Archive for Science

157 results.
May09

Variation, Within and Between

by tdaxp on May 9, 2013 at 9:47 pm
Posted In: Science

Occasionally, you will encounter someone who says this:

Variation between human races is greater than variation within human races

If you do, you know you’ve encountered someone who has been indirectly exposed to the work of Richard Lewontin.

There are two forms of “Lewontin’s fallacy.” One is the original claim that Lewontin made. It is demonstrably untrue, which is obvious once examined with graduate-level statistical knowledge. A later, weaker version is simply nonsensical. I’ll address these in order.

Lewontin’s Original Fallacy

In 1972, Lewontin published an article called The apportionment of human diversity, using blood group proteins. The work is pretty typical for its time, except it extremely political correct connotations, and so eventually took on a life of its own. Rather than discuss the original article, which has been thoroughly debunked, bizarrely focuses on blood proteins anyway, here’s an analogy. (I’m too tired to do matrix algebra now.)

Say someone comes to you, and says this:

“The racial groups that map to what we consider ‘East Asian’ or ‘Caucasian’ do not exist. There is no attribute of either race you can find, in which the majority of variation is between races, rather than within races. Hair, skin tone, skeletal shape, and so on all vary within both populations, so that means there is only one population.

In other words, the groups “East Asian” and “Caucasian” are entirely social groups. It is impossible to write a machine learning system to tell an East Asian apart from a European, if you don’t include purely social constructs like name, clothing style, and so on.

The obvious refutation (which mathematically requires matrix algebra) is to ask why in the world you would use only one dimension of variation (like height, or skin tone) to classify individuals as part of multiple populations.

You can just use multiple indicators, together. That way if there has been a murder, say, and the corpse has been stripped of clothing and identification and has been dumped, you can use multiple indicators together to determine the race of the victim.

If there is DNA evidence, you can do the same.

Indeed, you can do the same with “races” such as “German” and “French”!

european_races

If for some reason you’re transported back to the 1970s, and all you have is blood proteins, you can do the same.

The solution to Lewontin’s fallacy is to use multiple indicators together, and not just one.

These days, it seems crazy to suggest it would be impossible to tell the race of an individual from DNA. There’s even a popular PBS show about the concept! But in the 1970s, some people really were that ignorant.

finding_your_roots

The Remnant that Remains

There’s no reason to take Lewontin’s original fallacy seriously, but sometimes you’ll hear a variation of it

Variation in intelligence between human races is greater than the mean difference of intelligence of the races

This is like saying moisture is taller than speed. It makes no sense.

In some areas of life, differences in variation between groups is the fact that matters most. For instance, on many measures (say IQ, or time orientation) males have greater variation than females, while both tend to have the same average. From this you would expect you would see many more male violent criminals than female violent criminals, and also more male CEOs of large companies than female CEOs of large companies. There is little if any difference in the average of these traits between the sexes. There is substantial difference in the variation of these traits between the sexes, though.

In other areas, averages matter. For instance, the average IQ of American whites from the south-eastern United States is lower than the average IQ of American whites from the northern states. From this you might wonder if large companies have a disproportionately small number of CEOs from the American South, while white southerners have responded to this “dixie ceiling” by organizing politically to obtain political goods that they cannot gain in the marketplace.

I have never seen anyone talk, in a popular setting, about a comparison between a variation on the one hand and an average on the other. Typically one or the other is relevant to the conversation, and bizarre second-order comparisons (what is the variability in height of Australians compared t the average height of South Americans) are simply uninterpretable. But if you’ve never worked with variation as a real thing (through calculating a standard deviation to solve a problem, say), the remnant of the fallacy is a good-guess by an ignorant laymen of what Lewontin may have been talking about.

Conclusion

The phrase “Variation between human races is greater than variation within human races” is meaningless. It either refers to an empirical incorrect claim from the 1970s, on the impossibility of using “blood proteins” to predict race, or an incoherent claim that compares averages against variation.

└ Tags: , , , , , ,
2 Comments
Mar18

Structural Equations — or — Translating Theories into Models

by tdaxp on March 18, 2013 at 9:29 am
Posted In: Science

My friend Adam Elkus recently asked what made Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) powerful for testing theories, besides the ability to test for null results.

This is my answer.

