andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-1707 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Matt Taibbi writes : Glenn Hubbard, Leading Academic and Mitt Romney Advisor, Took $1200 an Hour to Be Countrywide’s Expert Witness . . . Hidden among the reams of material recently filed in connection with the lawsuit of monoline insurer MBIA against Bank of America and Countrywide is a deposition of none other than Columbia University’s Glenn Hubbard. . . . Hubbard testified on behalf of Countrywide in the MBIA suit. He conducted an “analysis” that essentially concluded that Countrywide’s loans weren’t any worse than the loans produced by other mortgage originators, and that therefore the monstrous losses that investors in those loans suffered were due to other factors related to the economic crisis – and not caused by the serial misrepresentations and fraud in Countrywide’s underwriting. That’s interesting, because I worked on the other side of this case! I was hired by MBIA’s lawyers. It wouldn’t be polite of me to reveal my consulting rate, and I never actually got depose
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Hidden among the reams of material recently filed in connection with the lawsuit of monoline insurer MBIA against Bank of America and Countrywide is a deposition of none other than Columbia University’s Glenn Hubbard. [sent-4, score-0.247]
2 It wouldn’t be polite of me to reveal my consulting rate, and I never actually got deposed so it’s not in the public record, but I will tell you that it was exactly half of Hubbard’s. [sent-12, score-0.336]
3 Taibbi writes of Hubbard’s consulting work: So how did Hubbard manage to analyze Countrywide and conclude that mass fraud in its underwriting procedures wasn’t problematic? [sent-15, score-0.317]
4 All Hubbard did was take a group of Countrywide loans and compare them to a group of other loans from the same time period. [sent-17, score-0.768]
5 When that comparison revealed that Countrywide’s loans failed at about the same rate as the non-Countrywide loans, he smartly concluded that fraud wasn’t the problem and that macroeconomic factors must have been the cause. [sent-18, score-0.482]
6 But there was a problem with the control group: Except for one thing: He left out the fact that about half of the loans in the “non-Countrywide” pool he selected for his analysis were originated by companies that were also being sued for underwriting fraud and other irregularities. [sent-20, score-0.742]
7 What Hubbard did is compare a bunch of bad loans to a bunch of bad loans. [sent-21, score-0.391]
8 Taibbi then provides some deposition transcript which he characterizes as Hubbard being “intentionally obtuse”: Q. [sent-22, score-0.212]
9 So in the aggregate, more than half of your entire population in the control group was affected by litigation? [sent-34, score-0.244]
10 And in neither your initial report nor your rebuttal report did you disclose that fact for the benefit of the court? [sent-38, score-0.612]
11 But the fact is in neither your initial report nor your rebuttal report did you disclose that more than half of all the securitizations in your so-called control group were affected by litigation? [sent-42, score-0.856]
12 You’re agreeing with me, you didn’t disclose it, right? [sent-46, score-0.233]
13 Well, sir, I do think it’s significant that you didn’t disclose that fact, that’s why it’s in my question. [sent-51, score-0.233]
14 I just wanted to confirm you did not disclose that fact, right? [sent-52, score-0.233]
15 I gave a deposition as an expert witness once (on a different case) and what I recall is the lawyer on the other side asking many many pointless-seeming questions, every once in a while coming up with a gotcha-type question that seemed completely off base. [sent-58, score-0.399]
16 This lawyer was sitting across from me asking a bunch of pointless questions, and meanwhile the clock was ticking: I was being paid for every minute. [sent-63, score-0.238]
17 He does not seem to be answering questions with the calm demeanor of someone who’s being paid $1200 an hour, win or lose. [sent-73, score-0.247]
18 I wonder what the background was there, by which Hubbard and the lawyers decided not to disclose in their report where the loans in the control group came from, and how it was they decided that it was not “a relevant fact. [sent-76, score-0.866]
