19th-century idea that peoples climb a single ladder from savagery to civilisation was empirically dismantled a century ago: the American Anthropological Association's Statement on Race (1998) affirms that all peoples have equal capacity and that hierarchies of peoples are social constructs, and cross-cultural work (Curry et al. 2019) finds the same core moral values in all 60 societies sampled. The adversarial review confirmed the direction but noted that the statement's second clause, if read as full cultural relativism, is genuinely contested - societies do differ measurably in violence and social complexity, and many philosophers reject moral relativism - which is why the grade stops at 'clearly leans'. Premise: labels like 'savage' and 'civilised' applied to whole peoples are warranted only if backed by innate hierarchical differences - near-universal.

#37 “First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country.” Disagree The US National Academies' 2015 consensus report and the OECD/EU's 2023 integration indicators both show first-generation immigrants' language skills, employment, income and civic participation improve substantially with time in the country, and many naturalise, intermarry and identify with their new home - which refutes the absolute 'can never'. Average outcomes usually do not fully converge with natives within one generation, and a meta-analytic 'integration paradox' literature shows even structurally successful immigrants can report reduced belonging; the adversarial review confirmed both, finding non-convergence but nothing establishing impossibility. Interpretive premise: 'fully integrated' read as substantial functional participation and belonging (citizenship, language, work, social inclusion) rather than total indistinguishability from natives - a choice that is itself part assimilationist-versus-pluralist value judgment.

#38 “What’s good for the most successful corporations is always, ultimately, good for all of us.” Disagree The universal form - 'always, ultimately' - is what fails. A 50-year study of 18 countries (Hope & Limberg 2022) found tax cuts benefiting the rich raised inequality without boosting growth or jobs, and an IMF study of about 150 countries found rising top income shares predict lower growth. Successful corporations do generate broad benefits (Nordhaus estimated innovators keep only about 2% of the social value of their innovations), and the adversarial review found real methodological dissent against the rising-markup and wage-decoupling evidence - hence 'clearly leans', not 'settled' - but no credible source defends the universal claim. Premise: 'good for all of us' judged by broad material outcomes such as median incomes, employment and living standards - near-universal.

#42 “Although the electronic age makes official surveillance easier, only wrongdoers need to be worried.” Disagree Peer-reviewed quasi-experimental and experimental studies (Penney 2016; Stoycheff 2016) show that awareness of government monitoring measurably chills entirely lawful behaviour - people read less about sensitive topics and voice minority opinions less - and declassified FISA Court opinions document hundreds of thousands of improper FBI searches of Americans, including protesters, journalists, judges and campaign donors. Because the statement is universally quantified ('only wrongdoers'), that documentary record refutes it without needing an effect size, which is how it survived an adversarial review that credibly attacked the magnitude of chilling effects. Surveillance does have real benefits - a 40-year meta-analysis finds CCTV modestly reduces crime - but benefits for the public do not make the harms fall only on wrongdoers. Premise: chilling of lawful conduct and documented misuse against innocent people count as harms worth worrying about - near-universal.

#52 “Astrology accurately explains many things.” Strongly disagree In double-blind tests that professional astrologers helped design, astrologers could not match birth charts to real people's personalities or life details better than chance (Carlson 1985 in Nature; McGrew & McFall 1990), and a review with meta-analysis of more than forty controlled studies (Dean & Kelly 2003) found them at chance even on simple tasks. The largest personality study, with over 15,000 people, found no link between birth date and personality or intelligence. The adversarial review found the only dissent lives in partisan venues, concedes astrology remains unverified, and has failed independent replication - so this is graded 'settled'. Premise: 'accurately explains' judged by controlled empirical testing rather than by subjective meaningfulness - near-universal.

#53 “You cannot be moral without being religious.” Disagree The largest meta-analysis (Kelly, Kramer & Shariff 2024; 811,663 participants) finds only a small religiosity-prosociality correlation that shrinks to near zero when behaviour is measured directly rather than self-reported, and the best behavioural study (Hofmann et al., Science 2014) found no difference between religious and non-religious people in everyday moral acts. The adversarial review graded the direction settled: the live scholarly debate is only about whether religion modestly boosts prosociality, not about whether the non-religious can be moral. The answer is nonetheless held at a mild Disagree because it turns on an interpretive premise: that 'being moral' is assessed by observing people's moral judgments and behaviour, rather than defined theologically so that morality without God is impossible by definition.