What I like about SEM is that it allows models to be created that better reflect theories than any other method I know. Other methods introduce a greater source of unmeasurable error — model error — than SEM, because those methods force you take your theories, translate them into another form, and then test those.

Take the example theory (which is crazy):

“While democracy exhibits substantial inertia — more democratic places stay more democratic, less democratic places stay less democratic — communication technology forces us to reshape our understandings of how democracy grows or declines. Within any community, the growth or decline in the strength of democratic institutions mediates outside international pressure entirely through smartphone connectivity.

“By strength of democratic institutions I mean such tings as average turn-over of political offices, number of political questions per year voters are asked to consider, the percentage of major editorials that our critical of government policy. By international pressure I mean UN resolutions that mention a country, statements by foreign ministers that reference a country, and number of applications for McDonalds franchise that were rejected. By smartphone connectivity I mean the fraction of the population that has smart-phones, the average number of web impressions per person to Wikipedia, and the average number of hours per day individuals spend playing Angry Birds.”

OK, let’s create the SEM for it. The generic measurement model for democracy, for time0 and time1 is (converted to a pseudo-Mplus language)

LATENT democracy0 (float);
MANIFEST democracy0 ONTO politicalTurnover0 (float); // [0...1]
MANIFEST democracy0 ONTO politicalQuestions0 (int); // [0...n]
MANIFEST democracy0 ONTO criticalEditorials0 (int); // [0..n]

LATENT democracy1 (float);
MANIFEST democracy1 ONTO politicalTurnover0 (float); // [0...1]
MANIFEST democracy1 ONTO politicalQuestions0 (int); // [0...n]
MANIFEST democracy1 ONTO criticalEditorials0 (int); // [0..n]

// … And

LATENT smartphoneConnectivity (float);
MANFIEST smartphoneConnectivity ONTO ownershipRate (float); // [0...1]
MANIFEST smartphoneConnectivity ONTO wikipediaRate (float); // [0...n]
MANIFEST smartphoneConnectivity ONTO angryBirds(float); // [0...24]

// AND

LATENT internationalPressure (float);
MANIFEST internationalPressure ONTO unResolutions(int); // [0...n]
MANIFEST internationalPressure ONTO fmCriticisms(int); // [0...n]
MANIFEST internationalPressure ONTO mcRejections(int); // [0...n]

// no time0, because we’re assuming that smartphoneConnectivity0 completely mediates the change in democratic trajectory, that isn’t the result of inertia

// OK, now we’d create our latent model

democracy0 LOADS ON democracy1; // the inertia of democracy

internationalPressure LOADS ONTO smartphoneConnectivity; // … smartphones mediate international pressure..
smartphoneConnectivity LOADS ONTO democracy1; // .. onto democracy

Because SEM allows us to so faithfully translate the model of our theories into the model of code, we now have a serious question that isn’t obvious from the paragraph, but is more obvious when we’re in he process of writing down

Because you see your theory in “code” (or matrices if you insist on the algebraic way to do this, which I’ve only used for class), it makes assumptions or mistake jump our more. Like in the first draft of this email I said that smartphones mediate onto democracy, but I didn’t define what they mediated — hence the inclusion of international Pressure.

Using graphviz/dot, here is a picture of what our model “looks” like:

examplesem_md

(A more common format is for a left to right flow of manifest predictor indicators, latent predictor factors, latent outcome factors, and manifest outcome indicators. The format above is chosen to fit well on my blog page, and impatience in taking time to make it look better.)

As I said, the theory’s crazy — but SEM allows that theory to be translated into a model that can be directly tested, and frees us from having to waste our time with hacks like ANOVA, multiple regression, or dead theory disconnected from reality.

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 
Feb24

The Humanities, the Sciences, and Strategy

by tdaxp on February 24, 2013 at 1:18 pm
Posted In: Science

The Servants of Strategy

The humanities and the Sciences are siblings. Both serve Strategy. Graduates from the Sciences can usefully serve Strategy to the extent they understand the tools of prediction and control: improvement, and are not distracted by non-normal, revolutionary science. Graduates from the Humanities can usefully serve Strategy to the extend they understand the tools of understanding and explanation, and are not distracted by critical political agendas.