19 ” One reason I think that Hubbard legitimately might be worth twice the consulting fee as me, is that often when I consult, it’s just a job, but when Hubbard consults, he’s more invested in the case. [sent-77, score-0.213]
20 When I say that consulting is “just a job,” I don’t mean that I would lie or do anything unethical, merely that in such job-like settings I will try to do my best as a statistician, while letting the lawyers worry about how to win the case. [sent-85, score-0.286]
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Introduction: Matt Taibbi writes : Glenn Hubbard, Leading Academic and Mitt Romney Advisor, Took $1200 an Hour to Be Countrywide’s Expert Witness . . . Hidden among the reams of material recently filed in connection with the lawsuit of monoline insurer MBIA against Bank of America and Countrywide is a deposition of none other than Columbia University’s Glenn Hubbard. . . . Hubbard testified on behalf of Countrywide in the MBIA suit. He conducted an “analysis” that essentially concluded that Countrywide’s loans weren’t any worse than the loans produced by other mortgage originators, and that therefore the monstrous losses that investors in those loans suffered were due to other factors related to the economic crisis – and not caused by the serial misrepresentations and fraud in Countrywide’s underwriting. That’s interesting, because I worked on the other side of this case! I was hired by MBIA’s lawyers. It wouldn’t be polite of me to reveal my consulting rate, and I never actually got depose
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Introduction: The most perfect pairing of author and subject since Nicholson Baker and John Updike. Here’s Wolfram on the great researcher of fractals : In his way, Mandelbrot paid me some great compliments. When I was in my 20s, and he in his 60s, he would ask about my scientific work: “How can so many people take someone so young so seriously?” In 2002, my book “A New Kind of Science”—in which I argued that many phenomena across science are the complex results of relatively simple, program-like rules—appeared. Mandelbrot seemed to see it as a direct threat, once declaring that “Wolfram’s ‘science’ is not new except when it is clearly wrong; it deserves to be completely disregarded.” In private, though, several mutual friends told me, he fretted that in the long view of history it would overwhelm his work. In retrospect, I don’t think Mandelbrot had much to worry about on this account. The link from the above review came from Peter Woit, who also points to a review by Brian Hayes wit
Introduction: I remember in 4th grade or so, the teacher would give us a list of vocabulary words each week and we’d have to show we learned them by using each in a sentence. We quickly got bored and decided to do the assignment by writing a single sentence using all ten words. (Which the teacher hated, of course.) The above headline is in that spirit, combining blog posts rather than vocabulary words. But that only uses two of the entries. To really do the job, I’d need to throw in bivariate associations, ecological fallacies, high-dimensional feature selection, statistical significance, the suddenly unpopular name Hilary, snotty reviewers, the contagion of obesity, and milk-related spam. Or we could bring in some of the all-time favorites, such as Bayesians, economists, Finland, beautiful parents and their daughters, goofy graphics, red and blue states, essentialism in children’s reasoning, chess running, and zombies. Putting 8 of these in a single sentence (along with Glenn Hubbard
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Introduction: A colleague writes: When I was in NYC I went to this party by group of Japanese bio-scientists. There, one guy told me about how the biggest pharmaceutical company in Japan did their statistics. They ran 100 different tests and reported the most significant one. (This was in 2006 and he said they stopped doing this few years back so they were doing this until pretty recently…) I’m not sure if this was 100 multiple comparison or 100 different kinds of test but I’m sure they wouldn’t want to disclose their data… Ouch!
