SAD NEWS FOR THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH: Glenn reported yesterday that the California Court of Appeal has denied UCLA law professor Rick Sander access to the California Bar’s data on bar passage. As a result, Sander and his ideologically diverse team of researchers will not be able to test for the mismatch effect in law schools. For those who give a damn about helping law students—specifically minority law students—to pass the bar, this is a sad result.

The data supporting the mismatch effect in STEM is strong. But some had criticized Sander’s previous research into law school mismatch on the ground that the database he was working from left something to be desired. Like a good and honest researcher, Sander responded by trying to obtain the best bar passage data in existence—the data kept by the California Bar (the nation’s largest). Litigation erupted.

Here’s the part that gets me: As I discussed in “A Dubious Expediency”: How Race-Preferential Admissions on Campus Hurt Minority Students, some of the very same people who criticized Sander’s first law school study on the ground that his database was inadequate were the ones who actively tried to prevent him from getting the California Bar data. The leftwing Society of American Law Teachers even subtly threatened to sue the Bar if they complied with Sander’s request. I can only hope that one day they will get what they deserve for this.