Why We Do What We Do

The purpose of Science is to “predict, control, and improve” phenomena. The sort of phenomenon that is being predicted (at a minimum), controlled (one would hope), and improved (ideally) tells you what sort of Science you are in. Cognitive Psychology focuses on cognitive behavior, “Behavioral” Psychology focuses on overt physical behavior, High-energy physics focuses on the behavior of matter under high energy conditions, and so on.

the_sciences

The purpose of the Humanities is to “understand, explain, and improve” phenomena. The sort of phenomenon that is being understood (at a minimum), explained (one would hope), and improved (ideally) tells you what sort of Humanities you are in. English Literature focuses on the written works of the English language, Geography on the nature of space, Anthropology on the nature of communities and so on.

the_humanities

The purpose of strategy is to “understand, control, and improve” phenomena. The sort of phenomenon that is being understood (at a minimum), controlled (one would hope), and improved (ideally) tells you what sort of Policy you are making. Political Strategy focuses on using political influence to obtain and hold offices. Business Strategy focuses on devoting capital and labor to earning a profit. Military Strategy focuses on using violence to achieve political outcomes.

strategy

A Division of Labor

These partially-overlapping purposes make a division of labor sensible. While strategists need to understand phenomenon, they do not need to be able to explain it, thus they can rely on the explanations of others. Likewise, strategists need to control phenomenon, but they do not need to be able to predict it, thus they can rely on the models and planning of others.

Those in the Sciences are useful to the extent they master the tools of prediction and control: tight exemplars, methodology, measurement, and statistics. Those in the Sciences can become useless by being distracted with revolutionary science.

ways_of_knowing_3

Those in the Humanities are useful to the extent they master the tools of understanding and explanation, which largely overlaps with the “digital humanities.” Those in the Humanities can become useless by being distracted with political agendas.

wages_employment_majors_humanities_ghetto_md

Political Agendas, Like Revolutionary Science…

I’ve written a lot about revolutionary science, so instead I’ll focus on the danger of political agendas in the Humanities. Recently, there have been three articles on the humanities. Michael Berube‘s thoughtful “The Humanities, Unruffled,” Razib Khan‘s philippic Against the Cultural Anthropologists,” Graeme Wood‘s interesting Anthropology, Inc.,” and Megan McArdle‘s stupid “What’s the Use of the PhD?.” In different ways, these four articles all focus on the same two problems:

1. What is the way to ensure that the Humanities PhD fulfills its function of understanding, explaining, and improving society
2. Does “improving” imply a pragmatic or a political objective?

These two questions are interwoven. A pragmatic Humanities ensures jobs for graduates to informing policy-makers, a pragmatic Humanities is fruitful and useful. But a political humanities that focuses on “race studies,” “gender studies,” and so on is simply a predator and parasite on academia, using academic resources to achieve a political objective. Megan McArdle’s post is prety dumb — it’s on the same level of intellectualism as an Afghan hick who dismisses astronomy by saying — but both she and Khan are reacting against the entrenched leftism of the humanities.

What You Do

It’s possible to have a fascinating, rewarding, and fun career in the Sciences or in the Humanities, in academia, in non-profits, government, or in business. Both the Humanities and the Sciences understand the same world, and their purposes overlap in their call to improve the world. How well you learn the tools and avoid the pitfalls of fulfilling these purposes can matter a lot.

└ Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 Comment 
Jan27

Science is Real. Measurement is Real. Improvement Is Real

by tdaxp on January 27, 2013 at 1:11 pm
Posted In: Science

Bill Gates, the co-founder of the company I work for and a personal hero of mine, has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “My plan to fight the world’s biggest problems.” It’s an exciting piece because it ties together several of my recent posts very well.

Science allows us to predict, control, and improve variation in the world. In order to actually make progress to these goals, it’s important to establish exemplars of great work. This is enabled through operational definitions that allow concepts to be measured. The quest for progress in science collapses when measurement becomes too difficult tor too expensive.

But the reverse is also true: progress in science begins when measurement becomes accessible.

Bill Gates’ op-ed is so awesome because he brings us back to the real world. When someone says “science,” others thinks of some cartoon view of men in white coats in a laboratory. When someone says that goal of science is the prediction, improvement, and control of variation, someone else will say that such is a “very narrow definition of science, downgrading as it does understanding and explanation.”

