[7] The study attracted widespread attention, in part because it seemed to challenge the conventional understanding of social persuasion that people tend not to change their point of view even when presented with contrasting information.
[10] In addition, LaCour had claimed that participants were paid using outside funding, but no organization could be found that had provided the amount of money required to pay thousands of people.
The baseline survey results appeared to have been taken from an earlier dataset called the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP), to which LaCour had access.
[13] Yet Green, as senior author on the Science paper, certified that he had examined the raw/original data on his Science/AAAS Authorship Form and Statement of Conflicts of Interest.
"[16] Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, wrote in The Washington Post that Donald Green had accepted LaCour's data "on faith".
[20] A subsequent article published by Science indicated that LaCour's response was lacking, failing to address a number of issues while raising new questions about his conduct.
[21] A blog post published by Discover stated that LaCour's rebuttal arguments were "very weak" and failed to refute a central criticism of the Broockman paper.
[26][27][28][29] The editorial page of The Wall Street Journal speculated that LaCour's argument originally gained acceptance in the scientific community because it "flattered the ideological sensibilities of liberals, who tend to believe that resistance to gay marriage can only be the artifact of ignorance or prejudice, not moral or religious conviction.
[26] New York Magazine columnist Jesse Singal dismissed the Wall Street Journal editorial, arguing that it was silly and uninformed, and suggested instead that the main reason for the article's publication was its contradiction of prior research.
[28] A New York magazine opinion piece by sociology doctoral candidate Drew Foster argued that the study exposed problems with the culture of political science research and supervision given to junior academics, along with a competitive culture caused by overproduction of PhD students relative to available political science academic positions.