Posted by Jim Lindgren:
Excommunicating Condoleeza Rice.--
Eugene [1]comments on these snarky assertions of a newly minted
Harvard Ph.D. at [2]AlexandraSamuel.com:
shouldn't political science have its equivalent to disbarment or
excommunication? After all, if we want the term "political
scientist" to mean something, then a doctorate shouldn't be a
one-way ticket. When political scientists promulgate ideas or
institute policies that violate even the most generous
interpretations of our collective wisdom, they are not only
disregarding their own academic training, but devaluing the
intellectual authority and standards of our field. So shouldn't
there be some threshold - it can be a generous one - beyond which
one loses the right to practice political science?
After spending the last few years at Harvard, Ms. Samuel (I presume
that it is she who is posting at AlexandraSamuel.com) seems to be
confused about how academics is supposed to work. To my mind, she is
doing what she decries: "promulgat[ing] ideas . . . that violate even
the most generous interpretations of our collective wisdom, . . . not
only disregarding [her] own academic training, but devaluing the
intellectual authority and standards of our field." I hope that no one
at Harvard tries to implement her authoritarian suggestion, or they
might just demand her Ph.D. back.
Science (and social science) proceeds by free inquiry, not by
consensus, as Michael Crichton, a Harvard MD from a different
generation so eloquently [3]put it two years ago:
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and
the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard
consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought
to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of
consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to
avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something
or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with
consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the
contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right,
which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by
reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant.
What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists
in history are great precisely because they broke with the
consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it
isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
Crichton then describes scientific consensuses that turned out to be
wrong. I don't think that there is anything wrong with talking about
the consensus of scientists or social scientists (and I certainly do
so myself), but one must remember that it is the quality of the
evidence that makes the work persuasive, not the consensus.
But what about examples of social science consensus?
The Case of James Coleman. As part of my Ph.D. work at the University
of Chicago, I was fortunate enough to be among James Coleman's last
students. At one time or another in his long career, Coleman had been
the leading practitioner of several subfields in Sociology:
educational sociology, mathematical sociology, and rational choice
sociology. In the 1960s Coleman did some of the first large-scale,
well designed educational studies. When his early results seemed to
find positive effects for school integration, he was lionized by the
profession. But just a few years later, when his data started showing
problems with the educational effects of busing, he was vilified.
Although I never heard exactly what was done to him, Chicago faculty
members told me that he was "basically thrown out" of the American
Sociological Association (ASA), perhaps analogous to what Ms. Samuel
has proposed for Condoleeza Rice. I don't take the claims that Coleman
was thrown out literally; probably nothing more was done than open
insults, shunning, and expressions that he was not welcome anymore.
When eventually Coleman's work was mostly validated by other
researchers, the leaders of the profession were ashamed of their prior
actions. I was told by faculty members at Chicago and elsewhere (I
have no personal knowledge of these events) that an effort was made to
make amends for their shoddy treatment. Twenty years after being
excluded, the ASA made him President of the organization. (I apologize
in advance to those readers who have personal knowledge of these
events; my knowledge is secondhand and thus likely to be in error on
some details. Coleman never spoke to me about any of this.)
Welfare Reform. The greatest success of the Clinton
Administration--and one that will continue to generate benefits for
years to come--is welfare reform. It was a Republican idea, but it
took real courage on Clinton's part to get it past the Democratic
establishment, both academic and political. I take it that its chief
proponents in the Clinton White House were Clinton himself, Gore, and
Dick Morris. All sorts of horror stories were told about the scale of
human disaster that would come about if even a modest workfare system
was imposed. Even less alarmist academics thought that it had to
worsen things, but as soon as it passed (even before it took effect),
more poor people began looking for and getting jobs. Poverty went
down, not up. Now a generation of the poor and the borderline poor are
being raised in households with many more employed breadwinners, with
positive effects of many sorts.
Arming America. After it was publicly exposed that in Arming America
Michael Bellesiles had described the contents of over a hundred
documents that never existed, the American Historical Association
passed a resolution that specifically expressed support for both
Michael Bellesiles AND HIS BOOK! With some of the country's leading
historians praising the book, the consensus was so strong that most
historians just did not think that they should spend an afternoon in a
good library checking criticisms before going public with expressions
of support. Later, some of those same leading historians wrote or told
me that they were wrong. For several reasons, including because the
AHA was embarrassed over having been taken in by Bellesiles, the AHA
decided to end its practice of conducting ethical investigations.
References
1. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_01_07.shtml#1105656637
2. http://alexandrasamuel.com/blog/index.php?p=11
3. http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html
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