But the person who writes you write like Bill Gates does — who never even bother with the word “science” and hammers in that improvements are real:

Such measuring tools, Mr. Rosen writes, allowed inventors to see if their incremental design changes led to the improvements—such as higher power and less coal consumption—needed to build better engines. There’s a larger lesson here: Without feedback from precise measurement, Mr. Rosen writes, invention is “doomed to be rare and erratic.” With it, invention becomes “commonplace.”

In the past year, I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal—in a feedback loop similar to the one Mr. Rosen describes.

This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. Historically, foreign aid has been measured in terms of the total amount of money invested—and during the Cold War, by whether a country stayed on our side—but not by how well it performed in actually helping people. Closer to home, despite innovation in measuring teacher performance world-wide, more than 90% of educators in the U.S. still get zero feedback on how to improve.

An innovation—whether it’s a new vaccine or an improved seed—can’t have an impact unless it reaches the people who will benefit from it. We need innovations in measurement to find new, effective ways to deliver those tools and services to the clinics, family farms and classrooms that need them.

… that’s the sort of person who can make a difference. The theory of science, measurement, and improvement are all left below the surface. What is left is a how-to guide to build a better world.

I write this blog for selfish reasons, I enjoy learning about the world. Bill Gates does what he’s doing to change the world.

└ Tags: , , , , , ,
3 Comments
Jan25

This Too Shall Pass

by tdaxp on January 25, 2013 at 9:46 am and modified on January 25, 2013. at 9:49 am
Posted In: Science

The Big Think has a rather poorly worded article, “Can we reach the end of knowledge.”

The article borders are incomprehensibility, because it confuses three things: ways of knowing, which are how we understand the world, science, one way of knowing based on testing falsifiable hypotheses, and normal science, which is a social phenomenon capable of scientific progress through the exemplars of good research.

ways_of_knowing_0

Humans will have “ways of knowing” as long as we exist, and science as long as we desire it, so the only sensible way to ask the question is how normal science will end: how will we stop making scientific progress?

Assuming a lack of a nuclear holocaust or other calamity, we will stop making progress in science for the same reason that we will stop making progress in the construction of propeller planes (a technology that has been in decay since the 1940s): the costs will exceed the benefits.

Three broad possible mechanisms for the end of normal science, therefore, are:

1. Increase in the costs of normal science, all other things being equal, or
2. Decrease in the benefits of, normal science, all other things being equal, or
3. Some external change, in other words, all things stop being equal.

On way the costs of normal science might increase is if that non-scientific fields outbid scientific fields for workers whose skills are essential to science. We may already be seeing this happen. A bit ago, Razib Khan had a much better written article, “The Real End of Science,” in which he noted the increase in scientific cheating. This is presumably undetected because there are too few scientists relative to the work we have available to them, and how much we are paying them.

article_retraction_gnxp

Related to this, normal science may end because of a decrease in the benefits of normal science. Perhaps the economic return on capital in both the short, medium, and long terms will be relatively low for scientific investments as opposed to capital improvements, and so it does not make sense to pay enough for scientists to engage in research that can make progress.

Thirdly, the ecosystem that supports normal science might collapse, changing the costs and benefits simultaneously. For instance, folks like Diane Ravitch are openly hostile to normal science and the federal-academic complex that supports it. A coalition of leftists and rightists could take down or deform the Large Research Universities and the Grant Funding Agencies to greatly retard normal science, subjecting them to the same lobotomy of low wages that has destroyed the American teaching profession.

Of course normal science will end. The important questions are when it will end, and who will miss it?

└ Tags: , , , , , ,
 Comment 
Jan22

The Search for Academic Utility

by tdaxp on January 22, 2013 at 1:49 pm
Posted In: Science

Over the past few weeks I talked a lot about “paradigms.” Paradigms are “research programs” that focus on a few exemplars of high quality work. This allows science to make progress, and breaks up “old boy” networks by privileging results over connections. The need for progress also allows students to have better lives after they graduate. Professors, like all people, crave money, power and respect.

Thus, normal science, paradigms, research programs, and exemplars align our the need for progress, student’s need for good lives, and professor’s need for professional accomplishment. This is how academia works. Science is not a cartoon. It is a great human achievement that gets human beings to predict, control, and improve variation of the objects scientists study.