#59 “Pornography, depicting consenting adults, should be legal for the adult population.” Agree The empirical question is whether legal adult pornography causes enough harm to justify banning it: a newer, larger meta-analysis (Ferguson & Hartley 2022) found no link for nonviolent material, weak longitudinal evidence and smaller effects in better-designed studies, and natural experiments in Denmark, Japan and the Czech Republic found sex crimes did not rise - and sometimes fell - as pornography became legal and widely available. No major medical or public-health body recommends criminalisation for adults, and public-health scholars writing in the American Journal of Public Health reject the 'public health crisis' framing. The adversarial review confirmed every citation and found a live methodological dispute about violent content and heavy use, hence 'clearly leans'. Premise: adults should be legally free to produce and consume expressive material involving consenting adults absent demonstrated, prohibition-preventable harm - near-universal.

#61 “No one can feel naturally homosexual.” Disagree Twin studies and the largest genetic study ever run (Ganna et al. 2019, N = 477,522) find real but partial heritability of same-sex attraction, the APA reports most people feel little or no choice about their orientation and that attempts to change it fail, and same-sex sexual behaviour occurs in roughly 261 mammal species (Gómez et al. 2023). The adversarial review hunted specifically for a source defending the universal negative and found none - dissenters dispute innateness or mechanism while conceding attractions are experienced as unchosen - so the direction is graded settled. The answer is held at a mild Disagree because it turns on an interpretive premise: 'naturally' read descriptively, as arising spontaneously in development without deliberate choice, rather than as a moral judgment about the proper end of human sexuality.

Clear evidence direction, genuinely contestable premise (18)

#2 “I’d always support my country, whether it was right or wrong.” Disagree This statement is almost word-for-word the item psychologists use to measure 'blind patriotism', which reviews consistently link to political disengagement, hostility toward outsiders, selective exposure to flattering information, and reduced acknowledgment of a nation's own moral violations (Schatz 2020; Roccas et al. 2006). The best evidence for strong national loyalty - a 67-country Nature Communications study of pandemic cooperation - shows the benefits belong to the non-blind, criticism-tolerant form; every citation survived the adversarial review, and nothing load-bearing failed. Contested premise: that a country's wrongs should be acknowledged and corrected rather than supported. Someone who holds loyalty to be unconditional is not contradicted by this evidence - the direction is on display, the final judgment is yours.

#13 “It’s a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product.” Agree A UN University review of data from 109 countries found bottled water is a roughly $270 billion industry whose growth outpaces public-supply investment and distracts from universal safe-water goals, and a Barcelona life-cycle study found all-bottled consumption carries 1,400-3,500 times the environmental impact of tap water for only marginal health benefit. Real counter-evidence exists - millions of Americans face genuine tap-water violations each year, and sales spike as rational averting behaviour during contamination events - and every key citation survived the adversarial review. Contested premise: that meeting a basic need through a branded private commodity marks a societal failure, rather than being ordinary consumer choice and market responsiveness.

#17 “The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.” Disagree Multiple large meta-analyses - including Friede et al. 2015, aggregating some 2,200 studies, plus Orlitzky and Margolis - find social and environmental performance carries no systematic financial penalty and often a small positive, and Hart & Zingales show that when firms create externalities, pure profit maximisation does not even maximise shareholders' own welfare. The adversarial review confirmed the direction while crediting real methodological attacks on the ESG meta-analyses and showing the Business Roundtable statement was cheap talk; notably, even the doctrine's strongest defenders (Friedman himself, Bebchuk & Tallarita) do not endorse the literal proposition. Contested premise: whether managers' sole moral duty is to shareholders with social problems left to law and government - a live normative dispute in economics, law and philosophy that evidence cannot settle.

#22 “Abortion, when the woman’s life is not threatened, should always be illegal.” Disagree Bans do not substantially reduce abortions; they shift them to unsafe methods (WHO, National Academies, Turnaway study); every citation survived the adversarial review. Contested premise: if the fetus has the full moral status of a person, the law's duty doesn't hinge on efficacy - the direction is on display, the final judgment is yours.

