Burying inconvenient findings (another example of Maier's Law)

One thing you will probably notice as you look through this blog is that I am no fan of burying inconvenient findings. It doesn't matter if it is the state or federal governments doing it or fellow researchers. The bottom line remains the same: the intended audience gets a distorted and one-sided view of the phenomenon under consideration, losing out on often important and crucial information in the process. The US federal government recently removed a thorough narrative review of research on terrorism. You can see the archived report for yourself here, courtesy of the Wayback Machine. I also made a pdf file of the archived document and will at some point upload it to my personal website, just in case the Wayback Machine ever goes away. I figure my tax dollars were used to generate the report, along with the data analyzed in the studies reviewed in that report. Why was it pulled? Its findings did not go along with the current government narrative that instructs us that all terrorism and politically motivated violence comes from left-wing groups. It turns out that the most common culprits when it comes to terrorism are tied to right-wing militias, followed by Islamist groups. Left-wing terrorism is barely existent in the US. To paraphrase N.R.F. Maier, "if the facts don't conform to the theory, ignore them." The consequences to me are obvious: by ignoring the facts, the federal government will be responsible for law enforcement failing to detect an imminent terrorist attack, or to go down blind alleys looking for non-existent left-wing terrorist. Those consequences could be devastating for lives and livelihoods. 

Now, remember: I was once an early career researcher. I know what it is like when those who have more power over me make decisions to bury the findings of experiments I had run because the findings did not fit an advisor's pet theory. I found that upsetting back in the late 1990s (even if the stakes in that particular line of research are fairly low), and I still do today. In the sciences we are supposed to be truth-seekers and truth tellers. To do so successfully means reporting findings that don't mesh with our preferred worldview. I don't have high expectations when it comes to truthfulness from elected officials (politicians tend to be generally useless in that regard to varying degrees), but I do hold out high expectations for the federal agencies that are supposed to be staffed by career professionals who can report their findings independently of the current dominant party line at any given time. When those professionals are prevented from reporting their work, we should all be worried. 

Update: I failed to mention that the report the government buried in this instance is one that would be of some professional interest to me, insofar as there is some evidence that individuals with authoritarian attitudes (as is the case with our own homegrown terrorists) tend to show greater acceptance of any of a number of authority-sanctioned acts of aggression and violence. I am basing that assessment on much of Bob Altemeyer's work when he was still an active researcher and some of the work I published in the aughts and last decade.