Normal Science is good because it is useful, not because it is True.

Consider three areas of work: race-based explanations for school performance, my UFO theory, and the ancient astronaut theory of Great Pyramid construction. If I had to bet, I would bet a great deal of money there’s a very strong impact of race in academic performance not explainable by income, I would bet a small amount of money the aliens at Roswell were from Japan, and I would bet against someone claiming that the logistics of Great Pyramid construction was designed by creatures from beyond the Moon.

ancient_ufo

But attempting to found an academic career on either of these theories would lead to a failure to gain tenure. The reason is all are currently outside of the normal science in educational psychology, digital humanities, and Egyptology. None of these theories are currently useful in the field, so none are pursued.

ways_of_knowing_0

Normal Science is just part of Science, which along with Inquiry are two of the ways of knowing about the world. There’s more to this world than captured in data sets. My friend Mark Safranski recent captured readers after linking to a data set, stating “ there are hidden qualitative decisions in who did the counting, how and by what yardstick.” Indeed, Normal Science has even more limitations than that.

A lot of grief is caused by considering Science the search for Truth. It may that, but Normal Science is the search for utility in an academic context.

└ Tags: , , , , ,
1 Comment
Jan19

The Progress of the Humanities

by tdaxp on January 19, 2013 at 2:06 am and modified on February 24, 2013. at 11:29 am
Posted In: Political Theory, Science

Over on Facebook, my friend Adam Elkus linked me to an article by David Lake, titled “Theory is Dead, Long Live Theory: The End of the Great Debates and the Rise of Eclecticism in International Relations. [pdf]” The piece is extremely strong, and describes International Relations split into two camps: one engaged in normal science capable of progress, and the other a tiresome collection of “Great Debates” that are never answered.

There’s a lot to love in Lake’s paper — it really is very high quality — but the most evocative image from it is the threat that International Relations will split into two fields that do not even study the same phenomenon. What if the scientists focus on experiments (and quasi-experiments) that can be conducted in the here and now, while the Great Debaters retreat into history and just-so stories?

To me, the best hope to save International Relations from such a fate lies in the “digital humanities.” The digital humanities are not just a method for those interested in the past to escape the “humanities ghetto of low employment and low wages
– rather, the “Digital Humanities” use Big Data techniques to understand our common past, in the same way that companies like Facebook use many of the same techniques to understand many private pasts. (Some more information on the digital humanities is available on the personal site of Jason Heppler of Stanford University.)

As an example, take Lake’s discussion of Zara Steiner‘s Triumph of the Dark, a narrative history of the outbreak of the Second World War. Lake notes the rigor of the book, but sadly states such a work can generate no hypotheses or tests. But a digital humanities approach — say working from the massive newspaper, magazine, book, and census corpora at our disposal, is not so limited. It is easy to imagine hypotheses that explain the reason for the motives of leaders with that amount of data to work with. Perhaps the degree to which “Hitler wanted war” can be tracked by measuring the day-to-day bellicosity of the written works of those he met with? Or might the locations that we knew Neville Chamberlain spent certain parts of his life be linked to pro-peace inflections in the lives of others?

International Relations is the science dedicated to predicting, controlling, and improving the behavior of States. This should be done through hypotheses testing, modeling building, and including the methods of the digital humanities. There are many ways to advance science.

In the chaos of old boy networks – in stagnant fields with no progress – it sucks to be young. But in all those areas where science and technology march hand-in-hand toward progress, it is a joy to be young!

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 
Jan18

Predicting “Null Results,” with Science

by tdaxp on January 18, 2013 at 7:01 am
Posted In: Science

Chris Blattman and Daniel Nexon both link to a paper. “Oil and Conflict: What Does the Cross Country Evidence Really Show?,” published in AEJ: Macro (the article is gated, but an older version is available from SSRN).

The paper purports to show no correlation between the presence of oil and violence. This may or may not be true — the issue seems complicated and as long as North Dakota doesn’t erupt into another round of midwest violence, my life won’t change much one way or another.

What was interesting was Dan Nexon’s commentary on it. I once would have agreed with Nexon’s comment. That was before I learned the tools that allow to conduct research.. Anyway, Nexon’s comment:

Indeed, no one — and I mean no one — who has ever invoked “Popper” or “falsification” as a standard for scientific inquiry should be allowed into a proseminar while graduate students remain actively dissuaded from pursuing research with null results because everyone knows you can’t get null results published.

