andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1493 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Life is continuous but we think in discrete terms. In applied statistics there’s the p=.05 line which tells us whether a finding is significant or not. Baseball has the Mendoza line. And academia has what might be called the John Yoo line : the point at which nothing you write gets taken seriously, and so you might as well become a hack because you have no scholarly reputation remaining. John Yoo, of course, became a hack because, I assume, he had nothing left to lose. In contrast, historian Niall Ferguson has reportedly been moved to hackery because he has so much to gain . At least that is the analysis of Stephen Marche ( link from Basbøll): Ferguson’s critics have simply misunderstood for whom Ferguson was writing that piece. They imagine that he is working as a professor or as a journalist, and that his standards slipped below those of academia or the media. Neither is right. Look at his speaking agent’s Web site. The fee: 50 to 75 grand per appearance. . . . Tha
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1 05 line which tells us whether a finding is significant or not. [sent-3, score-0.079]
2 And academia has what might be called the John Yoo line : the point at which nothing you write gets taken seriously, and so you might as well become a hack because you have no scholarly reputation remaining. [sent-5, score-0.913]
3 John Yoo, of course, became a hack because, I assume, he had nothing left to lose. [sent-6, score-0.234]
4 In contrast, historian Niall Ferguson has reportedly been moved to hackery because he has so much to gain . [sent-7, score-0.13]
5 At least that is the analysis of Stephen Marche ( link from Basbøll): Ferguson’s critics have simply misunderstood for whom Ferguson was writing that piece. [sent-8, score-0.059]
6 They imagine that he is working as a professor or as a journalist, and that his standards slipped below those of academia or the media. [sent-9, score-0.22]
7 That number means that Ferguson doesn’t have to please his publishers; he doesn’t have to please his editors; he sure as hell doesn’t have to please scholars. [sent-16, score-0.416]
8 He has to please corporations and high-net-worth individuals, the people who can pay 50 to 75K to hear him talk. [sent-17, score-0.244]
9 I can give a great rousing talk about Obama’s failures at any event you want to have me at. [sent-19, score-0.054]
10 No, I think what Ferguson is looking for (as am I, in my scholarly domain) is influence . [sent-23, score-0.172]
11 And one thing about being paid $50K is that you can assume that whoever is paying you really wants to hear what you have to say. [sent-25, score-0.21]
12 The paradox, though, as Marche notes, is that Ferguson gets and keeps the big-money audience is by telling them not what he (Ferguson) wants to say—not by giving them his unique insights and understanding—but rather by telling his audience what they want to hear. [sent-26, score-0.521]
13 This is too bad; I was a big fan of Ferguson, back before he jumped the shark . [sent-28, score-0.121]
14 Krugman and Mankiw are partisans and go over the top on occasion but if they have something to say, people will listen. [sent-31, score-0.069]
15 Similarly, I’d have no problem taking seriously the future publications of Tim Groseclose—when he’s not tossing out red meat for Fox News, he’s a scholar. [sent-32, score-0.158]
16 And some of you might still read my political science research (we have a new paper coming out soon ), even if you don’t love my blogging. [sent-33, score-0.054]
17 But it’s hard for me to imagine Niall Ferguson coming back from where he’s gone. [sent-34, score-0.112]
18 It’s possible—Ferguson has the ability, time, and financial resources to do whatever he wants—but I think it would be tough for him to recover the trust of his readers. [sent-35, score-0.138]
19 On the other hand, if his scholarly reputation disappears entirely, he’ll have to compete with Thomas Friedman on his own merits. [sent-36, score-0.364]
20 Right now, people are listening to Ferguson partly for his fun Obama-bashing and partly from his credentials as a world-famous scholar. [sent-38, score-0.27]
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same-blog 1 1.0000002 1493 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-12-Niall Ferguson, the John Yoo line, and the paradox of influence
Introduction: Life is continuous but we think in discrete terms. In applied statistics there’s the p=.05 line which tells us whether a finding is significant or not. Baseball has the Mendoza line. And academia has what might be called the John Yoo line : the point at which nothing you write gets taken seriously, and so you might as well become a hack because you have no scholarly reputation remaining. John Yoo, of course, became a hack because, I assume, he had nothing left to lose. In contrast, historian Niall Ferguson has reportedly been moved to hackery because he has so much to gain . At least that is the analysis of Stephen Marche ( link from Basbøll): Ferguson’s critics have simply misunderstood for whom Ferguson was writing that piece. They imagine that he is working as a professor or as a journalist, and that his standards slipped below those of academia or the media. Neither is right. Look at his speaking agent’s Web site. The fee: 50 to 75 grand per appearance. . . . Tha
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Introduction: Ashok Rao shreds the latest book from Niall Ferguson, who we’ve encountered most recently as the source of homophobic slurs but who used to be a serious scholar . Or maybe still is. Remember Linda, that character from the Kahneman and Tversky vignette who was deemed likely to be “a bank teller who is active in the feminist movement”? Maybe Ferguson is a serious scholar who is active in the being-a-hack movement. Perhaps when he’s not writing books where he distorts his sources, or giving lectures with unfortunate slurs, he’s doing historical research. It’s certainly possible. Rao describes how Ferguson distorts his source materials. This is a no-no for any historian, of course, but not such a surprise for Ferguson, who crossed over the John Yoo line awhile ago. Last year I wrote about the paradox of influence: Ferguson gets and keeps the big-money audience by telling them not what he (Ferguson) wants to say—not by giving them his unique insights and understanding—but rat
