"This history is truly what makes the lamentations of present-day conservatives for a conservative think tank (or think tanks in general) dedicated to rigorous policy development so hard to accept. In the sixties and seventies conservatives in places like AEI, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute did more than anyone else to discredit the idea of policy making as a social-scientific endeavor. Instead, policy debates became primarily concerned with political identities and political combat and provided the foundation for the elite media discourse within which Americans live today, where “balancing” public policy debates between “two sides” in a “marketplace of ideas” effectively takes precedence over policy content and, dare I say, truth.
"Likewise, this history makes the lamentations of Julian Sanchez at Cato equally hard to have sympathy for. As the brief history I’ve outlined here suggests, the political subjectivities and biases of the wealthy funders of conservative think tanks were integral to the success of these institutions. Obviously, such monies were used to develop the institutional infrastructure, but even more importantly their biases and subjectivities were used as a way to change and enter public policy debates. So, it is hard to feel sorry for those at Cato who are now lamenting what Koch may or may not do to the institution. When the history of the institution is wrapped up in a project which uses the biases of wealth funders to gain power and change the way people discuss politics and public policy, you can hardly be angry when those funders want to change the political identity that you’re promoting.
"And this, ultimately, is what the debate at Cato is about. Since it has been a long time since the technocratic ideal held (if it ever truly did—that is a discussion for another post) this is not a debate between one side that wants an institution dedicated to Republican Party political combat (Koch) and one side that wants rigorous truth-seeking and a development of policies that “work” (people like Sanchez at Cato). No, it is instead the battle that conservatives (in think tanks and elsewhere) have been wanting for the last four decades—a battle of identities in a political marketplace. Who will win: the millionaire who is seeking to “re-brand his product” or the old-school libertarian brand? According to the narrative conservatives have been offering us, only “the market” can decide."

" But it’s not a philosophical dispute. It’s a simple case of her making up false claims based on extremely elementary errors.
And this is why I am forced to be so mean. There are just a lot of people out there exerting significant influence over the political debate who are totally unqualified. The dilemma is especially acute in the political economic field, where wealthy right-wingers have pumped so much money to subsidize the field of pro-rich people polemics that the demand for competent defenders of letting rich people keep as much of their money as possible vastly outstrips the supply. Hence the intellectual marketplace for arguments that we should tax rich people less is glutted with hackery. "

"And as you’ll notice, in both cases the imaginary history just happened to be one more comfortable to status quo interests. I don’t want to go all Chomsky here, but this sort of thing really can radicalize you."

"So, although the development of even rudimentary forms of audit is a great boon to the democratic public (and probably a lot more so than yet another inconclusive study of “media bias” one way or the other), I think it needs to be taken with two caveats. The biggest villain is not the guy who gets it wrong. The people who will cost you money and reputation over the long run are first, the guy who says he’s more certain than he really is, and second, the guy who won’t admit he’s wrong when he knows he is. "

"So what does this predict? Like Blinder’s aphorism, it suggests that we will observe a broad empirical correlation between the extent of disagreement among economists, and the involvement of economists in political disputes. ‘Eat your greens’ propositions that are popular among economists, but more or less equally uncongenial to all political actors in a given system will, as in Blinder’s formulation, be systematically ignored. But economists’ influence will not be particularly high when they disagree with each other, since different economists arguing for different sides of the political debate will at least partially cancel each other out. It will be far higher on those rare and fleeting occasions when economists unite in favor of the one or the other side actively participating in a political debate. I note as a postscript that this toy model contains a simple public choice explanation for the emergence of public choice. Drawing this out is left as an exercise for the reader."

"the Borat humor is taking people whose jobs are to behave a certain way under a familiar, professionalized script and then start acting like a weirdo. ... They all try to keep to their scripts while the person opposite of them acts like a buffoon,,,, instead of going “stop acting like a buffoon.” ... These right-wing videos take this and amplify a particularly interesting part of the service/professionalized economy. When so much of our economy is driven by professionals there is a lot of work done in making sure that there are layers of people between the consumer and the professional. ... You don’t want the expensive brain surgeon making sure you’ve filled out your address and contact information correctly or taking your temperature – that’s why there’s a secretary and a nurse in-between these steps at the hospital.What the right-wing videos do ... is present the front-line staff as the actual decision making professionals. ..."

"Much of what we're discussing is [that] academia has, to some extent by its own actions, been cleaved away from public life. I hesitate to speak on television about the Civil War, because there are people who've made this the work of their life--actual experts--who should be speaking on this. But I also recoil at the notion of a host looking at me and saying, "John Brown--good guy or bad, guy? Go." I imagine the experts who I admire feel the same way.
As in all things, I don't write this to offer a definitive answer here. My sense is that the reluctance among people like me--and people smarter than me--to engage is as problematic as the form itself."

"But McArdle, I think, doesn’t really care if she’s wrong or risible. Her real goal is to advance the notion that government action informed by reason and empirical knowledge is impossible. So here she just says that you can’t trust the analytical models — and even if they do turn up evidence of economic improvement, they don’t matter: who are you going to believe, me or your lying pocketbook? ... This isn’t about the stimulus, in other words, or appropriate tax policy. It’s about the impossiblity of governance. .., the key fact to remember is that McArdle’s lapses of reasoning and fact are features, not bugs. Remember the mission as declared by her home institution: “TheAtlantic – shaping the national debate on the most critical issues ....” McArdle is indeed trying to shape the debate, to constrain what might be possible in the exercise of government power. Mere logic, paltry fact may not be permitted to get in the way. She is Always Wrong™ — by design."