By “null result,” Dr. Nexon actually means a lack of significant correlation. Nexon’s comment only makes sense if you assume he has been exclusively exposed to fully-saturated models, of the r2 = .15, p = .04 sort beloved by first-year graduate students.

The rigorous way to test for a lack of correlation is in a structural model. For instance, take this structural model from my dissertation:

abbott_dissertation_loadings_md

Each line with a number of it is analogous to an r2 finding in a fully saturated model. (You can read the whole thing if you want details ;-) ). But more important, every box-box, box-circle, or circle-circle pair with no line is assumed to be a “null result,” apart from the variation explained by following the lines of correlation between them. There are some easy introductions to structural equation modeling available. Structural equation modeling allows you not just to have science — but even normal science — while testing for lack for correlation between variables.

Karl Popper’s work on falsification is a hallmark of science. It is required for science to fulfill its objective of predicting, controlling, and improving behavior of the objects we study.

└ Tags: , , ,
1 Comment
Jan17

Controversies in Normal Science

by tdaxp on January 17, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Posted In: Political Theory, Science

tl:td: “Normal Science” refers to science when scientists focus on making progress, not just arguing in circles. The difference between probabilistic and bayesian — or “go-up” and “go-next” — statistics matters much more to the future of normal science and the nonsense that Walt and Meirsheimer came up with in a recent article.

Will F. Moore, at his blog A Second Mouse has a really funny up titled “Commentary on Mearsheimer and Walt.” Not surprisingly, it is a commentary on Mearsheimer’s and Walt’s (d’uh! :-) ) recent post, which I also criticized. Basically, Mearsheimer and Walt wrote a piece in which they demonstrated deep confusion of scientific methods, and lamented the decline of the “old boys network” and its replacement by objective methods of evaluation.

One of the ridiculous parts of Mearsheimer and Walt’s columns is their inability to distinguish substantive from non-substantive divisions in normal science. For instance, a large part of Mearsheimer and Walt’s piece is dedicated to a discussion of “scientific realism,” which appears to be a confused discussion of instrumental validity. Mearsheimer and Walt completely miss the division of scientific research into frequestist and bayesian camps, which Will Moore humorously emphasizes:

Quantitative approaches—particularly the misapplication of hypothesis testing methods which make complete sense in the context of survey research but no sense whatsoever in the context of the analysis of one-off populations—may be wrong, but at least we can systematically say why they are wrong.[4] Grand theory?—welcome to the narrative fallacy and that wonderful little hit of dopamine that your brain gives you in response to any coherent story. And that’s all they’ve got to work with.

..

[4] And again, we know of plenty of alternatives, including the rapid emergence of Bayesian model averaging which is likely to wipe out the cult of incremental frequentist garbage can models. The cult otherwise known by the initials APSR and AJPS.

Previously on this blog, I’ve referred to “frequentist” and “bayesian” statistics as “go-up” and “go-next,” because frequentist work tends to emphasize building a model of reality, while bayesian models tend to focus on predicting what will happen next. As I wrote previously:

The Go-Up view of statistics is that statistics measures the population from which an observation comes from. The appropriate way to go-up is to wait until you have a sufficient number of observations. and then generalize about the population from our observations. So if you are conducting science, and you notice. This is the method that Derbyshire was describing in 2010. A large number of observations of academic performance show consistent gaps between black and white learners. Because we’re “going-up” from observations to populations, we can conclude some things about the population, and how outcomes in the population should work-out over all, but it makes no sense to try to predict any given student’s success based on this. We’re going-up, not going-next.

The Go-Next view of statistics is that statistics gives us the likelihood of something being true, based on what has come before. In Go-Next statistics, population-averages are besides the point. What matters is guessing what’s going to happen, next, based on what you’ve seen before. The whole point is to guess what’s going to work for individuals you know only a few things about, based on your experience with other individuals who shared some things with the new strangers.

..

The superstructure of science changes as the infrastructure of the economy changes. The Go-Next philosophy of statistics, once the peasant stepchild of the serene Go-Up interpretation, now reigns supreme.

