Category Archives: Academics

Don’t be negative

A guest op-ed in the Washington Post (by Vanderbilt Political Science Professor John G. Geer) makes the obvious point that "negative" ads are not ipso facto bad (a similar point was made more effectively I think by Jamison Foser at Media Matters, discussed by me here).  They are more likely, the author correctly argues, to provide information to the voter than "positive" ads.  This need not necessarily be the case, but it seems in fact to be the case (the author has empirical research to support this claim). 

My problem with this op-ed, however, is another.  In all of the discussion of "negative" ads, the author fails to distinguish between "attack" ads and "critical" ads.  One might make finer-grained distinctions, as I am sure someone has, but these will suffice for the moment.  Let's say a "critical" ad makes an argument against an opponent's position on some or other issue.  An "attack" ad consists argument free character style attacks.  Those, as anyone can see I think, are clearly different.

A defense of the one kind of negative ad, need not be a defense of the other.  I would argue in fact that defending critical ads entails rejecting "attack" ads as "politically informative."  So this, for instance, strikes me as a false equivalence:

And Obama's not innocent, either. While McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, blasted the Democratic nominee for his rather thin ties to a seemingly unrepentant member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground, Obama responded with an ad reminding voters of McCain's role in the "Keating Five" savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s. Recent data from Nielsen suggest that the campaigns have aired roughly the same number of negative ads. Even Karl Rove, who knows a thing or two about attack ads, has declared that both sides have gone too negative.

The thin links between Obama and Ayers made by the McCain campaign and Fox News are dishonest and misleading.  Obama's linking McCain to the Keathing Five is another matter.  McCain was a member of the Keating Five (otherwise it would have been four), he intervened on Keating's behalf, had a tight relationship to Keating and helped, in a legislative way, Keating commit fraud.  He was in fact officially reprimanded by the Senate for that.  The Ayers and Keating allegations are not, in other words, in the same logical category.  It would be very helpful, I think, to keep them distinct.

No one I talked to . . .

In light of the fact that this person is an academic and therefore ought to know better, this is a really abysmal premise:

WITH gestures that ranged from a wink to a sneer, most anyone you met here this week volunteered the view that Barack Obama’s visit to Europe caused unprecedented frenzy. But it’s been hard for me to find a European, aside from two Harvard-educated friends in Paris, who confessed to excitement — not just about the visit, but the prospect of an Obama presidency.

Try harder.  It's been hard for me to find anyone who voted for Bush or who thinks he has done one single thing right.

Evidence of absence

The other week George Will repeated his frequent claim that the simple correlation of crime rates and jail rates tells you something–that harsh jail sentences reduces crime.  One would have to be a fool, he alleges, to wonder whether that were the case.  With that in mind, it's interesting to read Cass Sunstein and Justin Wolfers (actual law professors) on the deterrent effect of the death penalty.  Their conclusion (after what appears to be actual research): dunno.  Here's a selection:

One might like to conclude that these latter studies demonstrate that the death penalty does not deter. But this is asking too much of the data. The number of homicides is so large, and varies so much year to year, that it is impossible to disentangle the effects of execution policy from other changes affecting murder rates. Moreover, execution policy doesn't change often or much. Just as a laboratory scientist with too few experimental subjects cannot draw strong conclusions, the best we can say is that homicide rates are not closely associated with capital punishment. On the basis of existing evidence, it is especially hard to justify claims about causality.

Justice Stevens argues, "In the absence of such evidence, deterrence cannot serve as a sufficient penological justification for this uniquely severe and irrevocable punishment." Perhaps. But the absence of evidence of deterrence should not be confused with evidence of absence.

Justice Scalia relies on the suggestion by Sunstein and Vermeule that some evidence suggests a possible deterrent effect. But that suggestion actually catalyzed Donohue and Wolfers's study of available empirical evidence. Existing studies contain significant statistical errors, and slightly different approaches yield widely varying findings, a problem exacerbated by researchers' tendency to report only those results supporting their conclusions. This led Sunstein and Vermeule to acknowledge: "We do not know whether deterrence has been shown. . . . Nor do we conclude that the evidence of deterrence has reached some threshold of reliability that permits or requires government action."

In short, the best reading of the accumulated data is that they do not establish a deterrent effect of the death penalty.

It seems to be obvious that Stevens believes the burden of proof lies with those who assert the causal connection.  In the absence of such evidence for their claim, they can't make the assertion.  Showing that it's not the case might be akin to making the accused prove that he's innocent.  For, after all, there's always the possibility that there is a correlation we haven't discovered yet (and the claims of astrology might also turn ought to be true).  Disproving such a connection would be very difficult and it's silly that Sunstein and Wolfers would suggest this a reasonable request–especially in an op-ed about causal connections for which they claim no positive evidence exists.

