When I was teaching, I always clearly told the students my ideological bias on the first day of class and reminded them again whenever we got into normative discussions.
My students never understood my ideological bias. Roughly, I'm a philosophical anarchist, who is in practice a strong libertarian with a lot of respect for tradition, and I have a hillbilly background. A prof once described me as "A kind of heavily armed and incredibly dangerous Amishman."
Most of mine probably didn't understand either. (Rules without government, how can that be?) Indeed by the end of class I often got comments that they thought I was a (modern) liberal Democrat. 🤷
I'm surprised you, as an economist, wouldn't assume the rules merely convey the message that the benefits of financial disclosure are worth the costs while other kind of disclosure isn't.
Rules benefit from being bright lines and it's much easier to create those lines for financial disclosure. And there are a few donors -- particularly the DEA (at least in the 90s) -- whose grants really do seem to virtually guarantee a certain slant to the research. So there is benefit and not too much cost.
Regarding ideology, that's effectively disclosed via an academic's papers, speaking engagements and online presence while an effective rule for disclosure would be just an excuse for motivated attacks for non-disclosure (I think they're a socialist but they didn't say so). And even if you did get ideological disclosure what you really want to know is what their ideology was before studying these issues and that's even harder to identify on a form but easier to see in a publication record.
If you want to convince us that ideology would make sense to report give us a proposed rule for it. And how about a rule for reporting friends? Won't such a rule essentially chill any friendships across ideology if they might get printed?
Fascinating observation regarding Conflicts of Interest! We usually only “follow the money”, but currency is not just monetary, but may also be cultural/ ideological in nature and include aspects such as friendship and status.
I think financial corruption is more verifiable than, for example, ideology. If people thought it necessary to hide their ideology for their careers (solving for the equilibrium of required disclosures), they would do it.
We all have a price. I try to keep mine high enough that no one ever tries to tempt me. (I have had multiole attemptd to 'buy' grades. Thank goodness no one ever showed up with a suitcase full of used, not sequential bills adding up to one million dollars. I'd like to think I would have said, "No.")
I once dropped out of a project due to the other two authors increasingly insisting that I 'adjust' the the structural equation model I developed from the data they gathered so that it totally supported their hypotheses. It did about 95%, but there was no ethical way to improve on that.
> The truth is that if all government funding of social science ended tomorrow, researchers’ ideology would barely change.
This could mean a few different things.
Most uselessly, if all government funding ended tomorrow, very little would change tomorrow. But some changes would probably occur over time.
More importantly, while it is true that individual people would maintain their ideologies over time (and across the change), it is not clear that everyone would maintain their professions in the same way. So you might find that, 30 years after this change, there has been almost no change in the ideologies of "people who were researchers 30 years ago", as compared to the ideologies of those same people 30 years ago - but that there has been significant change in the ideologies of "researchers [now]", as compared to "researchers [30 years ago]".
Even if your beliefs are all sincerely held, independant of your funding source, and totally uninfluenced by your funding source (for what it's worth, I believe this is true in your case), your funding source may be relevant and worrying if one is concerned that the reason you have a platform at all is that someone with money has used their money to amplify the message of a writer who sincerely believes in ideas the funder want to spread.
1. Ideology biases research conclusions more than funding
2. We should prioritize coi disclosures for funding over disclosures for ideology
Reasons:
- funding is easier to measure, harder for researchers to mislead
- funding is easier to regulate and easier to change
- if funding biases research conclusions, this is plausibly worse than ideology doing so. Different ideological groups can cancel each other out; but funding will systematically bias conclusions to favor the rich, who already have excessive economic and social influence
I think we should try to tackle both sources of bias
Well no, the conflict of interest problem is actually a thing in academia and elsewhere. Getting funding from a source that has a pecuniary or political interest in the substance of your research findings is not proof of your insincerity, but it does suggest to the audience that you are advancing a particular agenda that the sponsor approves of.