The unfolding victory of Go-Next Statistics matters much, much more than, say, the Copernican Revolution. The number of people whose daily conversations were actually impacted by Copernicus may have been a few dozen, all involved in the Papal-Academic complex.

How many times a day does Facebook’s decision of which news to share impact you?

There are real controversies and real research programs in normal science.

Too bad Walt and Mearsheimer know so little about normal science they were unable to identify either.

└ Tags: , , , , , , ,
 Comment 
Jan14

Money, Power, and Normal Science

by tdaxp on January 14, 2013 at 9:48 am and modified on January 27, 2013. at 12:55 pm
Posted In: Political Theory, Science

Fabio Rojas has a post up titled Theory Death in Political Science. It links to a post by Stephen Saideman, “Leaving Grand Theorists Behind,” which was published as Saideman’s Semi-Spew. (A companion piece was also published at Duck of Minerva and discussed by me earlier.)

Here’s the beginning of the post:

A definition: theory death is when some intellectual group tires of theory based on armchair speculation. Of course, that doesn’t mean that people stop producing theory. Rather, it means that “theory” no longer means endless books based on the author’s insights. Instead, people produce theory that responds to, or integrates, or otherwise incorporates a wealth of normal science research. In sociology, theory death seems to have happened sometime in the 1980s or 1990s. For example, recent theory books like Levi-Martin’s Social Structures or McAdam and Fligstein’s A Theory of Fields are extended discussions of empirical research that culminate in broader statements. The days of endlessly quoting and reinterpreting Weber are over. :(

Now, it seems, theory death is hitting some areas of political science.

What Fabio Rojas calls “theory death” is the “normalization of science.” That is, the establishment of methods that allow for progress in the prediction, control, and improvement of behavior of some object of study (molecule, person, State, etc.) over time.

The next line is particularly important:

Science becomes normalized when the power the Old Boys network achieves through limiting competition is overtaken by the money available for creating progress.

There have been two great flowerings of science in American history. Both emerged from the establishment of the great American University System in the late 19th century, but they accelerated at different times. As I wrote previously:

Following the Second World War science boom, the federal government accelerated the rise of the American research universities. From the Second World War to the Vietnam War, physics was a favorite area for funding. From this we received many new physical inventions, such as a transistor. After the Vietnam War, medicine is a favorite area for funding. Now we have great medical breakthroughs.

While social science research funding is only a fraction of medical research, the federal academic complex ensures that there is bleed through from health sciences to the social sciences as well. The bureaucratic momentum for peer-reviewed scientific research funding. Such funding requires that researchers seek to achieve progress in some areas, which of course privileges normal science (which is capable of achieving progress) relative to non-paradigmatic science (Which is not).

ways_of_knowing_3

The reason that Political Science is late to normalization — why it is experiencing “theory death” later than other fields — come from the obvious exception to this general rule for how academia works:

Professors, like most people, respond to the incentives of power, influence, and money.

The institution of tenure reduces uncertainty regarding money, and focuses the incentives on power and influence.

Power in academia comes from the number of bodies a professor has under him. These bodies might be apprentices (graduate students he advises), journeymen (post-docs who have a PhD and work at the lab, or staff researchers), or simple workers (lab technicians, etc).

Influence in academia comes from the extent to which one is successful in influencing one’s peers. This is typically measured in terms of influence scores, which are a product of how often the academic is cited, weighted by how important of a publication he is cited in.

Unlike other places in academia, professors hope to influence national policy makers, and so are relatively immune to academic discipline. This actually hurts scholarship. For instance, Victor Cha’s otherwise great book on North Korea, The Impossible State, is pretty much ruined by his analysis of Kim Jung Il, which was basically a job application. Likewise, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer (who began this discussion by defending the Old Boys network) basically produce political propaganda for the Old Right (pessimistic, Army-focused, and anti-Zionist). The lack of academic discipline has allowed political science to get away with graduating students into the “humanities ghetto” — because skills don’t matter in political science as much as connections, those without connections are left with high unemployment and bitter job prospects:

wages_employment_majors_humanities_ghetto_md

The way forward is probably for grant-funding organizations to support normal science in political science research, and for political agitators to coalesce within agenda-driven “think tanks.” Educational sciences have already experienced this split. It’s time for Political Science to normalize, too.

└ Tags: , , , , ,
3 Comments