#24 “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Disagree The National Research Council's 2012 consensus report found thirty-five years of death-penalty deterrence research uninformative, and Nagin's authoritative reviews conclude that certainty of being caught deters while increases in severity add little or nothing. A Cochrane meta-analysis found confrontational 'Scared Straight' programmes actually increase delinquency (OR 1.68), while a Campbell review of ten randomised trials found restorative-justice conferencing - the opposite of retaliation - reduces reoffending and helps victims more, including reducing their desire for revenge; all eight citations survived the adversarial review. Contested premise: that punishment should be judged by its consequences rather than by an intrinsic duty to repay wrongdoing in kind. A retributivist who treats desert as intrinsic is untouched by any of this.

#26 “Schools should not make classroom attendance compulsory.” Disagree Attendance matters: a major meta-analysis (Credé et al. 2010) finds class attendance the best known predictor of college grades, Gottfried's large K-12 studies show chronic absenteeism damages achievement with spillover harm to classmates, and students compelled into school by attendance laws earned more later. Direct evidence that mandating attendance helps is positive but modest (d about 0.21, from only three studies), and well-designed recent work finds autonomy can work as well or better for high achievers - the adversarial review confirmed all of this and kept the grade at 'clearly leans'. This is the one premise-group direction that maps to the right-authoritarian side of the compass. Contested premise: that achievement gains justify overriding student and family autonomy about being physically present in class.

#31 “The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs.” Disagree Education economics confirms schooling is a powerful jobs engine - roughly 9% higher earnings per year of schooling in a 1,120-estimate global review (Psacharopoulos & Patrinos 2018) - but review-level work (Oreopoulos & Salvanes) finds the non-monetary benefits at least as large, and even for employment itself, narrowly job-focused vocational schooling wins early and loses over a lifetime as specific skills obsolesce (Hanushek et al.). The audit called this an unusually clean one: all seven citations verified with exact figures, and no counter-evidence supported making employment the prime function. Contested premise: which domain of outcomes schooling should primarily serve - a classic value-pluralist question (jobs versus citizenship versus human development) that no amount of outcome evidence can settle.

#39 “No broadcasting institution, however independent its content, should receive public funding.” Disagree Peer-reviewed cross-national work finds public broadcasters raise citizens' political knowledge more than commercial news, but only where they are genuinely well funded and editorially independent (Soroka et al. 2013), and the main economic objection - that public funding crowds out private media - finds little to no empirical support across the EU, Switzerland and Finland (Sehl, Fletcher & Picard 2020). The serious counter-evidence (Hungary, Poland, Turkey) shows public funding without independence produces propaganda, but the statement explicitly exempts independent institutions; the adversarial review confirmed all eight citations. Contested premise: whether compelling citizens to fund any media outlet can be legitimate in principle - if you hold that it cannot, no empirical benefit could justify it.

#40 “Our civil liberties are being excessively curbed in the name of counter-terrorism.” Agree The Campbell systematic review found almost no rigorous evaluations showing counter-terrorism measures work, US oversight found the flagship bulk phone-records programme unlawful and essentially useless before it was abolished, and comprehensive reviews by the International Commission of Jurists (2009) and the UN Special Rapporteur's Global Study (2023) conclude these frameworks damaged legal protections and are systematically misused against civil society. The counter-case is real but narrower - one programme (Section 702) was found lawful and valuable, and democracies rolled back some excesses - and all eight checked sources survived the audit. Contested premise: that a liberty restriction counts as 'excessive' when the state cannot show it is necessary and proportionate to a proven security benefit; a serious scholarly tradition (Posner and Vermeule) argues governments deserve deference under uncertainty.

#41 “A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system.” Disagree Democracies really do change policy more slowly, but the claim that avoiding argument delivers progress fails: two meta-analyses covering hundreds of studies find democracy's effect on growth positive (Colagrossi et al. 2020) or at worst neutral with clear indirect benefits, and the leading causal study (Acemoglu et al. 2019) finds democratisation raises long-run income about 20%. Autocracies do not reliably convert speed into progress - their growth records have fat tails, a few miracles and many disasters, because eliminating debate also eliminates error-correction. The review found genuine dissent (a halved effect size, one published null) but nothing establishing an autocratic advantage. Contested premise: that faster, less-contested decision-making counts as a 'significant advantage' only if it actually yields better long-run outcomes, outweighing the loss of accountability and political rights.