Introduction: We had some interesting comments on our recent reflections on Niall Ferguson’s ill-chosen remarks in which he attributed Keynes’s economic views (I don’t actually know exactly what Keyesianism is, but I think a key part is for the government to run surpluses during economic booms and deficits during recessions) to the Keynes being gay and marrying a ballerina and talking about poetry. The general idea, I think, is that people without kids don’t care so much about the future, and this motivated Keynes’s party-all-the-time attitude, which might have worked just fine for Eddie Murphy’s girlfriend in the 1980s and in San Francisco bathhouses of the 1970s but, according to Ferguson, is not the ticket for preserving today’s American empire. Some of the more robust defenders of Ferguson may have been disappointed by his followup remarks: “I should not have suggested . . . that Keynes was indifferent to the long run because he had no children, nor that he had no children because he was g
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Introduction: History professor (or, as the news reports call him, “Harvard historian”) Niall Ferguson got in trouble when speaking at a conference of financial advisors. Tom Kostigen reports : Ferguson responded to a question about Keynes’ famous philosophy of self-interest versus the economic philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed there was a social contract among the living, as well as the dead. Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of “poetry” rather than procreated. . . . Ferguson . . . says it’s only logical that Keynes would take this selfish worldview because he was an “effete” member of society. . . . Throughout his remarks, Ferguson referred to his “friends” in high places. They should all be embarrassed and ashamed of such a connection to such small-minded thinking. Ferguson says U.S. laws and institutions have become degenerate. Acc
Introduction: I don’t want this to be a regular feature but I wanted to briefly comment on Ferguson’s open letter regarding the Keynes-was-a-ballet-and-poetry-loving-poof remarks he made the other day at that conference of financial advisors. (I’m posting this one at night, and a new post on an unrelated topic is coming in the morning, so I’m burying it as much as possible.) Ferguson reiterates that his remarks were “stupid.” The question then arises: He’s a smart guy, how did he end up saying such stupid things? Ferguson has a history of saying high-profile stupid things, and they always seem to be when he’s trying to make some sort of political point. I’m still going with my theory that Ferguson misjudged his audience; he thought they’d appreciate an anti-Keynes remark, maybe he even thought they were the kind of crowd that would enjoy cracks about gay people who like ballet and poetry. No go. Again, I’m not trying to nail the guy to the cross for this. We all make mistakes; in fact
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Introduction: Life is continuous but we think in discrete terms. In applied statistics there’s the p=.05 line which tells us whether a finding is significant or not. Baseball has the Mendoza line. And academia has what might be called the John Yoo line : the point at which nothing you write gets taken seriously, and so you might as well become a hack because you have no scholarly reputation remaining. John Yoo, of course, became a hack because, I assume, he had nothing left to lose. In contrast, historian Niall Ferguson has reportedly been moved to hackery because he has so much to gain . At least that is the analysis of Stephen Marche ( link from Basbøll): Ferguson’s critics have simply misunderstood for whom Ferguson was writing that piece. They imagine that he is working as a professor or as a journalist, and that his standards slipped below those of academia or the media. Neither is right. Look at his speaking agent’s Web site. The fee: 50 to 75 grand per appearance. . . . Tha
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Introduction: I made the mistake of reading this article by Niall Ferguson summarizing his notorious new book. Here’s the best bit: Far more than in Europe, most Americans remain instinctively loyal to the killer applications of Western ascendancy, from competition all the way through to the work ethic. They know the country has the right software. They just can’t understand why it’s running so damn slowly. What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent—to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic. Then we need to download the updates that are running more successfully
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Introduction: Life is continuous but we think in discrete terms. In applied statistics there’s the p=.05 line which tells us whether a finding is significant or not. Baseball has the Mendoza line. And academia has what might be called the John Yoo line : the point at which nothing you write gets taken seriously, and so you might as well become a hack because you have no scholarly reputation remaining. John Yoo, of course, became a hack because, I assume, he had nothing left to lose. In contrast, historian Niall Ferguson has reportedly been moved to hackery because he has so much to gain . At least that is the analysis of Stephen Marche ( link from Basbøll): Ferguson’s critics have simply misunderstood for whom Ferguson was writing that piece. They imagine that he is working as a professor or as a journalist, and that his standards slipped below those of academia or the media. Neither is right. Look at his speaking agent’s Web site. The fee: 50 to 75 grand per appearance. . . . Tha
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