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December 27, 2013 | NYTimes.com
Published: 440 Comments
Signs of the energy business are inescapable in and around Houston - the pipelines, refineries and tankers that crowd the harbor, and the gleaming office towers where oil companies and energy traders have transformed the skyline.
And in a squat glass building on the University of Houston campus, a measure of the industry's pre-eminence can also be found in the person of Craig Pirrong, a professor of finance, who sits at the nexus of commerce and academia.
As energy companies and traders have reaped fortunes by buying and selling oil and other commodities during the recent boom in the commodity markets, Mr. Pirrong has positioned himself as the hard-nosed defender of financial speculators - the combative, occasionally acerbic academic authority to call upon when difficult questions arise in Congress and elsewhere about the multitrillion-dollar global commodities trade.
Do financial speculators and commodity index funds drive up prices of oil and other essentials, ultimately costing consumers? Since 2006, Mr. Pirrong has written a flurry of influential letters to federal agencies arguing that the answer to that question is an emphatic no. He has testified before Congress to that effect, hosted seminars with traders and government regulators, and given countless interviews for financial publications absolving Wall Street speculation of any appreciable role in the price spikes.
What Mr. Pirrong has routinely left out of most of his public pronouncements in favor of speculation is that he has reaped financial benefits from speculators and some of the largest players in the commodities business, The New York Times has found.
While his university's financial ties to speculators have been the subject of scrutiny by the news media and others, it was not until last month, after repeated requests by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act, that the University of Houston, a public institution, insisted that Mr. Pirrong submit disclosure forms that shed some light on those financial ties.
Governments and regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe have been gradually moving to restrict speculation by major banks. The Federal Reserve, concerned about the risks, is reviewing whether it should tighten regulations and limit the activities of banks in the commodities world.
But interviews with dozens of academics and traders, and a review of hundreds of emails and other documents involving two highly visible professors in the commodities field - Mr. Pirrong and Professor Scott H. Irwin at the University of Illinois - show how major players on Wall Street and elsewhere have been aggressive in underwriting and promoting academic work.
The efforts by the financial players, the interviews show, are part of a sweeping campaign to beat back regulation and shape policies that affect the prices that people around the world pay for essentials like food, fuel and cotton.
Professors Pirrong and Irwin say that industry backing did not color their opinions.
Mr. Pirrong's research was cited extensively by the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by Wall Street interests in 2011 that for two years has blocked the limits on speculation that had been approved by Congress as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. During that same time period, Mr. Pirrong has worked as a paid research consultant for one of the lead plaintiffs in the case, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, according to his disclosure form.
While he customarily identifies himself solely as an academic, Mr. Pirrong has been compensated in the last several years by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the commodities trading house Trafigura, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and a handful of companies that speculate in energy, according to the disclosure forms.
The disclosure forms do not require Mr. Pirrong to reveal how much money he made from his consulting work, and a university spokesman said that the university believed it was strengthened by the financial support it received from the business community. When asked about the financial benefits of his outside activities, Mr. Pirrong replied, "That's between me and the I.R.S."
Debating to a Stalemate
No one disputes that a substantial portion of price increases in oil and food over the last decade were caused by fundamental market factors: increased demand from China and other industrializing countries, extreme weather, currency fluctuations and the diversion of grain to biofuel.
But so much speculative money poured into markets - from $13 billion in 2003 to $317 billion at a peak in 2008 - that many economists, and even some commodities traders and investment banks, say the flood became a factor of its own in distorting prices.
Others assert that commodities markets have historically gone through intermittent price bubbles and that the most recent gyrations were not caused by the influx of speculative money. Mr. Pirrong has also argued that the huge inflow of Wall Street money may actually lower costs by decreasing what commodities producers pay to manage their risk.
Mr. Pirrong and the University of Houston are not alone in publicly defending speculation while accepting financial help from speculators. Other researchers have received funding or paid consulting jobs courtesy of major commodities traders including AIG Financial Products, banks including the Royal Bank of Canada or financial industry groups like the Futures Industry Association.
One of the most widely quoted defenders of speculation in agricultural markets, Mr. Irwin of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, consults for a business that serves hedge funds, investment banks and other commodities speculators, according to information received by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act. The business school at the University of Illinois has received more than a million dollars in donations from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and several major commodities traders, to pay for scholarships and classes and to build a laboratory that resembles a trading floor at the commodities market.
Mr. Irwin, the University of Illinois and the Chicago exchange all say that his research is not related to the financial support.
Underwriting researchers and academic institutions is one part of Wall Street's efforts to fend off regulation.
The industry has also spent millions on lobbyists and lawyers to promote its views in Congress and with government regulators. Major financial companies have also funded magazines and websites to promote academics with friendly points of view. When two studies commissioned by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the financial regulatory agency, raised questions about the possible drawbacks of speculation and of high-frequency trading, lawyers for the Chicago exchange wrote a letter of complaint, saying that its members' proprietary trading information was at risk of disclosure, and the research program was shut down.
The result of the various Wall Street efforts has been a policy stalemate that has allowed intensive speculation in commodities to continue despite growing concern that it may harm consumers and, for example, worsen food shortages. After a two-year legal delay, the futures trading commission this month introduced plans for new limits on speculation. Some European banks have stopped speculating in food, fearing it might contribute to worldwide hunger.
Mr. Pirrong, Mr. Irwin and other scholars say that financial considerations have not influenced their work. In some cases they have gone against the industry's interests. They also say that other researchers with no known financial ties to the industry have also raised doubts about any link involving speculation and soaring prices.
But ethics experts say that when academics fail to disclose financial ties, they do a disservice to the public and undermine the perception of impartiality.
"If those that are creating the culture around financial regulation also have a significant, if hidden, conflict of interest, our public is not likely to be well served," said Gerald Epstein, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who in 2010 released a study about conflicts of interest among academics who advised the federal government after the financial crisis.
Speculation in the Market
Financial ties among professors promoting speculation and the banks and trading firms that profit from it date back to the beginning of the recent commodities boom, which got an intellectual kick-start from academia.
After Congress and the Clinton administration deregulated the commodities markets in 2000, and the Securities and Exchange Commission lowered capital requirements on investment banks in 2004, the financial giants began developing new funds to capitalize on the opportunity.
AIG Financial Products commissioned two highly respected Yale University professors in 2004 to analyze the performance of commodities markets over a half-century. The professors - who prominently acknowledged the financial support - concluded that commodities markets "work well when they are needed most," namely when the stock and bond markets falter.
Money flowed into the commodities markets, and although the markets have cooled in the last two years, the price of oil is now four times what it was a decade ago, and corn, wheat and soybeans are all more than twice as expensive.
A public uproar about the rising prices became heated in the spring of 2008, as oil soared and gas prices became an issue in the presidential campaign. Congress scheduled public hearings to explore whether speculation had become so excessive it was distorting prices.
Financial speculators are investors who bet on price swings without any intention of taking delivery of the physical commodity. They can help smooth the volatility of the market by adding capital, spreading risk and offering buyers and sellers a kind of price insurance. But an assortment of studies by academics, congressional committees and consumer advocate groups had found evidence suggesting that the wave of speculation that accelerated in 2003 had at times overwhelmed the market.
Financial speculators accounted for 30 percent of commodities markets in 2002, and 70 percent in 2008. As gasoline topped $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008, Congress tried to soothe angry motorists by pushing for restrictions on oil speculation.
Mr. Pirrong jumped into the fray. He wrote papers, blog posts and opinion pieces for publications like The Wall Street Journal, calling the concern about speculation "a witch hunt."