The absence of such a correlation, of course, might be seen as a separate question from whether the death penalty is justified (but they don't argue this).  If one's justification for capital punishment relies on deterrence, then the answer is obviously no.  They write:

Why is the Supreme Court debating deterrence? A prominent line of reasoning, endorsed by several justices, holds that if capital punishment fails to deter crime, it serves no useful purpose and hence is cruel and unusual, violating the Eighth Amendment. This reasoning tracks public debate as well. While some favor the death penalty on retributive grounds, many others (including President Bush) argue that the only sound reason for capital punishment is to deter murder.

We concur with Scalia that if a strong deterrent effect could be demonstrated, a plausible argument could be made on behalf of executions. But what if the evidence is inconclusive?

We are not sure how to answer that question. But as executions resume, the debates over the death penalty should not be distorted by a misunderstanding of what the evidence actually shows.

This is baffling.  While the authors deny positive evidence for deterrence, they fail to make the point that there might be some independent justification for capital punishment, like punishment.  Instead they retreat into an absurd hypothetical–if it does deter crime, then yes.  But there's no evidence that it does, so the reasonable conclusion would be that it's not justified on that basis, would it not?

Twaddle

Courtesy of Brian Leiter.  Here's noted historian of ancient philosophy (and much else) Jonathan Barnes on Contintental Philosophy:

[M]ost philosophers who belong to the so-called analytical tradition are pretty poor philosophers. (Most academics who do anything are pretty poor at doing it; and philosophy, or so it seems to me, is a subject in which it is peculiarly difficult to do decent stuff. A modestly competent historian may produce a modestly good history book; a modestly competent philosopher has no reason to publish his modest thoughts.)   But there's a big difference between the analyticals and the continentals: what distinguishes the continental tradition is that all its members are pretty hopeless at philosophy. Myself, I've read scarcely a hundred continental pages. I can't see how any rational being could bear to read more; and the only question which the continental tradition raises is sociological or psychological: How are so many apparently intelligent young people charmed into taking the twaddle seriously?

Why bother indeed with straw men, they take so much time to construct, just to knock down in the end.

 

Conservative thoughts

Perhaps this person could be nominated for the Self-Refuting Chair of Logic:

“The University of Colorado is considering a $9 million program to bring high-profile conservatives to teach on the left-leaning Boulder campus.”

From this affirmative action hire the occupant could rail against university education, intellectualism, and affirmative action.   

**h/t Stanley Fish.

I couldn’t help but think

People may have seen Hillary Clinton’s now much lampooned television advertisement.  She answers the phone at 3 AM, all ready for dealing with some  world crisis.  Some have seen a cause for concern.  Among them Harvard sociology Professor Orlando Patterson.  His op-ed contribution leaves much to be desired in the logic category.  We couldn’t help but think of two points.

First, the phrase "I couldn’t help but think of x" probably ought to be retired.  I don’t know when one can help but think of stuff.  The stuff I think of is mostly involuntary.  Well, here’s the phrase:

I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and
slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent
sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of
mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t
help but think of
D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist
movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of
black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger
implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering
the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to
protect us from this threat.

Pointing out that you couldn’t help but think of something seems like an odd way to separate yourself from your thoughts (he does it twice in this piece).  I can’t help but think of a lot of things.  But I can help but write them.

Here’s the second point (this point has, by the way, already been made across the blogosphere.  See the Daily Howler for particularly acute analysis). I think Patterson’s reading of this advert is way of the mark, particularly when it comes to the empirical questions.  He writes, later:

Did the message get through? Well, consider this: people who voted
early went overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama; those who made up their minds
during the three days after the ad was broadcast voted heavily for Mrs.
Clinton.

Don’t know about the implication there.  Seems like there are many obvious countervailing factors that need to be considered before one can buy the inference that the racist ad–actually, not just the ad, the racism of the ad–seriously changed people’s minds.  There’s more:

It is significant that the Clinton campaign used its telephone ad in
Texas, where a Fox poll conducted Feb. 26 to 28 showed that whites
favored Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent, and not
in Ohio, where she held a comfortable 16-point lead among whites. Exit
polls on March 4 showed the ad’s effect in Texas: a 12-point swing to
56 percent of white votes toward Mrs. Clinton. It is striking, too,
that during the same weekend the ad was broadcast, Mrs. Clinton refused
to state unambiguously that Mr. Obama is a Christian and has never been
a Muslim.