#43 “The death penalty should be an option for the most serious crimes.” Disagree The most authoritative source - the National Research Council's 2012 consensus report - reviewed thirty years of deterrence studies and concluded the literature cannot say whether capital punishment lowers, raises or leaves homicide unchanged. What is well documented are the costs: a peer-reviewed PNAS study conservatively estimated that at least 4.1% of American death-sentenced defendants are falsely convicted, and a GAO synthesis of 28 studies found consistent race-of-victim disparities in capital charging and sentencing; every citation survived the adversarial review, which found real dissent on the error-rate and race figures. Contested premise: that execution should be retained only if it yields demonstrable benefits unattainable through lesser punishment. If you hold that some crimes simply deserve death, or that state killing is intrinsically wrong, the empirical record settles nothing either way.

#44 “In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded.” Disagree Hierarchy is near-universal and often useful - governance hierarchy grows with societal scale (Turchin et al., PNAS 2018) - but 'must always' is an absolute claim, and the best meta-analysis (Greer et al. 2018; 13,914 teams) finds hierarchy on net slightly harms group performance, with benefits only under specific conditions. Boehm's ethnographic survey documents forager societies keeping order through enforced egalitarianism and Ostrom's Nobel-recognised cases show centuries of self-governance without top-down command; the review confirmed every citation and found dissent about how typical such cases were, not about whether they existed. Contested premise: that command hierarchy should be endorsed as a universal requirement only if societies demonstrably cannot function without it - that is, that obedience carries no intrinsic moral value beyond practical necessity.

#45 “Abstract art that doesn’t represent anything shouldn’t be considered art at all.” Disagree Contemporary philosophy of art, surveyed in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, has abandoned the view that art must imitate or represent something: every mainstream current theory counts non-representational works as art, and museums and art historians classify Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich accordingly. Experimental psychology adds that abstract art is not arbitrary mark-making - even untrained viewers reliably distinguish professional abstract paintings from similar-looking work by children and animals (Hawley-Dolan & Winner 2011; replicated 2015). All five citations survived the audit, which held the grade at 'clearly leans' precisely because the question is definitional. Contested premise: that established scholarly and institutional usage settles what counts as art, rather than a private definition requiring depiction.

#46 “In criminal justice, punishment should be more important than rehabilitation.” Disagree On what actually reduces crime the evidence leans one way: the largest meta-analysis of custodial sanctions (Petrich et al. 2021; 116 studies) finds imprisonment null or slightly crime-increasing compared with noncustodial alternatives, the National Research Council's 2014 consensus report found no clear evidence that greater reliance on imprisonment substantially reduced crime, and deterrence research finds severity barely deters while certainty of being caught does. Rehabilitation's own average effects may be modest - the most rigorous RCT-only meta-analysis suggests they shrink toward zero - but never worse than punishment-first policy; the adversarial review confirmed all six citations and the live incapacitation dissent. Contested premise: that criminal justice should be judged primarily by its consequences for future crime, rather than by retribution as an intrinsic good independent of crime-control effects.

#49 “Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.” Disagree Two large meta-analyses in Psychological Bulletin (2008 and 2010), covering roughly 140 studies and thousands of effect sizes, find no overall association between maternal employment and children's achievement or behaviour, with positive associations in low-income and single-parent families; a recent systematic review finds a mixed picture, with slightly more conduct problems concentrated in full-time work and very early return after birth but fewer internalizing symptoms. Large longitudinal work finds parenting quality matters far more than childcare arrangements, and reviews of father involvement show the beneficial input is engaged parenting rather than specifically mothering; all eight citations survived the adversarial review. Contested premise: that outcome data is the right basis for assigning a gendered duty at all, as opposed to tradition, religious teaching, or complementarian role theory.

#50 “Almost all politicians promise economic growth, but we should heed the warnings of climate science that growth is detrimental to our efforts to curb global warming.” Agree As worded, this stayed contested through two rounds: systematic-review evidence (Haberl et al. 2020; Vogel & Hickel 2023) shows achieved decoupling in rich countries running roughly ten times too slow for Paris targets, while the IPCC's own 1.5-2°C pathways assume continued growth. A third round asked a reading panel what the sentence actually claims; all three read it as a 'headwind' claim, and the narrowed statement 'economic growth makes it harder to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions' came back agree 2-1 and was capped at a mild Agree. Contested premise: whether curbing warming should take priority over growth when the two conflict - and whether growth itself, rather than the energy and policy mix, is the causal problem.