Mr. Pirrong also testified before the House of Representatives in 2008 and, identifying himself as an academic who had worked for commodities exchanges a decade earlier, he warned that congressional plans to rein in speculators would only make matters worse.
"Indeed, such policies are likely to harm U.S. consumers and producers," he said. When oil company executives, traders and investment banks cited speculation as a major cause of surging prices which, by some estimates, was costing American consumers more than $300 billion a year, Mr. Pirrong dutifully contradicted them.
Mr. Pirrong's profile grew as he sat on advisory panels and hosted conferences with senior executives from the trading world as well as top federal regulators. Last year, Blythe Masters, head of commodity trading at JPMorgan Chase, approached him to write a report for a global bank lobbying group, the Global Financial Markets Association.
The report was completed in July 2012, but the association declined to release it. Mr. Pirrong said it was because he had reached the conclusion that banks should be regulated more heavily than other commodity traders. "I wouldn't change the call, so they sat on the report," he wrote on his blog, The Streetwise Professor.
What Mr. Pirrong did not reveal in his public statements about the report is that he had financial ties to both sides of that debate: the commodities traders as well as the banks. Ms. Masters declined to comment. Over the years, Mr. Pirrong has resisted releasing details of his own financial dealings with speculators, and when The Times first requested his disclosure forms in March, the University of Houston said that none were required of him. The disclosure forms Mr. Pirrong ultimately filed in November indicate that since 2011, he has been paid for outside work involving 11 different clients. Some fees are for his work as an expert witness, testifying in court cases on behalf of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and a bank and a company that makes futures-trading software. The commodities firm Trafigura contracted him to conduct a research project.
Mr. Pirrong is also a member of the advisory board for TruMarx Partners, a company that sells software to energy traders, a position that entitles him to a stock option package.
It was reported in The Nation magazine in November that the University of Houston's Global Energy Management Institute, where Mr. Pirrong serves as a director, has also received funding from the Chicago exchange, as well as financial institutions that profit from speculation, including Citibank and Bank of America.
On his blog, Mr. Pirrong has dismissed suggestions that his work for a school that trains future oil industry executives creates a conflict of interest.
"Uhm, no, dipstick," he wrote in 2011, replying to a reader who had questioned his objectivity. "I call 'em like I see 'em." In a telephone interview last week, Mr. Pirrong said that his consulting work gave him insight into the kind of real-world case studies that improve his research and teaching. "My compensation doesn't depend on my conclusions," he said.
When asked about Mr. Pirrong's disclosure, Richard Bonnin, a university spokesman said only that all employees were given annual training on the school's policy, which requires researchers to report paid outside consultant work.
Professors as Pitchmen
Concerns about academic conflicts of interest have become a major issue among business professors and economists since the financial crisis. In 2010, the documentary "Inside Job" blasted a handful of prominent academic economists who did not reveal Wall Street's financial backing of studies which, in some cases, extolled the virtues of financially unsound assets. Two years later, the American Economic Association adopted tougher disclosure rules.
Even with the guidelines, however, financial firms have been able to use the resources and credibility of academia to shape the political debate.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for example, at times blur the line between research and public relations.
The exchange's public relations staff has helped Mr. Irwin shop his pro-speculation essays to newspaper op-ed pages, according to emails reviewed by The Times. His studies, writings, videotaped speeches and interviews have been displayed on the exchange's website and its online magazine.
In June 2009, when a Senate subcommittee released a report about speculation in the wheat market that raised concerns about new regulations, executives at the Chicago exchange turned to Mr. Irwin and his University of Illinois colleagues to come up with a response.
Dr. Paul Ellinger, department head of agriculture and consumer economics, said, "The interactions that have occurred here are common among researchers."
A spokesman for the exchange said that Mr. Irwin was just one of a "large and growing pool of esteemed academics, governmental editors and editors in the mainstream press" whose work it follows and posts on its various publications. While the C.M.E. has given more than $1.4 million to the University of Illinois since 2008, most has gone to the business school and none to the School of Agriculture and Consumer Economics, where Mr. Irwin teaches. And when Mr. Irwin asked the exchange's foundation for $25,000 several years ago to sponsor a website he runs to inform farmers about agricultural conditions and regulations, his request was denied.
Still, some of Mr. Irwin's recent research has been funded by major players in the commodities world. Last year, he was paid $50,000 as a consultant for Gresham Investment Management in Chicago, which manages $16 billion and runs its own commodities index fund. He noted Gresham's sponsorship in the paper and on his disclosure form, and said it gave him the opportunity to use new data and test new hypotheses.
Mr. Irwin also works for a business called Yieldcast that caters to agricultural producers, investments banks and other speculators, selling them predictions of corn and soybean yields. Mr. Irwin has said he does not consider it a conflict because he works only with the mathematical forecasting models and never consults with clients.
"The debate about financialization is primarily about the large index funds, none of whom are clients," he said.
Mr. Irwin declined to provide a list of his clients, and the university said its disclosure requirements did not compel him to do so.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 31, 2013
An article on Saturday about financial rewards from Wall Street to academic experts whose research supports the financial community's views on commodity trading misidentified a Canadian bank and commodities trader that financed the work of academic researchers or paid consultants. It is the Royal Bank of Canada, not the Bank of Canada, which is that nation's central bank. The article also rendered incorrectly the university affiliation of Scott H. Irwin, a prominent defender of speculation in agricultural markets. He is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - not Champaign-Urbana. And a picture caption with the continuation of the article misidentified the subject of one of several pictures. The lower right photograph showed the atrium of the University of Illinois's business school - not its Market Information Lab, which was shown behind Professor Irwin in the photograph at the left.
Related
The House Edge: Off Limits, but Blessed by the Fed (December 22, 2013)
The House Edge: Wall St. Exploits Ethanol Credits, and Prices Spike (September 15, 2013)
- Response from the academic criminal: Streetwise Professor
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Dec 17, 2013 | Economist's View
Antonio Fatas:
Four missing ingredients in macroeconomic models: It is refreshing to see top academics questioning some of the assumptions that economists have been using in their models. Krugman, Brad DeLong and many others are opening a methodological debate about what constitute an acceptable economic model and how to validate its predictions. The role of micro foundations, the existence of a natural state towards the economy gravitates,... are all very interesting debates that tend to be ignored (or assumed away) in academic research.I would like to go further and add a few items to their list... In random order:
1. The business cycle is not symmetric. ... Interestingly, it was Milton Friedman who put forward the "plucking" model of business cycles as an alternative to the notion that fluctuations are symmetric. In Friedman's model output can only be below potential or maximum. If we were to rely on asymmetric models of the business cycle, our views on potential output and the natural rate of unemployment would be radically different. We would not be rewriting history to claim that in 2007 GDP was above potential in most OECD economies and we would not be arguing that the natural unemployment rate in Southern Europe is very close to its actual.
2. ...most academic research is produced around models where small and frequent shocks drive economic fluctuations, as opposed to large and infrequent events. The disconnect comes probably from the fact that it is so much easier to write models with small and frequent shocks than having to define a (stochastic?) process for large events. It gets even worse if one thinks that recessions are caused by the dynamics generated during expansions. Most economic models rely on unexpected events to generate crisis, and not on the internal dynamics that precede the crisis.
[A little bit of self-promotion: my paper with Ilian Mihov on the shape and length of recoveries presents some evidence in favor of these two hypothesis.]
3. There has to be more than price rigidity. ...
4. The notion that co-ordination across economic agents matters to explain the dynamics of business cycles receives very limited attention in academic research. ...
