andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-1042 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: A colleague emailed me with a question about the methods used by Groseclose and Milyo in their study of media bias. Before getting to the question, I just wanted to comment that Groseclose has had really bad timing with this project. First off, his article came out in 2005 when everybody was hating Bush. Even the Republicans who reelected him weren’t thrilled with the guy. Then his book came out in 2011. If his book had come out a year ago, that would’ve been perfect: the 2010 elections coming up, lots of anger at the Democrats and Obama, no peer-reviewed criticisms of his work, etc. Instead he waited until 2011, and then look what he got: - Republicans feel they have a chance at winning in 2012 so they’re more interested in fighting and less interested in complaining. - John Gasper shoots down Groseclose/Milyo in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. That’s gotta hurt. (Until this point, Groseclose could respond to attacks by saying he was waiting until a crit
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1 A colleague emailed me with a question about the methods used by Groseclose and Milyo in their study of media bias. [sent-1, score-0.259]
2 First off, his article came out in 2005 when everybody was hating Bush. [sent-3, score-0.07]
3 Even the Republicans who reelected him weren’t thrilled with the guy. [sent-4, score-0.075]
4 If his book had come out a year ago, that would’ve been perfect: the 2010 elections coming up, lots of anger at the Democrats and Obama, no peer-reviewed criticisms of his work, etc. [sent-6, score-0.07]
5 Instead he waited until 2011, and then look what he got: - Republicans feel they have a chance at winning in 2012 so they’re more interested in fighting and less interested in complaining. [sent-7, score-0.065]
6 ) - The biggest news in media bias is the story of Rupert Murdoch buying the London police force. [sent-11, score-0.075]
7 ” Here’s my colleague’s question: Here’s the guts of their model: Define x i as the average adjusted ADA score of the i th member of Congress. [sent-13, score-0.211]
8 Given that the member cites a think tank, we assume that the utility that he or she receives from citing the j th think tank is (1) a j + b j x i + e ij The parameter b j indicates the ideology of the think tank. [sent-14, score-1.513]
9 , the legislator is liberal), then the legislator receives more utility from citing the think tank if b j is large. [sent-17, score-1.163]
10 The parameter a j represents a sort of “valence” factor (as political scientists use the term) for the think tank. [sent-18, score-0.129]
11 This seems to me [my colleague who sent me the email] to be gratuitously false to fact, and likely to distort other aspects of the model fit, since all or nearly all the choices of conservative congresscritters need to be accounted for using the valence terms. [sent-20, score-0.637]
12 Regarding the specific question, I haven’t looked at all the details but my guess is that Groseclose is using a standard ideal-point model and that the reparameterization (0 to 100 rather than, say, -1 to +1) won’t affect his substantive conclusions. [sent-21, score-0.146]
13 My guess is that if you shake out all the algebra you get back to the standard model. [sent-22, score-0.132]
14 Groseclose is a well respected scholar but his strength is particularly in theory rather than empirical methods. [sent-24, score-0.103]
15 Theoretical modelers tend to distrust models of data. [sent-25, score-0.19]
16 The result (from the perspective of an empirical modeler such as myself) is that they add unnecessary layers of implausible psychology on to empirical models that might very well stand up just fine on their own. [sent-27, score-0.337]
17 In particular, I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to say that a congressmember has a “utility” from citing an advocacy organization. [sent-28, score-0.712]
18 In any case, I don’t see this having anything to do with utility (except in the tautological sense that whatever you do, you must have utility for, or you wouldn’t do it). [sent-30, score-0.61]
19 Also, as I’ve written elsewhere, I don’t like Groseclose/Milyo’s use of the term “think tanks” for organizations that are not, in fact, think thanks. [sent-31, score-0.351]
20 I’d prefer the term “research and advocacy organizations” or even simply “advocacy organizations” (as even the research organizations tend to have policy positions that they’re pushing). [sent-32, score-0.58]
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Introduction: A colleague emailed me with a question about the methods used by Groseclose and Milyo in their study of media bias. Before getting to the question, I just wanted to comment that Groseclose has had really bad timing with this project. First off, his article came out in 2005 when everybody was hating Bush. Even the Republicans who reelected him weren’t thrilled with the guy. Then his book came out in 2011. If his book had come out a year ago, that would’ve been perfect: the 2010 elections coming up, lots of anger at the Democrats and Obama, no peer-reviewed criticisms of his work, etc. Instead he waited until 2011, and then look what he got: - Republicans feel they have a chance at winning in 2012 so they’re more interested in fighting and less interested in complaining. - John Gasper shoots down Groseclose/Milyo in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. That’s gotta hurt. (Until this point, Groseclose could respond to attacks by saying he was waiting until a crit
Introduction: One of my left-wing colleagues pointed me to this Fox TV interview in which UCLA political scientist Tim Groseclose expresses displeasure with having his research criticized by liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America. My colleague thought it was irresponsible and unprofessional for Groseclose to get all indignant about the criticism. But I understood. I remember how after the state Attorney General’s office released the study Jeff Fagan and I did on police stops ( see here for the research-paper version), we were viciously attacked. Some creep from the NYC Law Department sent a nasty letter full of accusations that were . . . I’d say “bullshit” but I don’t want to say that because “bullshit” contains the word “shit” and I don’t want to use profanity on this blog . . . anyway, this lawyer creep sent us an aggressive letter with bogus claims about our research competence. He could’ve just said: Yes, the NYPD stops ethnic minorities at a rate disproportionate to their c
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Introduction: A colleague emailed me with a question about the methods used by Groseclose and Milyo in their study of media bias. Before getting to the question, I just wanted to comment that Groseclose has had really bad timing with this project. First off, his article came out in 2005 when everybody was hating Bush. Even the Republicans who reelected him weren’t thrilled with the guy. Then his book came out in 2011. If his book had come out a year ago, that would’ve been perfect: the 2010 elections coming up, lots of anger at the Democrats and Obama, no peer-reviewed criticisms of his work, etc. Instead he waited until 2011, and then look what he got: - Republicans feel they have a chance at winning in 2012 so they’re more interested in fighting and less interested in complaining. - John Gasper shoots down Groseclose/Milyo in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. That’s gotta hurt. (Until this point, Groseclose could respond to attacks by saying he was waiting until a crit
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