#54 “Charity is better than social security as a means of helping the genuinely disadvantaged.” Disagree State social security is the largest and most reliable poverty-reduction mechanism known: US Social Security alone keeps about 27.6 million people above the poverty line, welfare-state generosity predicts lower poverty across rich nations (Kenworthy 1999), and the largest systematic review of cash transfers (Bastagli et al. 2016) finds they reduce poverty without systematic work disincentives. Charity is structurally limited - less than a third of US giving targets the poor, and church charity in the 1930s equalled only about 3% of New Deal relief - and while the review found real crowd-out evidence, nothing shows charity matching state coverage or adequacy. Contested premise: that this should be judged mainly by material outcomes, rather than by the intrinsic moral value of voluntary giving or the wrongness of tax-funded redistribution.

#58 “A same sex couple in a stable, loving relationship should not be excluded from the possibility of child adoption.” Strongly agree Three decades of research converge: children raised by same-sex couples do as well as children of heterosexual couples in psychological adjustment, social functioning and school outcomes (meta-analyses by Crowl 2008, Fedewa 2015, and a 2023 BMJ Global Health review), and adoption-specific longitudinal work (Farr 2017) found parenting stress mattered while orientation did not. Every major professional body, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the APA, concludes sexual orientation should not bar adoption; the main dissent (Regnerus 2012 and a 2025 reanalysis of it) studies family disruption rather than stable same-sex couples, so the audit graded the factual question settled. Contested premise: that adoption eligibility should be decided by expected parenting quality and child wellbeing, rather than by a claimed intrinsic requirement that a child have both a mother and a father.

No evidence answer (24)

#3 “No one chooses their country of birth, so it’s foolish to be proud of it.”
Classified pure-values by a unanimous Stage-1 panel, and the classification held on re-examination. Psychology can describe how pride works - attribution theory ties it to controllable causes, and Tracy & Robins' model distinguishes authentic from hubristic pride - but whether pride is appropriately felt only toward things one chose is a normative question about what pride is for, not an empirical one. Carries no evidence answer.

#5 “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Researched in full and returned contested. Psychology experiments do find a real common-enemy bonding effect, but network science is actively split over whether real signed networks obey the 'strong balance' axiom - the verdict flips with methodology - and the best long-run international-relations test (Maoz et al., covering 1816-2001) found states sharing enemies are disproportionately likely to be enemies of each other. Science shows a conditional tendency, not a reliable rule, and whether one should embrace such alliances is a value judgment anyway.

#6 “Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified.”
Classified pure-values by a unanimous Stage-1 panel, and a second research round found no directional majority. The dispute is between legal positivists who treat the UN Charter's near-absolute restriction on force as not open to unilateral override, and a just-war tradition that lets catastrophic humanitarian necessity override formal legality - a values question about which should yield, not a factual one. Carries no evidence answer.

#7 “There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment.”
Researched and returned contested. Longitudinal content analyses (Umbricht & Esser's six-country study) confirm the descriptive part - political news really has become more entertainment-styled - but whether that is 'worrying' splits scholars: Prior finds entertainment-rich media environments widen knowledge and turnout gaps, while Baum's gateway research shows soft news reaches citizens who would otherwise consume none, and a 2022 meta-analysis of 70 studies found satirical news aids learning. The field's major reviews conclude the evidence for harmful 'dumbing down' is mixed.

#9 “Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment.”
Researched and returned contested, because the two strongest literatures answer different questions. Measured per percentage point, unemployment is clearly the costlier evil - large well-being studies find a 1-point rise in unemployment reduces life satisfaction roughly two to five times as much as a 1-point rise in inflation, and job loss raises mortality and scars earnings. But mainstream macroeconomics holds there is no exploitable long-run trade-off, so tolerating inflation cannot durably lower unemployment, and unanchored inflation harms growth and the poor. Which matters more depends on time horizon and value weights, not on a settled empirical finding.

#11 ““from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a fundamentally good idea.”
Classified pure-values by a unanimous Stage-1 panel, and the classification held on re-examination. Social-psychological research treats need as one of three legitimate bases of distributive justice alongside equity and equality, but whether the need principle is 'fundamentally good' turns on the classic equality-versus-incentives trade-off - which criterion of goodness should dominate is precisely what the data cannot adjudicate. Carries no evidence answer.

