The limits of doing this for free
Will Wilkinson links to this post by Ezra Klein, who makes a very good point:
Fairly few political commentators know enough to decide which research papers are methodologically convincing and which aren’t. So we often end up touting the papers that sound right, and the papers that sound right are, unsurprisingly, the ones that accord most closely with our view of the world. So Alesina’s paper gets a lot of conservative pickup, but if it had found the opposite, it would’ve been ignored by conservatives, or maybe torn apart by experts sympathetic to the conservative approach to austerity, even as liberals championed its findings.
Wilkinson adds:
This is one of the reasons I tend not to blog as much I’d like about a lot of debates in economic policy. I just don’t know who to trust, and I don’t trust myself enough to not just tout work that confirms my biases. This is also why I tend to worry a lot about methodology in my policy papers. How much can we trust happiness surveys? How exactly is inequality measured? How exactly is inflation measured? Does standard practice bias standard measurements in a particular direction? Of course, the motive to dig deeper is often suspicion of research you feel can’t really be right. But this is, I believe, an honorable motive, as long as one digs honestly. Indeed, I’m pretty sure motivated cognition, when constrained by sound epistemic norms, is one of the mainsprings of intellectual progress.
I couldn’t agree more.
I’d like to add, also, that this becomes even more difficult when you aren’t doing this for a living. When you have to fit blogging in as a hobby while working at a regular job to make ends meet, even having the time to read enough policy or economic blogs (let alone papers) is pretty difficult.
This is one of my huge frustrations with blogging. I find that it’s very difficult to keep up with the paid professionals who have a great deal more time on their hands, more resources, and therefore better perspective and, generally, better material to show for it. Whatever expertise got them into those positions in the first place is given even more room to grow and evolve.
Sure, in the age of self-publishing anyone can blog and they can do it fairly cheaply. But unless you’re being paid well for your efforts or you’re independently wealthy, then you probably need to hold down another job or jobs, and that ties up a lot of time and energy and resources.
I don’t mean to complain by any means. I could have a much worse blogging set-up. But I do often find myself wishing that I had the time and resources at my fingertips that many A-list bloggers do. It’s tough to keep up.
In many senses I think this is all that really differentiates the really good A-list bloggers from everyone else. They have the time and the resources to burn on their writing, while the rest of us fit what we can into our busy days and hope it sticks. If it’s hard for Ezra Klein or Will Wilkinson to determine “which research papers are methodologically convincing and which aren’t” it’s even harder for the rest of us.
That’s my rant and I’m sticking to it.
Very good point. To many people just fall back on repeating their ideology over and over. Its fair enough to say your opinions but be open to learning and searching for data. And of course admitting we all don’t know everything is helpful.
You’re doing fine.Report
A phenomenon that bothers me is that when all of the now-pro bloggers were amateurs or semi-pro they were good about linking to each other and highligting litle-known blogs. Now they only link to other pro bloggers. In the meantime all of us in the amateur ranks link to them as well instead of generating more original content or linking to each other. I’ve tried to make a concious effort in the past year to avoid giving too much free PR to pro-bloggers. It’s not that I don’t read or enjoy them but if they don’t have time for us we shouldn’t be spending so much time with them.Report
Shouldn’t Klein and Wilkerson, of all people, have a sense of reputable information as it pertains to economics? Just throwing up your hands and saying, “I don’t know” seems weird. I understand the tenancy to latch onto points of view that support your position, god knows, I do.
But Klein and Wilkerson should be able to separate out the junk. Aren’t they “A-list bloggers”?
I suspect, that more often than not, some sort of absolute truth does not exist. Then one is left with the strong urge to grab the stuff we find comforting.
The best thing I can say about their admissions – now we know.Report
@Bob,
It’s probably a reaction based on prior beliefs being disproven by reality. Economic theory is one thing, but then there’s the experience of the business owners who understand clearly why they aren’t hiring. Much of what is being debated regarding stimulus vs freeing up the market to operate on sound business/free market principles is understood best by the people doing business everyday, not blogging about economic theory.Report
@Mike Farmer, maybe, but they are paid, “doing business everyday,” to earn their keep. Seems they owe their employer an honest days work. And if they have learned the lesson you guess they have learned shouldn’t they say as much – We’re just dipshits and the suites know best.Report
@Bob,
I agree they should present a deeper understanding — I suspect they do have a deeper understanding, they just don’t like the findings, so they play the game of who-to-believe, as if they aren’t smart enough to know which analysis makes the most sense. Plus, Klein’s critique that conservatives cling to an analysis which confirms their bia doesn’t mean anything — the important thing is if the analysis is close to correct, or on the money, or off the mark. The truthfulness of an analysis doesn’t depend on the political beliefs of its adherents.Report
Obviously the pros have more resources. But the amateurs have an advantage in that they are more likely to care about the subject matter than the personalities.Report
@Koz, Jeez, I guess we are destined to cross swords today.
What evidence can you point to that Klein or Wilkerson care less about X than you or I or any amateur?
I just don’t see it that way. If anything they seem to be saying they care, a lot, and they are grading against repeating information that just endorses their point of view.Report
To quote one of my bosses today (a professor retiring within the year) “No on reads the papers.” He pointed out that no one can really read the papers that come out. And by that he means thoroughly examine it, look at the figures, consider the methodology and truly comprehend the meaning. What he can do is get out “the key findings”. This is why peer review is so vital and why blogging sucks on academics. Peer reviewed journals cost (a lot) of money to have subscriptions to and bloggers cannot access the data and look at it themselves. When you read a peer review journal you have the knowledge that several experts read it and agreed it was sturdy enough to go into the journal. This lead to many terrible blog posts as bloggers re-post newspaper pieces about scholarly articles they haven’t read. In the worst case scenario, you get something like a Hanna Rosin Slate piece about science.Report