I am aware that they are plenty of papers that deal with these four issues, some of them published in the best academic journals. But most of these papers are not mainstream. Most economists are sympathetic to these assumption but avoid writing papers using them because they are afraid they will be told that their assumptions are ad-hoc and that the model does not have enough micro foundations (for the best criticism of this argument, read the latest post of Simon Wren-Lewis). Time for a change?
Jeffrey Stewart"Krugman, Brad DeLong and many others are opening a methodological debate about what constitute an acceptable economic model and how to validate its predictions." -M. Thoma
The major problem is right here. Predictions as a theory evaluation criterion is misguided, ideological bunk. As long as neoclassical economists are focused on predictions, they are free to avoid analyzing capitalism as it really exists.
The main topic for scientific economics is EXPLAINING the normal, profitable operation of capitalism and why it breaks down. Neoclassical economists will never uncover the truth about capitalism as long as they utilize models whose exact relationship to capitalist reality is at best unknown and at worst absurd. That is, as long as they focus on predictions instead of explanations they are engaged in a apologetics and not science.
Dan
4. The notion that co-ordination across economic agents matters to explain the dynamics of business cycles receives very limited attention in academic research. ...
YES!!!!
And who exactly does the coordinating? well, families of course, and managers and owners and corporations - with in whatever rules and societal norms exist - AND the Government.The Government is a central component of a modern economy including and centrally as a coordinating agent on behalf of all the little agents. The Reagan revolution solved the 70s by throwing out government - who will save us from the 00s and increase effective coordination???
Also, can we just through out the idea of equilibrium? It's not all bad, but somehow I have a strong suspicion that Econ would be better off without it.
DrDick
I think he is really on target with the issue of the systematic connection between the dynamics of booms and the following crisis, as well as the stochastic elements in the business cycle. Both seem well supported by the observed patterns over the past 40 years. I also think far too little attention has been given to economic collusion, despite the fact the Adam Smith observed that it is near universal among capital.
bakho
One of the keys to recession is the change in velocity. In the last recession we saw great increase in the money supply reflected in decreases in velocity. Models that considered velocity nearly constant failed.
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December 9, 2013 | theguardian.com
The Guardian, Monday 14.30 EST
Jump to comments (228)We all know what distorting incentives have done to finance and banking. The incentives my colleagues face are not huge bonuses, but the professional rewards that accompany publication in prestigious journals – chiefly Nature, Cell and Science.
These luxury journals are supposed to be the epitome of quality, publishing only the best research. Because funding and appointment panels often use place of publication as a proxy for quality of science, appearing in these titles often leads to grants and professorships. But the big journals' reputations are only partly warranted. While they publish many outstanding papers, they do not publish only outstanding papers. Neither are they the only publishers of outstanding research.
These journals aggressively curate their brands, in ways more conducive to selling subscriptions than to stimulating the most important research. Like fashion designers who create limited-edition handbags or suits, they know scarcity stokes demand, so they artificially restrict the number of papers they accept. The exclusive brands are then marketed with a gimmick called "impact factor" – a score for each journal, measuring the number of times its papers are cited by subsequent research. Better papers, the theory goes, are cited more often, so better journals boast higher scores. Yet it is a deeply flawed measure, pursuing which has become an end in itself – and is as damaging to science as the bonus culture is to banking.
It is common, and encouraged by many journals, for research to be judged by the impact factor of the journal that publishes it. But as a journal's score is an average, it says little about the quality of any individual piece of research. What is more, citation is sometimes, but not always, linked to quality. A paper can become highly cited because it is good science – or because it is eye-catching, provocative or wrong. Luxury-journal editors know this, so they accept papers that will make waves because they explore sexy subjects or make challenging claims. This influences the science that scientists do. It builds bubbles in fashionable fields where researchers can make the bold claims these journals want, while discouraging other important work, such as replication studies.
In extreme cases, the lure of the luxury journal can encourage the cutting of corners, and contribute to the escalating number of papers that are retracted as flawed or fraudulent. Science alone has recently retracted high-profile papers reporting cloned human embryos, links between littering and violence, and the genetic profiles of centenarians. Perhaps worse, it has not retracted claims that a microbe is able to use arsenic in its DNA instead of phosphorus, despite overwhelming scientific criticism.
There is a better way, through the new breed of open-access journals that are free for anybody to read, and have no expensive subscriptions to promote. Born on the web, they can accept all papers that meet quality standards, with no artificial caps. Many are edited by working scientists, who can assess the worth of papers without regard for citations. As I know from my editorship of eLife, an open access journal funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Max Planck Society, they are publishing world-class science every week.
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I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but Ben Goldacre's book "Bad Science" is an interesting and relevant read
http://www.badscience.net/In the early days of the EFQM http://www.efqm.org/en/tabid/132/default.aspx I believe they did some research that showed how the Dunning-Kruger effect inflated self assessment scores from less mature organisations to a level that would be a major achievement for a world class organisation.
James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/
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Benedict@Large : \
On an adjacent post, someone remarked that economics wasn't a science. This isn't true. The problem is that too many of the people practicing economics (including most of the mainstream ... present company excepted) aren't scientists, and are only doing so because monied interests are paying their way to be in the way.
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Pseudoscience is a term commonly applied to any body of knowledge, methodology, or practice that is portrayed as scientific but diverges substantially from the required standards for scientific work or is unsupported by scientific research.[1] (See Scientific method.)
The term "pseudoscience" generally has negative connotations because it asserts that things so labeled are inaccurately or deceptively described as science. As such, those labeled as practicing or advocating a "pseudoscience" almost always reject this classification.
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Economist's View
Mike the Mad Biologist:The Age of Denial and the Marketplace of Ideas: I probably should have written "The Age of Denial Results from the Marketplace of Ideas." Physicist Adam Frank at the NY Times tackles the topic of denialism and science ...
Mark Thoma lists a bunch of reasons why this might be the case (boldface mine):
•The cranks have always been there, but today digital technology makes it easier to gain a platform.
•The stakes are higher, so winning is the only thing.
•Scientists have pushed too far and offered evidence as though it were fact, only to have to reverse themselves later (e.g. types of food that are harmful/helpful) eroding trust.
•Science education is so bad that the typical reporter has no idea how to tell fact from "manufactured doubt," and the resulting he said, she said journalism leaves the impression that both sides have a valid point.
•Scientists became too arrogant and self-important to interact with the lowly public, and it has cost them.
•The political sphere has become ever more polarized and insular making it much easier for false ideas intended to promote political or economic gain to reverberate within the groups.
•Nothing has really changed, old people always think their age was the golden one.I would add to the list:
•The opposition to certain fields and findings of science is central to self-identity and part of a larger world view and way of life (e.g., fundamentalist doctrines). It transcends data-driven assessment of single issues. Typically, people will resist changing their minds and only do so after a trauma or betrayal (personal or group) forces them to confront their inconsistencies.
I would argue the widespread acceptance of racism–I mean the flat-out, stone cold kind, not subtle prejudice–for much of the twentieth century has to be one of the dumbest displays of denialism. And it was certainly tied into notions of self-identity ("If you ain't better than a…, then who are you better than?"). So the oldsters, like Tolstoy's unhappy families, were stupid in their own ways.
But I want to return to the notion of a marketplace of ideas. I dislike that metaphor because it implies ideas are judged not on their validity, but on how well they are marketed. The implication of this is that once some rich wacko decides to fund a 'faith-tank', that entity essentially becomes a Self-Perpetuating Bullshit Machine, and is unstoppable. It's relatively cheap to 'put ideas out there.' More importantly, there's no way to stop them from doing so, nor do the individual actors pushing these ideas have any incentive to stop.