#12 “The freer the market, the freer the people.”
Researched and returned contested. The correlation is strong and well replicated - countries with freer markets score higher on personal and political freedom, and politically free societies with heavily controlled economies are almost nonexistent - but the causal slogan is not established: Granger-causality work finds no direct causal link in either direction, and where causality is detected it more often runs from political to economic liberalisation. Singapore, the UAE and post-1978 China show high market freedom coexisting durably with political repression.

#14 “Land shouldn’t be a commodity to be bought and sold.”
Classified pure-values by a unanimous Stage-1 panel; on re-examination the values classification stood, with one of three researchers dissenting. Mainstream economics treats secure, transferable land rights as generally welfare-enhancing, while a long tradition from Henry George through Polanyi to contemporary indigenous-rights and agrarian scholarship treats land's fixed supply, socially created value and cultural roles as reasons not to treat it as an ordinary commodity - both cite real evidence and differ on which outcomes to weight. Carries no evidence answer.

#15 “It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.”
Researched twice and left contested. The strongest evidence - a Journal of Economic Surveys meta-analysis and Levine's authoritative survey - finds financial development causally raises growth, so the absolutist claim that money-manipulators 'contribute nothing' is not supported. But a substantial peer-reviewed literature supports a softer version: Zingales's presidential address on finance degenerating into rent-seeking, Philippon's finding that intermediation costs never fell in 130 years, and IMF and BIS work showing finance beyond a threshold reduces growth. Whether particular fortunes reflect productive service or extraction is simply not measured.

#16 “Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.”
Researched twice and left contested, because the word 'sometimes' does the work. On average protectionism hurts - a 151-country study finds tariff increases lower output and productivity while raising unemployment and inequality, and in a 2016 expert poll not one top economist endorsed new import duties. Yet careful causal work (Juhász's study of the Napoleonic blockade, in the American Economic Review) shows temporary protection can launch industries with lasting benefits, a 2024 Annual Review survey finds the modern industrial-policy evidence more favourable than once believed, and the national-security exception is near-universally accepted. Whether such exceptions make protection ever 'necessary' rather than inferior to subsidies remains genuinely disputed.

#18 “The rich are too highly taxed.”
Researched twice and left contested; it is ultimately a value judgment whose factual underpinnings are themselves disputed at the top journals. On standard measures the US federal system is clearly progressive - the top 1% pay about a 30% average federal rate versus 17% overall, and Auten & Splinter find rates near 50% at the very top - while Saez, Zucman and a White House analysis argue the very wealthiest pay about 8% once unrealised gains are counted, and optimal-tax work puts the revenue-maximising top rate near 73%. Credible evidence supports both readings, and whether any of it means 'too much' depends on contested values.

#19 “Those with the ability to pay should have access to higher standards of medical care.”
One of the three verdicts killed by the adversarial review. A round-two panel had reached 'the evidence clearly leans disagree', but the audit found one citation misrepresented on care quality and the dossier's self-declared highest-weight source (Devereaux's for-profit hospital mortality meta-analysis) no longer bearing its load - later umbrella reviews call the ownership-outcomes evidence inconsistent, and it tests for-profit versus not-for-profit hospitals rather than the paid-tier-versus-public contrast the statement is about. With two-tier survival data pointing the other way and a split panel, it was downgraded to contested; carries no evidence answer.

#23 “All authority should be questioned.”
Classified pure-values by a unanimous Stage-1 panel, and a second research round found no directional majority. No study tests the blanket disposition 'question all authority' as its own variable; the closest cognitive-science consensus favours selective, source-calibrated trust rather than uniform questioning or uniform deference, and which default risk to guard against - complicity in illegitimate authority, or undermining functional authority - is a values choice. Carries no evidence answer.

#25 “Taxpayers should not be expected to prop up any theatres or museums that cannot survive on a commercial basis.”
Researched and returned contested, with the facts themselves genuinely disputed. Meta-analyses of valuation studies and landmark work on Copenhagen's Royal Theatre consistently find people, including the majority who never attend, willing to pay for such institutions to exist, often at levels matching actual subsidies. But a prominent Journal of Economic Perspectives critique (Hausman 2012) argues those survey-based numbers are systematically inflated and unreliable, and primary studies find public funding partly crowds out private donations while subsidies flow disproportionately to higher-income attendees.

