This discussion of research incentives and bias is pretty interesting,
reminding me of some of Paul Krugman's recent disparaging remarks about
e.g. the Cato Institute versus Brookings.
Consider a organization that gets 100% of its funding from the
conservative Coors brothers. People would expect a strong bias.
Now compare that to an organization that gets 50% Coors, 50% Kennedy
money. Would we expect that to lead to unbiased research? What would
it not instead lead to *biased* research with *different* weights. We
would expect 100% Coors financing to lead to conservative answers,
regardless of the facts. So why wouldn't we expect 50/50 financing to
lead to moderate answers, *also* regardless of the facts?
In other words, there is a big equivocation between being unbiased and
being committed to an ideology of moderation. And most of the
organizations that purport to be unbiased are in reality moderate
ideologues. Krugman, for example, pointed out that a place like Cato is
never going to publish calls for government expansion. Fair enough; but
is a place like Brookings (no offense, Bill) going to publish vocal
cries for the abolition of popular programs?
--
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics George Mason University
http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"A man should be sincere, and nobly shrink
From saying anything he does not think."
-- Moliere, _The Misanthrope_