That last claim, I think, is dubious.  The poll reading, without question, leaves much to be desired.  I couldn’t help but think of that. 

Argumentum ad angelum

The following startling piece of reasoning may put us into new fallacy territory.  Glenn Reynolds, also known as Instapundit, writes:

RANK ANTISEMITISM in the Democratic congressional primary in Memphis:

"Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen and the JEWS HATE Jesus," blares the flier, which Cohen himself received in the mail — inducing gasps — last week.

Circulated by an African-American minister from Murfreesboro Tenn., which isn't even in Cohen's district, the literature encourages other black leaders in Memphis to "see to it that one and ONLY one black Christian faces this opponent of Christ and Christianity in the 2008 election."

Well, that just makes everybody look good. Jeez. I like Steve Cohen a lot, and not just because he once gave me some absolutely amazing John Fogerty tickets (to the Mud Island show that was his first appearance after a decade of not touring). But even if I didn't, this would be absolutely disgraceful. Perhaps Barack Obama should make a point of condemning this.

UPDATE: Why should Obama weigh in? Because he promises an uplifting new kind of politics and this is an ugly old kind. Because Steve Cohen is one of Obama's supporters, and political loyalty is supposed to run both ways — unless you're Hillary, anyway, and Obama's supposed to be the anti-Hillary. Because otherwise Obama's big appeal — I'm a black candidate who's not like Al Sharpton! — will be a fraud. And, of course, because it's the right thing to do.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, the "fraud" bit was a bit strong. But it is the right thing to do, and it's the kind of thing that a guy promising a new uplifting kind of politics ought to do. Trust me, if the racial angle were pointing the other way, this would be getting a lot of attention, especially if it could be tied to a Republican. And I say this, remember, as a guy who went after Trent Lott for a lot less.

Let me get this straight.  First, an African-American minister having no relation to the Obama campaign sent around an antisemitic flier about a supporter of Barack Obama–and this not because he is a supporter of Obama; Reynolds therefore adduces that Obama needs to condemn this specific instance of antisemitism.  Why?

1.  Obama promises uplifting politics, and this is not uplifting;

2.  Cohen supports Obama;

3.  Otherwise Obama will be no different from Al Sharpton;  

4.  It's the right thing to do. 

How to understand this?  The second update merely softens the "fraud" allegation but it doesn't retreat on the basic argument.

 1.  The first reason is a curious kind of ad hominemad angelum–against the angel.  Because Obama claims to be against such politics, he will be held responsible for every instance of them, regardless of their relation to him.  His failure to act will be a sign of hypocrisy. 

2.  The second one suggests that Obama is rather not an angel, but some kind of horrible friend for not coming to the defense of his supporter. 

3.  The third resembles the first in that it holds Obama responsible for the dastardly deeds of others.  But this is more specific in that it stresses only the actions of other African-American people.  That's a very odd position to take, for no one expects Glenn Reynolds to denounce every instance of white people behaving badly.   

4.  The fourth only works on the theory that it's always right always and everywhere to do what is right.  Everyone knows that.  But why is it the right thing in this particular case?  I think the first three reasons were meant to establish this.  But they didn't.  

We saw this sort of argument a few weeks ago.  Richard Cohen had demanded Obama disagree more with someone's daughter's friend.  That failure, in Cohen's mind, results in Obama's embracing the ideas of someone who supports him.  We might have termed that argument an argumentum ad amici amicum–argument against the friend of a friend.

These arguments share the strained relevance of the ad hominem argument, but they carry one step further by replacing the attack the character of the arguer with an attack on the views of people in some (very distant) way associated with the initial arguer.  This loose association serves then as justification for the demand that the initial arguer vociferously condemn the actions or words of the loosely associated persons or risk confirming the initial suspicions.  When the pool of possibly associated individuals as large as Reynolds makes it, this becomes a rather difficult task.

via Crooked Timber and Sadly, No

de Causis

There's another new book out about how God doesn't exist, this time by a mathematician (where are the philosophers?). It got panned in a quotation-rich review in the New York Times.  If the quotations are representative, then no wonder:

In his opening chapters Mr. Paulos uses simple logic to point up the gaping holes in the so-called first-cause argument. “Either everything has a cause, or there’s something that doesn’t,” he writes. “The first-cause argument collapses into this hole whichever tack we take. If everything has a cause, then God does, too, and there is no first cause. And if something doesn’t have a cause, it may as well be the physical world.”