One more way we have commodified the previously uncommodifiable*.
*Or least to a recently unprecedented extent.
kievite:
The key problem IMHO is that the science became political.
And well organized minority with money can dictate the political discourse to the less organized majority. That's how societies are organized (Iron law of oligarchy).
That means that well financed cranks employed in think tanks by elite for particular (often nefarious) purposes are now the feature not an aberration. They are an integral part of the modern social landscape.
Remember Academician Trofim Lysenko who pioneered the use a totalitarian state to suppress all research in genetics for almost three decades(1935-1965). Looks like his methods found a lot of talented followers in the West ;-)
Now we have Lysenkoism as a mainstream phenomenon. In other words parts of the science are now organized like high demand cult.
beezer:
The Grand Old Party has fallen prey to a boatload of goofy economic ideas and become the Goofy Old Party. Trickle down, giving rich people tax cuts makes money for everyone else, rising tide lifts all boats (everyone has boats? who knew?), firing people creates more jobs, cutting pay and benefits increases spending and demand, closing voting locations in poor areas increases voting election integrity. But it gets worse, goofy ideas crowd out good ideas.
Romneycare works but the Goofy party has become so goofy it opposed it's own plan in Obamacare. Government spending is all waste. Goofy. So we can't have infrastructure spending that would create good jobs for millions of Americans. Goofy crowds out good. Government R&D is wasteful. Goofy. State funded R&D was the primary innovation force for the past 50 years: Internet, chip technology, Siri, touch screen, and pretty much everything Apple sells, nanotechnology, biotechnology, the algorithm that created Google--the list is almost comprehensive. Goofy crowds out good. But money talks louder than anything else, it seems. And if goofy is what's needed to get that big money happy, then it's goofy we get. From the Goofy Old Party.
jrossi:
I think the biggest factor is the internet giving fools and knaves a huge megaphone. That combined with confusion and distraction go a long way towards explaining this.
As regards science confusion, science is too hard. Only nerds are interested.
Dave:
"But I want to return to the notion of a marketplace of ideas. I dislike that metaphor because it implies ideas are judged not on their validity, but on how well they are marketed."
You might not like it, but can you explain how that isn't an accurate depiction of reality? When faced with the kind of decisions that ordinary people cannot possibly understand, they will tend to choose the better marketing so long as it comes from people that seem to be experts.
For example, if you, an economist, are trying to decide between 2 different personal computer purchases, how do you go about doing it? I doubt you carefully weigh the pros and cons of various RAM sockets and SSD hard drives, but instead talk to someone who you trust who seems like s/he knows what that all means. And the thing is, because you aren't an expert, you can't know if that expert is lying to you.
The same phenomenon happens to most people on matters of public policy. If all the apparent experts you're exposed to are saying global warming is a myth cooked up by Al Gore to convince America to give up their freedom, then you're going to believe it.
grizzled:
The world has become complicated enough that no one can master the facts of more than one or two of a number of technically complicated but highly significant issues.
For instance, consider the question of whether waste material from nuclear power can be disposed of safely. I believe it can solely on the basis of an NSF study, which is the best information I know of. I am totally unable to evaluate the question myself.
Studies of the psychology of denialism have identified the choice of who qualifies as an expert to be a crucial variable. People tend to choose those who give answers that fit the rest of their world view. Present company excepted, of course.
But the only alternative to relying on experts is to be an expert, and this is impossible.
bakho:
Some of these goofy ideas turn out to be good investments. Millions of Rubes will pay top dollar to see statues of Adam and Eve next to the dinosaurs. WTF/
Glen:
Unfortunately we seem to be unable to convince the rest of the world to be science deniers.
Just another reason our economy is being shipped overseas.
Bill Tozier:
Has nobody ever read John Dewey on the importance of habit in psychology? Because yes, of course, and I'm pretty sure he even said why, and how to go about changing it.
And the missing link was: http://books.google.com/books?id=sx74ybdAJ8IC
Dismalist :
Well, another market failure! OK, let's abolish the market in ideas. Expression only with Genehmigung. By whom?
grizzled
" I dislike that metaphor because it implies ideas are judged not on their validity, but on how well they are marketed."
The people who first used this metaphor cheerfully assumed that high quality wins in the marketplace, at least eventually.
We now doubt this. What is the alternative?
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Jul 17, 2013 | Bloomberg
Is economics a science or a religion? Its practitioners like to think of it as akin to the former. The blind faith with which many do so suggests it has become too much like the latter, with potentially dire consequences for the real people the discipline is intended to help.
The idea of economics as religion harks back to at least 2001, when economist Robert Nelson published a book on the subject. Nelson argued that the policy advice economists draw from their theories is never "value-neutral" but foists their values, dressed up to look like objective science, on the rest of us.
Take, for example, free trade. In judging its desirability, economists weigh projected costs and benefits, an approach that superficially seems objective. Yet economists decide what enters the analysis and what gets ignored. Such things as savings in wages or transport lend themselves easily to measurement in monetary terms, while others, such as the social disruption of a community, do not. The mathematical calculations give the analysis a scientific wrapping, even when the content is just an expression of values.
Similar biases influence policy considerations on everything from labor laws to climate change. As Nelson put it, "the priesthood of a modern secular religion of economic progress" has pushed a narrow vision of economic "efficiency," wholly undeterred by a history of disastrous outcomes.
Rational Responses
The economic zeal reached its peak several years back, when a number of economists openly celebrated what they called economic imperialism -- the notion that the inherent superiority of their way of thinking would lead it to displace all other social sciences. Academics sought to bring the advanced calculus of rationality -- with its assumption that everything can be explained by people's perfectly rational responses to incentives -- to the primitives in fields ranging from sociology to anthropology.
The imperial adventure lost much of its momentum in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. More attention has turned to the psychological, or behavioral, revolution, which has established that the rational ideal of economic theory isn't even a good starting point as a crude caricature of the way real people act. We're often goal-oriented, of course, but we seek those goals through imperfect heuristic rules and trial and error, learning as we go. If anything, rationality is the anomaly in human life.
Of equal significance is a growing acceptance of Nelson's larger point: that economics is riddled with hidden value judgments that make its advice far from scientific. In one notable development, the Journal of Economic Perspectives published a paper by economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson that examines how value judgments -- in this case, the dismissal of political repercussions -- have undermined well-intentioned economic interventions.
Most economists, for instance, see the weakening of trade unions in the U.S. and other Western nations in the past few decades as a good thing, because unions' monopoly power over wages impairs companies' ability to adapt to the demands of the market. As Acemoglu and Robinson point out, however, unions do a lot more than influence the supply and cost of labor. In particular, they have historically played a prominent role in creating and supporting democracy, in limiting the political power of corporations, and in mitigating income inequality.
Narrow policy analyses have repeatedly led economists to push for policies that have had unexpected consequences for the balance of political power. Acemoglu and Robinson cite the push to privatize industries in Russia in the 1990s. The idea was that private ownership, no matter how it came about, would ultimately benefit the entire economy. In practice, a rigged process gave rise to an illegitimate oligarchy and an increase in inequality that set the stage for the ascendance of President Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime.
Tragic Flaw
More recently, the gospel of economic efficiency helped lay the groundwork for the financial crisis, mostly by encouraging overconfidence in the wonders of financial engineering. Theory-induced dreams of market discipline provided justification for stripping away entirely sensible regulations, such as barriers between commercial and investment banking, and for avoiding oversight of the booming trade in derivatives. One result was an extremely wealthy financial lobby that is still working hard to block reform.
