They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha!

According to this story:

Lohse, a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University, says he has proven what many progressives have probably suspected for years: a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush.

Lohse says his study is no joke. The thesis draws on a survey of 69 psychiatric outpatients in three Connecticut locations during the 2004 presidential election. Lohse’s study, backed by SCSU Psychology professor Jaak Rakfeldt and statistician Misty Ginacola, found a correlation between the severity of a person’s psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.

Of course, Libertarians are envious.

I suspect it was the Perot voters. They went Republican in 2000, 2002, and 2004 but not in 2006.

On the other hand, Republican support among the brain damaged is not unanimous.

Set seriousness bit to ON

It looks like this supposed result was due to data mining:

Rakfeldt says the study was legitimate, though not intended to show what it did.

“Yes it was a legitimate study but these data were mined after the fact,” Rakfeldt says. “You can ask new questions of the data. I haven’t looked at” Lohse’s conclusions regarding Bush, Rakfeldt says.

If a scientist looks at, say, a hundred different possible correlations, sheer chance would indicate that some of the results will seem improbable enough to be published.

I'd like to know how hard they tried to torture the data into confessing.