What’s more, he notes, “the uncaused first cause needn’t have any traditional God-like qualities. It’s simply first, and as we know from other realms, being first doesn’t mean being best. No one brags about still using the first personal computers to come on the market. Even if the first cause existed, it might simply be a brute fact — or even worse, an actual brute.”

Doesn't seem the author has much familiarity with first-cause arguments.  They typically make the distinction between the idea of a first cause and the idea of an uncaused cause.  A first cause comes first in a series; an uncaused cause may not be a member of a series.  As any student of intro to philosophy of religion knows, these represent entirely different arguments and one can't just lump them together. I might wonder about the author of the book, but I'm rather more perplexed by the review.

If I might whine a little bit here.  The reviewer doesn't seem aware that there's an entire specialty that concerns itself with this kind of business.  It's been at it for maybe 2500 years.  While it's astounding that a non-specialist could simply thrust himself into this discussion completely unaware of its manifold iterations, it's depressing that the reviewer of the book doesn't bother to point out that simple fact.  

 

Don’t ask me, I’m not a scientist

The New York Times reports that you can now get a master's degree in creationism from Texas:

HOUSTON — A Texas higher education panel has recommended allowing a Bible-based group called the Institute for Creation Research to offer online master’s degrees in science education.

The action comes weeks after the Texas Education Agency’s director of science, Christine Castillo Comer, lost her job after superiors accused her of displaying bias against creationism and failing to be “neutral” over the teaching of evolution.

The state’s commissioner of higher education, Raymund A. Paredes, said late Monday that he was aware of the institute’s opposition to evolution but was withholding judgment until the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board meets Jan. 24 to rule on the recommendation, made last Friday, by the board’s certification advisory council.

Henry Morris III, the chief executive of the Institute for Creation Research, said Tuesday that the proposed curriculum, taught in California, used faculty and textbooks “from all the top schools” along with, he said, the “value added” of challenges to standard teachings of evolution.

“Where the difference is, we provide both sides of the story,” Mr. Morris said. On its Web site, the institute declares, “All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the creation week” and says it “equips believers with evidences of the Bible’s accuracy and authority through scientific research, educational programs, and media presentations, all conducted within a thoroughly biblical framework.”

It also says “the harmful consequences of evolutionary thinking on families and society (abortion, promiscuity, drug abuse, homosexuality and many others) are evident all around us.”

You may wonder what bright stars the state of Texas has to consider such accreditation questions: 

Asked how the institute could educate students to teach science, Dr. Paredes, who holds a doctorate in American civilization from the University of Texas and served 10 years as vice chancellor for academic development at the University of California, said, “I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.”

 

 

 

 

More on bias in academia

The New York Times and the Washington Post must be under some kind of obligation to run an “academia is biased to the left” piece once or twice a year (excluding, of course, the regular appearance of this theme in the columns of David Brooks and George Will, to give two examples). And yesterday’s Outlook section in the Washington Post has another one.

According to the formula, it begins with an unverifiable anecdote:

>A sociologist I know recalls that his decision to become a registered Republican caused “a sensation” at his university. “It was as if I had become a child molester,” he said. He eventually quit academia to join a think tank because “you don’t want to be in a department where everyone hates your guts.”

>I think my political views hurt my career some years back when I was interviewing for a job at a prestigious research university. Everything seemed to be going well until I mentioned, in a casual conversation with department members over dinner, that I planned to vote Republican in the upcoming presidential election. Conversation came to a halt, and someone quickly changed the subject. The next day, I thought my final interview went fairly well. But the department ended up hiring someone who had published far less, but apparently “fit” better than I did. At least that’s what I was told when I called a month later to learn the outcome of the job search, having never received any further communication from the school. (A friend at the same university later told me he didn’t believe that particular department would ever hire a Republican.)

>Now there is more data backing up experiences like mine. Recently, my Villanova colleague Richard Redding and my longtime collaborator Frederick Hess commissioned a set of studies to ascertain how rare conservative professors really are, and why. We wanted real scholars to use real data to study whether academia really has a PC problem. While our work was funded by the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute, we (and our funders) have been very clear about our intention to go wherever the data would take us.

For those of you who don’t know what it’s like to look for a job in academia, the experience he mentions is completely common. Having been on both sides of hiring committees, “fit” considerations (not merely publications) can play a very central role. Besides, how can the author tell that he was rejected because he said he would vote Republican? He can’t read the minds of that committee, and no amount of research of the AEI is going to vindicate him. That anecdote, in other words, illustrates nothing other than the lazy way this guy reaches conclusions.

Of course, I’m just saying that because I’m biased.

There’s a better discussion of this piece (and this type of piece) at LGM.