In all these cases, the tragic flaw lies in the heady confidence that comes with a one-size-fits-all theoretical framework. There's a real danger in seeing economics as an objective science from which all values have been stripped. Nelson preferred an older, more modest perspective on economics espoused by Frank Knight, a founder of the University of Chicago's free-market school of thought. Knight expressed the view that truly careful social and economic analysis emphasizes the limits to human knowledge and "the fatuousness of over-sanguine expectations" from economic-policy designs, including those favoring free enterprise.
In short, economists would do well to derive their prescriptions from observations of how the world really works, with a healthy respect for its complexity. Faith is no substitute for informed inquiry.
(Mark Buchanan, a theoretical physicist and the author of "Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology and the Natural Sciences Can Teach Us About Economics," is a Bloomberg View columnist.)
To contact the writer of this article: Mark Buchanan at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this article: Mark Whitehouse at [email protected]
About Mark Buchanan"
Mark Buchanan, a theoretical physicist, is the author of the book "Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology and the ... MORE
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Jul 17, 2013 | Bloomberg
Is economics a science or a religion? Its practitioners like to think of it as akin to the former. The blind faith with which many do so suggests it has become too much like the latter, with potentially dire consequences for the real people the discipline is intended to help.
The idea of economics as religion harks back to at least 2001, when economist Robert Nelson published a book on the subject. Nelson argued that the policy advice economists draw from their theories is never "value-neutral" but foists their values, dressed up to look like objective science, on the rest of us.
Take, for example, free trade. In judging its desirability, economists weigh projected costs and benefits, an approach that superficially seems objective. Yet economists decide what enters the analysis and what gets ignored. Such things as savings in wages or transport lend themselves easily to measurement in monetary terms, while others, such as the social disruption of a community, do not. The mathematical calculations give the analysis a scientific wrapping, even when the content is just an expression of values.
Similar biases influence policy considerations on everything from labor laws to climate change. As Nelson put it, "the priesthood of a modern secular religion of economic progress" has pushed a narrow vision of economic "efficiency," wholly undeterred by a history of disastrous outcomes.
Rational Responses
The economic zeal reached its peak several years back, when a number of economists openly celebrated what they called economic imperialism -- the notion that the inherent superiority of their way of thinking would lead it to displace all other social sciences. Academics sought to bring the advanced calculus of rationality -- with its assumption that everything can be explained by people's perfectly rational responses to incentives -- to the primitives in fields ranging from sociology to anthropology.
The imperial adventure lost much of its momentum in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. More attention has turned to the psychological, or behavioral, revolution, which has established that the rational ideal of economic theory isn't even a good starting point as a crude caricature of the way real people act. We're often goal-oriented, of course, but we seek those goals through imperfect heuristic rules and trial and error, learning as we go. If anything, rationality is the anomaly in human life.
Of equal significance is a growing acceptance of Nelson's larger point: that economics is riddled with hidden value judgments that make its advice far from scientific. In one notable development, the Journal of Economic Perspectives published a paper by economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson that examines how value judgments -- in this case, the dismissal of political repercussions -- have undermined well-intentioned economic interventions.
Most economists, for instance, see the weakening of trade unions in the U.S. and other Western nations in the past few decades as a good thing, because unions' monopoly power over wages impairs companies' ability to adapt to the demands of the market. As Acemoglu and Robinson point out, however, unions do a lot more than influence the supply and cost of labor. In particular, they have historically played a prominent role in creating and supporting democracy, in limiting the political power of corporations, and in mitigating income inequality.
Narrow policy analyses have repeatedly led economists to push for policies that have had unexpected consequences for the balance of political power. Acemoglu and Robinson cite the push to privatize industries in Russia in the 1990s. The idea was that private ownership, no matter how it came about, would ultimately benefit the entire economy. In practice, a rigged process gave rise to an illegitimate oligarchy and an increase in inequality that set the stage for the ascendance of President Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime.
Tragic Flaw
More recently, the gospel of economic efficiency helped lay the groundwork for the financial crisis, mostly by encouraging overconfidence in the wonders of financial engineering. Theory-induced dreams of market discipline provided justification for stripping away entirely sensible regulations, such as barriers between commercial and investment banking, and for avoiding oversight of the booming trade in derivatives. One result was an extremely wealthy financial lobby that is still working hard to block reform.
In all these cases, the tragic flaw lies in the heady confidence that comes with a one-size-fits-all theoretical framework. There's a real danger in seeing economics as an objective science from which all values have been stripped. Nelson preferred an older, more modest perspective on economics espoused by Frank Knight, a founder of the University of Chicago's free-market school of thought. Knight expressed the view that truly careful social and economic analysis emphasizes the limits to human knowledge and "the fatuousness of over-sanguine expectations" from economic-policy designs, including those favoring free enterprise.
In short, economists would do well to derive their prescriptions from observations of how the world really works, with a healthy respect for its complexity. Faith is no substitute for informed inquiry.
(Mark Buchanan, a theoretical physicist and the author of "Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology and the Natural Sciences Can Teach Us About Economics," is a Bloomberg View columnist.)
To contact the writer of this article: Mark Buchanan at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this article: Mark Whitehouse at [email protected]
About Mark Buchanan"
Mark Buchanan, a theoretical physicist, is the author of the book "Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology and the ... MORE
More from Mark Buchanan:
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Amazon.com
FrancisRepublican/Dominionist Science in an Era of Burgeoning Totalitarianism, June 20, 2013
Chris Mooney's book reviews some aspects of what he called in its time "the Bush administration's war on science," and he was right. To please a constituency located on the far right of the political spectrum that usually abuses the Christian religion to impose their views on a plural and democratic society, Mr Bush and his allies simply denied science and the results of scientific studies that did not flatter their partisanship. So, where do we go now? The book, maybe, gives an idea that should be developed; Chris Mooney describes the Bush administration as the first post-modern, post-scientific administration. The author is kind enough to write that the Bush administration did not understand the scientific process.
Frankly, I concluded after the reading of this book that the partisanship of the Bush era, the misinterpretations, the unscientific attacks against the rights of women and gays (among other minorities), were simply premeditated acts to satisfy the totalitarian agenda of the Christian Dominionists (and of some really rich persons who put their interests first, ignoring what science dictates for the preservation of humankind).
My present writing leads me naturally to the present time, with its abuses of privacy that some whistle-blowers proved that the Bush administration began... Considering the degree of technological discoveries that have been made by military and military sponsored researchers, will we some day add a missing part to the scientific puzzle that Chris Mooney begins to put together in this book, although his posterior writings rather try to describe the conservative mind?
Whatever, when I was a child I was told that Nazi science was abominable, and I laughed at communist science. Today, what could we say of the "Republican Science"?
Can't Recommend This Book Enough August 31, 2005
I've been psyched about the release of this book for months now, and it doesn't disappoint. Far from it: this is an unbelievably thorough, balanced, and well-researched study of a phenomenon that ALL Americans need to be concerned about, no matter what their political stripes are. While the title may mislead you into thinking that this is a partisan book, Mooney's dedication here is to the integrity of the scientific research process, and not at all to politics. Indeed, his argument is that the politicization of the scientific research process is bad no matter which party does it, but that the Bush Administration and the current incarnation of the Republican Party is particularly culpable of abusing science for partisan gain. Indeed, Mooney heaps praise on the Nixon administration science policies, which were much better than what we have under the current president.
Read this book. It's leaps and bounds better than any other political book out today- Coulter AND Franken included.