#35 “Those who are able to work, and refuse the opportunity, should not expect society’s support.”
Classified pure-values by a unanimous Stage-1 panel, and a second research round found no directional majority. Quasi-experimental work does show benefit sanctions move people from welfare into work, but the statement's claim is about desert - whether collective support is conditional on demonstrated willingness to contribute - and 'refusal' is often hard to distinguish from health or structural barriers. Carries no evidence answer.

#36 “When you are troubled, it’s better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.”
Researched twice and left contested, because the statement blurs a distinction the research separates. Short-term distraction genuinely works - a large meta-analysis of emotion-regulation experiments found it reliably improves mood while focusing on the emotion backfires, and keeping busy with rewarding activity is behavioural activation, an effective depression treatment. But as a standing policy, habitual avoidance and thought suppression show medium-to-large associations with anxiety and depression, and suppressed thoughts rebound. High-quality evidence sits on both sides depending on which reading is taken.

#47 “It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.”
The research round found rehabilitation programs measurably reduce reoffending, but the adversarial review killed the verdict: two citations did not hold up and a genuine literature on treatment-resistant subgroups exists. Downgraded to contested; carries no evidence answer.

#48 “The businessperson and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist.”
Classified pure-values by a unanimous Stage-1 panel, and the classification held on re-examination. Sectors can be compared on output and employment, but there is no established empirical metric of overall social 'importance' that ranks whole professional categories against each other - the item asks which yardstick to use, which is the value question itself. Carries no evidence answer.

#51 “Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity.”
Classified pure-values by a unanimous Stage-1 panel, and the classification held on re-examination. Lifespan-development research - Erikson's later stages, Vaillant's decades-long Grant study - describes mature adulthood partly as integrating with one's circumstances rather than remaining in conflict with them, but whether reconciling with existing power structures is constitutive of maturity, incidental to it, or its opposite is exactly what the statement asserts. Carries no evidence answer.

#55 “Some people are naturally unlucky.”
Researched and returned contested, because the verdict depends entirely on what 'naturally unlucky' means. Where outcomes are genuinely random nobody is inherently unluckier - in Wiseman's decade-long programme, self-described lucky and unlucky people won identical amounts in a lottery task, and their differences were psychological. Yet the only meta-analysis in the area (Visser et al. 2007, on accident proneness) finds repeated mishaps really do cluster in some individuals beyond chance, driven by partly heritable traits like impulsivity. No mystical unlucky aura exists, but misfortune is not evenly distributed either.

#56 “It is important that my child’s school instills religious values.”
Classified pure-values by a unanimous Stage-1 panel, and a second research round found no directional majority. The premise it needs - that forming children in their parents' religious tradition is a legitimate goal of schooling - collides with an equally widely held view that public, pluralistic schooling should stay religiously neutral and leave faith formation to family and community; both the empirical and the normative halves are contested. Carries no evidence answer.

#57 “Sex outside marriage is usually immoral.”
Classified pure-values by a unanimous Stage-1 panel; on re-examination the values classification stood, with one of three researchers dissenting. The statement spans two very different cases - premarital sex and extramarital affairs, which surveys treat very differently - and whether an act is 'usually immoral' turns on which theory of wrongness applies: harm, cross-cultural consensus, or religious and natural-law premises that do not depend on either. Carries no evidence answer.

#60 “What goes on in a private bedroom between consenting adults is no business of the state.”
One of the three verdicts killed by the adversarial review. A round-two panel had reached 'the evidence clearly leans agree', and the empirical record on criminalising consensual adult intimacy really is one-sided - WHO and the UNDP Global Commission on HIV and the Law both recommend decriminalisation - but the audit found the top-weighted citation misrepresented (it addresses HIV non-disclosure prosecutions, not consensual conduct) and the quantitative pillars softer than presented. Live authoritative dissent from the absolutism - the European Court of Human Rights in Laskey and Stübing, and sex-purchase laws in six democracies - means the evidence cannot carry 'no business of the state'; downgraded to contested.

#62 “These days openness about sex has gone too far.”
Researched and returned contested, because the two relevant literatures point different ways. Deliberate, structured openness performs well: UN consensus guidance and recent meta-analyses show comprehensive sexuality education delays first sex and increases contraceptive use, open parent-teen communication predicts safer sex, and abstinence-only programmes are ineffective. But ambient commercial openness shows documented downsides - an APA task force tied media sexualisation of girls to depression and low self-esteem, and reviews associate adolescent pornography exposure with earlier sexual debut, though causality is unestablished. 'Too far' also requires a contested moral threshold.