Wait, lobbyists actually drumming up an astroturf cause _before_ they had corporate clients? That's not how base & superstructure are supposed to relate!

"Obviously, this data I’ve cited is perhaps open to some criticisms or alternate interpretations. But Flanagan doesn’t dispute it, doesn’t cite alternate data, and doesn’t even seem to be aware of the possibility of discussing social trends in terms of evidence rather than assertion."

"Still, just as a brief refresher, recall that over the past two years, the movement’s flagship publications and most prominent pundits have found it urgent to discuss: Bill Ayers’ potential authorship of Obama’s memoir, the looming threat of death panels, the president’s crypto-Islamic background and allegiances, his attempt to create a “private army” via the health care bill, his desire to see America come to ruin, the imagined racism of Sonia Sotomayor…"

review of a possibly-interesting book.

What exactly was the polling method here?

And this, children, is how publicizing scientific findings actually comes to create myths.

I especially look forward to reading the bits about Larry Summers.

Oh this makes me feel ever so much better about going to the doctor.

"Contrarianism generally lines up with the "perversity" column in Albert Hirschman's typology "The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy". ... Experts come up with solutions to the problems the societies face. Those solutions often entail discomfiting established interest groups [and] ... almost always entail some degree of perverse counterreaction .... It can be very interesting to focus on those counterreactions.... But [overwhelmingly], the counterreactions aren't as big as the first-order effects of the solutions. The minimum wage may price a few people out of the labour market, but it mostly raises low-income people's wages. Raising marginal income taxes does slightly lower rich people's incentives to generate income, but it mostly raises government revenue.... And as journalism has come increasingly to focus on contrarianism, it has become less and less adept at actually describing the world." This from the Economist!!!

To be clear, the utter_stupidity tag refers to the people peddling the meme, not Silver.

Roger Eugene Ailes

Merck paid Elsevier to gin up a mock peer reviewed journal pushing Merck's drugs. I have already given up on providing free labor to Elsevier in the form of refereeing, but now I am contemplating deliberately avoiding citing papers which appear in their journals.

I forget how I wound up here, but it's well worth reading --- especially when you get to the flogging-of-dubious-products bit.

I'm puzzled. Davis seems to be saying that it doesn't really matter if scholars go around repeating nonsense they've copied out of each other's books, and referring to founts of nonsense as authorities, because (here I grow really confused) humanist discourse isn't really _about_ its ostensible subjects, but is really some sort of internal status game. But if I believed that I'd think it a far more damning indictment than anything in Hamilton's book. And I don't think Davis believes that. So what is he saying, and how could he say it so that I would understand?

"One thing I've learned from the current episode is not to automatically trust that the most well-known economists in the field have done due diligence before speaking out on an issue, even when that issue is of great public importance, or even to trust that they've thought very hard about the problems they are speaking to. I used to think that, for the most part, the name brands in the field would live up to their reputations, that they would think hard about problems before speaking out in public, that they would provide clarity and insight, but they haven't. In fact, in many cases they have undermined their reputations and confused the issues. "

Or, rather, a debunking of a _misrepresentation_ of Shaw's views, rather than a debunking of the views themselves.

Beware your data.

I got _two_ copies.

Henry Farrell attempts to _explain_ why oh why we don't have a better press corps.

Word.

In a weird way, this post makes me nostalgic for the 1990s.

Some good points, but surprisingly bad history (Chinese printing didn't take off, "The Web began as a means of communication among physicists in 1981"!) from a professional historian. Not material to the mostly-sound recommendations.

Earnest, wonky evisceration.

"Steve Milloy -- the man deserves a statue, on which we could inscribe the words: "No one man labored harder or more successfully to propagate misinformation about global warming, tobacco's health effects, and DDT.""

Ezra Klein on why American political coverage is so awful.

Ans.: The CIA, of course. (OK, a _retired_ CIA officer. Still.)

"The idea that someone might ... oppose embryonic stem cell research on ethical grounds but, based on the available evidence, reject the [idea] that research adult stem cells will provide the same benefits, simply does not enter his mental frame of refere

War as public relations exercise, the goal being to project an image of strength.

Phil Carter on the "'military analysts' were Pentagon shills" story. Misses, oddly, the difference between _open_ propaganda and this, which hides it source, making it harder for citizens to evaluate, let alone hold accountable.

Chris Mooney reviews _Doubt Is Their Product_, and ends by calling for maddened scientists bearing torches and pitchforks to storm PR firms.

"to say something so false that people can't resist writing about how false it is thus making the Fukayamer famous. "

Ken MacLeod reports on the state of creationism in Britain.

_are_ people in fact "walking away" from mortgages which are bigger than their house values? how would we know? could we inject some facts into the debate?

"the 'culture war' between red and blue states, is really something happening at the higher range of incomes."

"Mussolini was called a fascist because he was a fascist, OG style, yo".

Crude (but not stupid) use of social networks in analyzing campaign donations.

"he people behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth weren't actually a bunch of aggrieved veterans pissed off at John Kerry's anti-war activities. Rather, the main donors were extremely wealthy businessmen like developer Bob Perry, oilman T. Boone Pickens"