An important and balanced book August 30, 2005
Mooney does a good job at meticulously showing the politicization of science by both sides, but as the title shows, he refuses to make the common journalistic mistake of imposing "false balance" where it is not warranted. Just as you wouldn't say, "people differ on roundness of the Earth", Mooney has the courage and the wherewithall to call a spade a spade - and he doesn't ask you to take his word for it.
The facts are here for anyone with eyes to see. The "perfect storm" of anti-regulatory conservatives and fundamentalist Christians have combined to wage a unified war against science with a vengeance that the disorganized "frankenfood" liberals can only dream of.
Mooney's objective, scientific approach to making his case only makes his partisan conclusions that much more compelling and impossible to deny. In this war of reason vs. ideology, Mooney plants himself firmly on the side of reason, while always being fair. After reading his book, anyone who values science and critical thinking will do the same.
A Call to Action for People Who Care About Science September 2, 2005
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
That oft-quoted statement from Carl Sagan captures the essence of the scientific approach to knowledge. Before an idea can achieve the revered status of "theory," it must survive round after round of skeptical criticism.
Evolution, for example, has withstood nearly 150 years of challenges. With minor modifications to Darwin's seminal ideas, it has become perhaps the most robust theory in all of science.
Religious fundamentalists, who oppose that theory as well as abortion and embryonic stem cell research, are major combatants in what journalist Chris Mooney describes in his new book as The Republican War on Science. Allied with them is a force of neo-conservative soldiers who resist the conclusions of environmental research, especially about global climate change.
Yet neither religion nor business is fundamentally opposed to science. Probably a majority of American scientists guide their lives by faith in a Creator, but they do not consider their houses of worship as observatories or laboratories in which to test the existence of a deity. And most modern businesses rely on science and technology to make a profit.
Thus most readers of this book, including liberal Democrats, will consider Mr. Mooney's brash thesis extraordinary. Though they may view it an interesting model of what is happening in American politics today, they will demand extraordinary research before declaring it a viable theory.
Indeed, the evidence supporting the existence of a partisan War on Science will never measure up to the Sagan criterion. The most the author can hope for is that open-minded people will consider his ideas compelling. In that, he has succeeded admirably.
By the time readers finish this book they will understand who the opponents of science are and how they have taken control of the Republican Party. The Party's rightist base has adopted positions that are antithetical to science, not because they oppose science per se but because government policies suggested by the scientific consensus threaten their religious beliefs, their economic status, or their societal influence.
Readers will also see the very effective political strategy that this alliance has evolved: to redefine science, to undermine science, and to misconstrue science even to the point of dismissing scientific consensus in favor of increasingly discredited fringe ideas.
The United States may not be embroiled in a war on science, but that phrase describes a useful model for understanding the dangers of the current administration's antiscientific tactics to our nation's future and its character. For that Republicans and Democrats, scientists and people of faith should be grateful to Chris Mooney.
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Logos
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has published an updated study entitled Lobbying for the Faithful: Religious Advocacy Groups in Washington, D.C. According to the study, as of May 2012. there are some 200 organizations engaged in "religious lobbying" and they address about 300 different issues and causes. 18% of them are described as "evangelical Christian" which have a particular interest in "bioethics and life issues." These include stem cell research and the teaching of evolution.
It is difficult to know the exact numbers these special interests collectively represent. We do know that some 22% of Americans identify themselves as fundamentalist Christians.[1] In terms of a media presence, Pat Robertson's 700 Club, a fundamentalist Christian media effort which started in 1961 and is still broadcasting, is the longest running program on TV and has millions of viewers worldwide.[2] There can be no doubt that when well organized and directed, this constituency represents a politically powerful force. Here are two examples of how they use their influence.
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The LA Times had been moved to its florid description of the issue by the actions of President George W Bush. 2001 was the first year of Bush's presidency, and being a fundamentalist Christian he had instituted prayer sessions and bible study in the White House. Therefore, it came as no surprise that one of Bush's first major actions was to try to devise a policy toward federal funding of embryonic stem cell research that would meet most of the objections of his Christian compatriots while not totally alienating the medical research community. His compromise was to allow funding on self-reproducing embryonic stem cell lines that the research community had already brought into existence. That is lines of cells created from embryos already destroyed or, as Bush put it, where "the life and death decision has already been made." There would be no federal funding for research on any new embryonic stem cell lines.
In 2005, Congress (more liberal then than it is today) tried to broadened Bush's executive order and passed a Stem Cell Enhancement Act permitting federal funding to support stem cell research using embryos bound for disposal by fertility clinics with the written consent of the donor. However, the fundamentalist Christian interest groups objected and President Bush vetoed the bill the day after it was passed. Congress tried again in 2007 and passed the same legislation adding instructions to the National Institute of Health (NIH) to investigate alternative forms of stem cell sourcing. Again President Bush vetoed the bill. This standoff lasted until 2009 when a newly elected President Barak Obama issued his own executive order lifting restrictions on the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research and the number self-reproducing stem cell lines available to researches quickly grew.
What this story tells us is that there exists in the United States significant numbers of fundamentalist Christians for whom certain lines of scientific inquiry, including stem cell research, are ideologically anathema. As Dr. Ray Bohlin, author of The Natural Limits of Biological Change, has put it, the embryos from which stem cells are harvested are "of infinite value to God. We are not going to redeem them by killing them for research."[4] Such Christians are politically well organized and thus, under certain circumstances, able to shape government policy to fit their outlook.
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In a democracy like the United States people can believe what they wish as long as their beliefs do not lead to criminal behavior. And, it is within that environment of democratic freedom that fundamentalist Christians have chosen to organize themselves for an effort to forbade the teaching of scientifically based evolution in the public school system, or alternatively, to require the teaching of their bible based version of creation as a valid alternative alongside evolution.
This effort has been on-going since the end of World War I. At that time the scientific theory of evolution was incorrectly thought to have been one of the motivators of the German monarchy's decision to go to war. This, along with their fundamentalist reading of the bible, led some famous and influential American Christian leaders, such as Williams Jennings Bryan, to crusade against evolution. The result was that, in the 1920s, several states passed laws making it illegal to teach the fact of human evolution. This in turn led to the famous Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925. Scopes was a biology teacher who was prosecuted under such a law in a trial that became a national media event. Paralleling the legislative effort against teaching evolution in the classroom was public pressure that led the major textbook publishers to leave evolution out of their texts until the 1960s.
The major organizations presently involved in this anti-evolution effort are the non-profit Discovery Institute based in Seattle which budgets about $1 million a year to push the notion of intelligent design; the Creation Studies Institute in Florida; Answers in Genesis in Kentucky; and Liberty University in Virginia. A stereotypical motivation for all of this was given by the Southern Baptist Minister Terry Fox who, referring to the effort of the Kansas State Board of Education to allow the teaching of alternatives to evolution, declared that "most people in Kansas don't think we came from monkeys" (a notion that evolution does not put forth). Fox is correct in that a large majority of Americans believe that God created human beings. Of course, the fact that a majority of people believe something (for instance, that the sun revolves around the earth which itself stands motionless in the heavens) does not mean that it is true.
The laws against teaching evolution in the public schools eventually ran afoul of court decisions which labeled them violations of the separation of church and state. This turn of events has motivated fundamentalist Christians to create the notion of "scientific creationism" and later "intelligent design." Claiming that these concepts are not derived from religious belief, they have campaigned for them to be taught in the schools as equally valid ideas alongside evolution. All such efforts have been found unconstitutional by the courts and therefore blocked. This has led to resentment and an increased enrollment in Christian schools. As one fundamentalist mother who pulled her children out of public school rather curiously put it, "if students only have one thing to consider, one option, that's really more brainwashing."[5]
More importantly, prior to (and also following) all the court decisions against the Christian position, fundamentalists were successful in passing their demands into law in a large number of state legislatures. Indeed, as of 2012, twenty six states have on-going legislative challenges to the teaching of evolution.
