When it comes to research about Xinjiang even greater care than usual is required to prevent bias.

Before subscribing to any theory or interpretation of data about #Xinjiang, ask yourself if the academics responsible are religious, religionists, or parareligionists. Especially if they are a theist and supernaturalist. This is a central question and not at all irrelevant or trivial to research designs and outcomes, and to methodologies and execution.

There has been enormous upheaval in the psychological and social sciences over the last decade due to both the reproducibility crisis and the theory crisis. A huge part of the problem is researchers' cognitive and confirmation biases precipitating many bad premises, wrong assumptions, undetected confounding variables, flawed quantitative methods, and bad experimental designs.

One thing to watch out for in situations like that in #Xinjiang is the approach of social scientists and economists who use predominantly quantitative methods. When it comes to the memetic narratives of megacults, great care and subtlety is required in determining the motives and intentions of human sources. Most quantitative analysts fail to properly account for qualitative psychological properties and dynamics, and especially for the effects of large, influential property-laden and value-laden cultural and religious narratives that have enormous cultural and social momentum.

One significant problem is the effects these narratives can have on concepts and operationalisation, and the assumptions underlying the latter.

The theory crisis example I like to cite is that of ego depletion theory. Baumeister's ego depletion theory is popular in psychology, and I personally think it highly valuable and very probably right. However: there's a sticky problem (the resolution of which I am optimistic about.) It is hard to accurately and confidently grasp - certainly in all important reductionist and neurophysiological terms - exactly what is being depleted. Is ego a kind of emotional-cum-cognitive resource? Is it some kind of dynamical nervous system energy? Is it emotional stamina? Is it neurologically based attention and focus? Is it some combination of these?

When it comes to studies and research involving highly emotionally charged, religio-cultural megacult narratives that have fictive and mystical premises and concepts integrated within them, and as their very basis, then correctly identifying and operationalising concepts as quantitative variables is even more challenging. Even the most deft kinds of phenomenological qualitative analyses might vastly misestimate them.

Under the influence of such memetic narratives, sources' very perception of reality can often become confused, as can their perception of how to assess and measure, cognitively process, and report both truth and facts. For example, a megacultist or religionist who really believes their imaginary over-friend is real, and who sees their belief system as unassailable and as embodying the essence of truth on the basis of mysticism and clerical authority, is far more likely to fluidly and earnestly completely misrepresent facts, to confabulate, and to construct and fabricate. This outcome can happen communally with a group-thinking dynamic too. If these influences and their confounding variables are missed or assumed away - then the entire body of alleged evidence will be all but useless, and researchers will instead have become subsumed themselves under the service of the perpetuation of the very narratives that induced the falsehoods and clouded the facts.

What transpires, rather than objective scientific research outcomes, is a kind of research-embodied and ideologically motivated self-fulfilling prophecy.

There is also a lot more chance of researcher interaction effects for data interpretation that involves political, ideological and - especially - religious values and views. When it comes to the interpretation of any social outcomes that involve megacult narratives and political passions, people are even worse at falling victim to the illusion of consensus than usual.

I hypothesise that Illusion of consensus with no vested interest is very limited compared to illusion of consensus where the source, researcher, participant, or other assessor has vested emotional, ideological, and - especially - megacult doctrinal and doxastic interests. This certainly fits with past research on the perceived trustworthiness of sources and the messages they produce. Very significant additional qualitative preparation and preliminary naturalistic psychological study will be needed in all cases where these dynamics are in play. #Xinjiang is a perfect case in point. I very much doubt most Western researchers are adequately across the requisite issues, and I have seen little serious care taken.

---