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Introduction: Matt Taibbi writes : Glenn Hubbard, Leading Academic and Mitt Romney Advisor, Took $1200 an Hour to Be Countrywide’s Expert Witness . . . Hidden among the reams of material recently filed in connection with the lawsuit of monoline insurer MBIA against Bank of America and Countrywide is a deposition of none other than Columbia University’s Glenn Hubbard. . . . Hubbard testified on behalf of Countrywide in the MBIA suit. He conducted an “analysis” that essentially concluded that Countrywide’s loans weren’t any worse than the loans produced by other mortgage originators, and that therefore the monstrous losses that investors in those loans suffered were due to other factors related to the economic crisis – and not caused by the serial misrepresentations and fraud in Countrywide’s underwriting. That’s interesting, because I worked on the other side of this case! I was hired by MBIA’s lawyers. It wouldn’t be polite of me to reveal my consulting rate, and I never actually got depose
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Introduction: I have a great idea for a movie. Actually two movies based on two variants of a similar idea. It all started when I saw this story: Dr. Anil Potti, the controversial cancer researcher whose work at Duke University led to lawsuits from patients, is now a medical oncologist at the Cancer Center of North Dakota in Grand Forks. When asked about Dr. Potti’s controversial appointment, his new boss said : If a guy can’t get a second chance here in North Dakota, where he trained, man, you can’t get a second chance anywhere. (Link from Retraction Watch , of course.) Potti’s boss is also quoted as saying, “Most, if not all, his patients have loved him.” On the other hand, the news article reports: “The North Carolina medical board’s website lists settlements against Potti of at least $75,000.” I guess there’s no reason you can’t love a guy and still want a juicy malpractice settlement. Second Chance U I don’t give two poops about Dr. Anil Potti. But seeing the above s
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Introduction: Commenters here are occasionally bothered that I spend so much time attacking frauds and plagiarists. See, for example, here and here . Why go on and on about these losers, given that there are more important problems in the world such as war, pestilence, hunger, and graphs where the y-axis doesn’t go all the way down to zero? Part of the story is that I do research for a living so I resent people who devalue research through misattribution or fraud, in the same way that rich people don’t like counterfeiters. What really bugs me, though, is when cheaters get caught and still don’t admit it. People like Hauser, Wegman, Fischer, and Weick get under my skin because they have the chutzpah to just deny deny deny. The grainy time-stamped videotape with their hand in the cookie jar is right there, and they’ll still talk around the problem. Makes me want to scream. This happens all the time . All. Over. The. Place. Everybody makes mistakes, and just about everybody does thing
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Introduction: A blog commenter pointed me to this news article on Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociology professor here: He was the subject last year of a grueling investigation into a quarter-million dollars of spending that Columbia auditors said was insufficiently documented, misappropriated or outright fabricated. According to internal documents from that investigation, which were obtained by The New York Times, the auditors said that Professor Venkatesh directed $52,328 to someone without any “documented evidence of work performed.” He listed a dinner for 25 people, relating to research on professional baseball players; auditors found that only 8 people had attended . . . All told, auditors questioned expenses amounting to $241,364.83. . . . Professor Venkatesh said in a brief phone conversation in October that he had repaid $13,000. . . . “I have never been accused of fraud or embezzlement.” One thing that frustrates me with newspaper articles is when they don’t follow up. Venkatesh was
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Introduction: Neil Malhotra writes: I just wanted to alert to this completely misinformed Politico article by Roger Simon, equating sampling theory with “magic.” Normally, I wouldn’t send you this, but I sent him a helpful email and he was a complete jerk about it. Wow—this is really bad. It’s so bad I refuse to link to it. I don’t know who this dude is, but it’s pitiful. Andy Rooney could do better. And I don’t mean Andy Rooney in his prime, I mean Andy Rooney right now. The piece appears to be an attempt at jocularity, but it’s about 10 million times worse than whatever the worst thing is that Dave Barry has ever written. My question to Neil Malhotra is . . . what made you click on this in the first place? P.S. John Sides piles on with some Gallup quotes.
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Introduction: Matt Taibbi writes : Glenn Hubbard, Leading Academic and Mitt Romney Advisor, Took $1200 an Hour to Be Countrywide’s Expert Witness . . . Hidden among the reams of material recently filed in connection with the lawsuit of monoline insurer MBIA against Bank of America and Countrywide is a deposition of none other than Columbia University’s Glenn Hubbard. . . . Hubbard testified on behalf of Countrywide in the MBIA suit. He conducted an “analysis” that essentially concluded that Countrywide’s loans weren’t any worse than the loans produced by other mortgage originators, and that therefore the monstrous losses that investors in those loans suffered were due to other factors related to the economic crisis – and not caused by the serial misrepresentations and fraud in Countrywide’s underwriting. That’s interesting, because I worked on the other side of this case! I was hired by MBIA’s lawyers. It wouldn’t be polite of me to reveal my consulting rate, and I never actually got depose
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