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Logos
Freedom and human dignity mark any serious rendering of utopia. Politics only sets the stage: utopian thinking necessarily privileges the individual in terms of exploring his desires, expanding his interests, and taking control over his life. So, for example, Marx never equated communism with any regime, not even the Paris Commune, but instead with the end of "pre-history" and a world where "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." In such a world, he believed, humanity can finally democratically determine its fate in common, consciously and without reference to external determinants like economic interest. Perhaps even more important, however, the classless society must serve as a society in which individualism would flourish.
This vision initially influenced the Bolsheviks who, after all, gained power in 1917 under the slogan: "All Power to the Soviets!" Left-wing radicals still exhibit nostalgia for the "heroic stage" of the Russian Revolution (1918-1921) when it seemed that all things were possible: the cultural avant-garde working for the people, the abolition of money, the transformation of the nuclear family, the end of hierarchy, and international revolution intent upon creating regimes based on soviets or workers' councils. The arbitrary exercises of power, the bloodshed, the confusion, the cruelty, and the poverty of those times vanish.
Only an idealized vision remains of what are today completely anachronistic institutions such as soviets in which, as it was once put to me, "everyone will control everything" (naturally without considering the number of meetings this would entail). Many contemporary radicals are inspired only by the image of that "new man" who once seemed ready to take the stage. Trotsky crystallized this utopian communist outlook in his Literature and Revolution (1924) by insisting that ultimately: "Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise."
Utopian experiments undertaken in the past cast a dark shadow over the seemingly pedestrian politics in the present. According to this mode of thinking, differences between existing parties and movements appear negligible. There is only mass society with its culture industry and commercialism. The drama is gone. The existing ensemble of social relations turns into a seamless whole threatening all forms of critical reflection and individuality. The "system" (not class society) is now seen as the problem and anything tainted by instrumental reason or bureaucracy is suspect. Grand narratives are considered mere manipulative props for mass movements, authoritarian parties, and overweening states. Tempering the imbalances of political and economic power is no longer the priority. Nothing associated with real politics is radical enough and, in this way, the perfect becomes an enemy of the good. Staunch belief in utopian ideals excuses indifference to building a better future. As an all or nothing proposition, therefore, utopia can justify passivity as well as fanaticism.
Kievite
"Staunch belief in utopian ideals excuses indifference to building a better future. As an all or nothing proposition, therefore, utopia can justify passivity as well as fanaticism."
Well said. I think is fanaticism, not passivity is the essence of utopian thinking. The arbitrary exercises of power, the bloodshed, the confusion, the cruelty, and the poverty naturally follow.
Along with the Authoritarian personality we can probably talk about "True believers" as another important type of personality, that deserve careful study. When organized this , it is a dangerous type of personality although in a different way then Authoritarians, or, say, psychopaths.
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Alan Sokal: What Is Science and Why Should We Care?
Margaret C. Jacob: The Left, Right and Science: Relativists and Materialists
Philip Kitcher: Plato's Revenge: An Undemocratic Report from an Overheated Planet
Michael Ruse: Democracy and Pseudo-Science
Barbara Forrest: Rejecting the Founders' Legacy: Democracy as a Weapon Against Science
Lawrence Davidson: Fundamentalist Christians, Science, and the Democracy
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Logos
As Aristotle rightly noted, one swallow does not make a summer. But I use this little personal story for some more general points I want to make about science and democracy, or more particularly – for I consider this to be true of much of the Steiner output – pseudo-science and democracy. Let me lay out what seem to me to be some pretty basic points.
First, if democracy means anything then it means letting people have some pretty silly thoughts (Mill 1859). Of course, what counts as "pretty silly" is a comparative term, but that is no big issue. Even if you are a minority of one in thinking something pretty silly, you are still obligated to let others have them. While I find the idea of turning water into wine a very attractive prospect, I don't think it is true, and moreover I think anyone who believes this has a pretty silly belief. I am fully aware that most people in the part of the world where I live would not agree, but whether I am a minority of one or a majority faced with but one believer, I should not prevent that person from having those beliefs. I take it for granted that what I am saying is hedged with the usual caveats. Personally I find the idea of sex with young children rather silly – rather disgusting actually – but I take it that for the obvious reasons (exploitation and so forth) the tolerance I am expressing does not apply here. I shall have more to say shortly about the boundaries of tolerance.
Second, pretty silliness is not entirely a subjective matter. Let's leave religion on one side (because that is not the topic now) and turn to the realm of the empirical, the world of science. I take it that down through the centuries philosophers and others interested in the nature of science have managed to articulate a fairly robust set of criteria for distinguishing between genuine science and false or bogus or pseudo-science. At the risk of seeming intolerably self-serving, but pointing out that they were accepted in a court of law – in an anti-Creationism trial in Arkansas in 1981 - let me give you the criteria that I favor for real science.
- It is guided by natural law;
- It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;
- It is testable against the empirical world;
- Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and
- It is falsifiable. (Ruse 1988)
I take it that Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection fits these sorts of criteria (Ruse 2006). It appeals to law – both natural selection and the laws of genetics (formerly Mendelian and now molecular). It can be tested. For instance, one can run models to see how efficiently an ant nest uses its resources and then check your results against actual nests. It is always open to revision – is it selection working here or just random factors (genetic drift)? And sometimes it is seen to be false or at least potentially so. The newly discovered little human-like creature, Homo floriensis (nicknamed the "hobbit") might turn out just to be a diseased, regular Homo sapiens, and not a new species at all.
I take it that something like so-called Creation Science that supposes that Genesis is literally true does not satisfy these criteria. It appeals to miracles – God created Adam and Eve. It is certainly not testable nor are its conclusions tentative. Nothing would persuade its enthusiasts that Noah's Flood was not literally true. And it is certainly not falsifiable. How could it be? It is based on the Word of God.
Third, I take it that tolerance about people's beliefs does not extend to letting this sort of stuff be taught in science classrooms in state-supported schools. I am not sure that I would go as far as Richard Dawkins (2007) as to say that all forms of religious education are just excuses for child abuse. Although I am not comfortable with many of these things, I don't think I would want to close down private schools that taught what I (and others) regard as pseudo-science. But there are good reasons for preferring regular science over pseudo-science, not the least being that the former works and the latter does not. I want children taught the best that we have, not any odd idea because someone is sincere about it. Put the matter this way. In medical schools would you want equal time given over to Christian Science and the Jehovah's Witnesses on blood transfusions and the anthroposophists on vaccinations? I want children taught what works. I certainly do not want children – or medical students – taught things that are positively false and potentially very harmful. (I am leaving on one side constitutional questions. In the USA, Creation Science cannot be taught in state schools because it violates the separation of Church and State as mandated by the First Ammendment. Here I am trying to make a more general, philosophical argument, not win a court case.)
Fourth and finally, let me draw your attention to the fact that pseudo-science rarely comes without a philosophy attached (Ruse 2013). It stands to reason in a way. There has to be something driving people to go out into the wilderness beyond respectability. In the case of anthroposophy, it is a vision of human nature, one bound up with astral forces as we develop and try to respond to the unseen. It is deeply holistic, seeing the whole of nature including humans as part of one integrated whole. This is all very much in the spirit of Romanticism seeing all as one. Wordsworth expressed it well in his poem Tintern Abbey.
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.Ultimately of course it all goes back to Plato and his theory of forms, with the Good standing above and integrating all things. Anthroposophists are not above suggesting that Rudolf Steiner is Plato reincarnated. Since apparently we alternate sexes in our incarnations, one wonders who was the woman in the middle. One presumes that the Virgin Mary was not an option.
In the case of Creation Science, obviously there is (what I would consider) the somewhat distorted version of Christianity that carries with it those values that lie near and dear to the hearts of American evangelicals (Ruse 2005). To be candid, I doubt anyone has ever really worried about gaps in the fossil record. But they do worry about abortion on demand and gay marriage and the abolition of the death penalty and (very much) feminism. (They worry a lot less about divorce perhaps because the evangelical record in this respect is truly dreadful – undoubtedly in major part a function of people marrying far too young in order to enjoy the delights of connubial bliss and to avoid the snare of fornication.[i])
Tolerance
Now, I think that tolerance demands that one accept the views of others in this respect, meaning that they have a perfect right to hold them, although frankly I am not sure that the other side would reciprocate. (I suspect that the value of letting others have their values is one of the values at issue here.) But it doesn't mean that I have to accept them in a quiescent sort of way or have no right to argue against them or to try politically to prevent their ideas and values prevailing. I can do everything in my ability to block them – as indeed I personally have done for the past thirty years with respect to all forms of Creationism.
Democracy is a precious thing and there are always forces trying to prevent it or to circumscribe it – in our own society particularly, when you think of the grotesque gerrymandering that goes on when drawing up congressional districts or the absurd qualifications that are demanded before one is allowed to vote. It is a nice balance between recognizing that democracy means that others can believe and do what one finds offensive – pretty silly, as I have said – and making sure that no one abuses that right to try to stop you holding ideas that they find offensive – pretty silly. Remembering also that democracy does not mean that every idea deserves a level playing field. We have the right and the obligation to judge ideas in the light of past experience and if they fail the test then they should be so judged.
None of this sounds very easy, but whoever said that the important things are easy?
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Slashdot
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 21, @10:25PM
skade88 writes "Reuters is reporting that scientists now say the universe is 100 million years older than previously thought after they took a closer look at leftover radiation from the Big Bang. This puts the age of the Universe at 13.8 billion years. The new findings are the direct results from analyzing data provided by the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft.
from the you-don't-look-a-day-over-13-billion dept.The spacecraft is providing the most detailed look to date at the remnant microwave radiation that permeates the universe. 'It's as if we've gone from a standard television to a high-definition television. New and important details have become crystal clear,' Paul Hertz, NASA's director of astrophysics, told reporters on a conference call."
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Jan 28, 2013 | Alternet
Of all the Religious Right's schemes, the constant promotion of Bible-based creationism in schools is one of its most nefarious.
Not only does replacing science with biblical literalism violate the separation of church and stat irst day they walk into freshman Biology 101.
In fact, a failure to understand evolution can make it harder for high school students to get into the best colleges. Try passing the Advanced Placement Biology exam when you know nothing of natural selection. A poor grounding in evolution can choke off entire career paths for young people.
Despite these high stakes, some states, school districts and individual teachers insist on doing students a disservice by promoting scientific illiteracy.
Anyone who thinks this issue died with the Scopes trial in 1925 hasn't been keeping up. Creationists have continued to spread ignorance and attempt to infiltrate public education. Examples are legion, but here are five prominent (and outrageous) attempts by creationists to disrupt the education of America's budding scholars.
1. Texas: In one of the creationists' sneakiest moves to date, in 2007 a phalanx of anti-science fundamentalist groups swamped the Texas legislature and lobbied for a law allowing elective courses "about" the Bible in public schools.
At first glance, it sounded like it might work. The courses were supposed to be objective and not promote any one version of faith over others. But Texas lawmakers refused to allocate any money for teacher training, leaving the matter in the hands of local school districts.
You can guess what happened – in most districts, no training was offered. About 60 public school districts and charter schools adopted the classes, and many of them ended up with instruction that had the flavor of fundamentalist Sunday School lessons.
A recent report by the Texas Freedom Network authored by Mark Chancey, a professor of religious studies at Dallas' Southern Methodist University, found that many schools are teaching that the Earth is 6,000 years old, a key concept of creationism. Chancey found two districts that went so far as to teach that modern racial diversity can be traced back to Noah's sons, another creationist standby. Another district used videos from YouTube arguing that people's lifespans began to drop "due to major environmental changes brought about by [Noah's] flood."
Most of the Bible courses, Chancey reported, were taught from a default conservative Protestant perspective. Most claimed that the Bible is literally true, and some even included anti-Jewish bias.
Observed Chancey, "Courts have repeatedly ruled that advocating creation science in public school science courses is unconstitutional….Nonetheless, several courses incorporate pseudoscientific material, presenting inaccurate information to their students and exposing their districts to the risk of litigation."
2. Louisiana: In the early 1980s, Louisiana legislators decided to pass a law mandating that when evolution was taught in public schools, "creation science" must be as well. Scientists, educators and advocates of church-state separation were appalled and blasted the so-called "balanced treatment" measure, but lawmakers, led by state Sen. Bill Keith, plowed ahead. The bill was soon law.
Advocates of the new law didn't even bother to disguise their religious motivations. Keith asserted that evolution is a tenet of "secular humanism, theological liberalism and atheism." Paul Ellwanger, a creationist who helped author the bill, said he viewed the struggle as "one between God and anti-God forces."
A legal challenge was promptly filed, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Fundamentalist religious groups bombarded the high court with legal briefs urging the justices to uphold the law, arguing that it was merely an attempt to promote "academic freedom" and present both sides of a controversial issue.
But the justices weren't fooled. In a 7-2 ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard, the court struck down the law. Writing for the majority, Justice William Brennan observed, "Families entrust public schools with the education of their children, but condition their trust on the understanding that the classroom will not purposely be used to advance religious views that may conflict with the private beliefs of the student and his or her family."Unfortunately, Louisiana learned little from the experience, and legislators there have continued to pass bills designed to eviscerate the teaching of evolution. Most recently, the legislature in 2008 approved a "Science Education Act" that has little to do with actual science or useful education. The law allows teachers to use "supplemental" materials – code for creationist propaganda – in science classes.
Zack Kopplin, a former high school student in Baton Rouge who now attends Rice University, put it well during a 2011 pro-science rally: "Louisiana," he said, "is addicted to creationism."
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From a review of Bob Woodward's new book at the Washington Post:But his failure to consistently work his will on Congress surely has less to do with his individual failings, as Woodward suggests, than with larger forces, chief among them the radicalization of the GOP - a party that actually seems to believe its depiction of a moderate, pragmatic president as some kind of wild-eyed collectivist, a party whose members, in their loathing for government, were willing to risk, in some cases to welcome, the economic armageddon of a debt default as an opportunity, a catharsis, a shock to the body politic. In Woodward's book, "the caucus" and the tea party are little more than bit players, but for Obama - and no less for Boehner - their rigidity is the central, unalterable fact of political life. The manufactured crisis over the debt ceiling was their proud creation, and their zealotry has extended it right to the edge of the cliff. Congress is one thing - how does a man work his will on a crusade?
It's important to view Woodward's statements through a "Very Serious" lens that assumes a particular kind of grand bargain -- one that is tough on social programs for one thing -- is highly desirable. His idea of good and bad outcomes - e.g. whether standing up for certain principles in a negotiation is honorable or obstructionist - must be seen in this light.
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