Apart from issues of truthfulness, there are also issues of relevance and the particular Overton window the sponsor is willing to tolerate. In the case of the Koch brothers, there have been instances where they have purged people from their organizations who don't follow their line.
Prestige as well. Perhaps that falls into the “Friends” category. Many a rich entertainment celebrity keeps to crazy and highly destructive ideas to gain moral points (friends?), and many a rich scientific or political celebrity couldn’t be bought by a Koch brother, but would feign adherence to an ideology to maintain their prestige within that group. Is this just somewhere in between ideology and friends?
In any case, you’re right that there are incentives that trump money by a long, deep shot.
I dont think COI is much of a driver there,simply adopting the ideology of judging people not as individuals but as member of a group based on race/gender/sexual orientation,and that the moral purpose of any political discourse is reducing inequalities with these groups,then not publishing research,cherry picking/manipulating data and obscuring the truth are the natural processes.You don't need government funding,social capital,prestige or even friends and family acceptance to justify these actions,you just lie because its the good thing a person does to improve the world,how a beauty pageant winner wishes for world peace or a christian lights a candle in church
in some academic areas (e.g., feminist and queer studies), its even worse than confirming hypotheses that suit your ideology; it's creating entire imaginary worlds.
When I was teaching, I always clearly told the students my ideological bias on the first day of class and reminded them again whenever we got into normative discussions.
My students never understood my ideological bias. Roughly, I'm a philosophical anarchist, who is in practice a strong libertarian with a lot of respect for tradition, and I have a hillbilly background. A prof once described me as "A kind of heavily armed and incredibly dangerous Amishman."
Most of mine probably didn't understand either. (Rules without government, how can that be?) Indeed by the end of class I often got comments that they thought I was a (modern) liberal Democrat. 🤷
But I also did attract a bunch of libertarian oriented students
I'm surprised you, as an economist, wouldn't assume the rules merely convey the message that the benefits of financial disclosure are worth the costs while other kind of disclosure isn't.
Rules benefit from being bright lines and it's much easier to create those lines for financial disclosure. And there are a few donors -- particularly the DEA (at least in the 90s) -- whose grants really do seem to virtually guarantee a certain slant to the research. So there is benefit and not too much cost.
Regarding ideology, that's effectively disclosed via an academic's papers, speaking engagements and online presence while an effective rule for disclosure would be just an excuse for motivated attacks for non-disclosure (I think they're a socialist but they didn't say so). And even if you did get ideological disclosure what you really want to know is what their ideology was before studying these issues and that's even harder to identify on a form but easier to see in a publication record.
If you want to convince us that ideology would make sense to report give us a proposed rule for it. And how about a rule for reporting friends? Won't such a rule essentially chill any friendships across ideology if they might get printed?
Fascinating observation regarding Conflicts of Interest! We usually only “follow the money”, but currency is not just monetary, but may also be cultural/ ideological in nature and include aspects such as friendship and status.
As well as friends, also your enemies. I imagine some academics are more likely to publish results that prove their rival wrong. :D
I can't stop thinking:
Was the left-handed handshake in the AI image a result of the author's request, or a beautiful but subtle decision by our AI friends?
I think financial corruption is more verifiable than, for example, ideology. If people thought it necessary to hide their ideology for their careers (solving for the equilibrium of required disclosures), they would do it.
We all have a price. I try to keep mine high enough that no one ever tries to tempt me. (I have had multiole attemptd to 'buy' grades. Thank goodness no one ever showed up with a suitcase full of used, not sequential bills adding up to one million dollars. I'd like to think I would have said, "No.")
I once dropped out of a project due to the other two authors increasingly insisting that I 'adjust' the the structural equation model I developed from the data they gathered so that it totally supported their hypotheses. It did about 95%, but there was no ethical way to improve on that.
> The truth is that if all government funding of social science ended tomorrow, researchers’ ideology would barely change.
This could mean a few different things.
Most uselessly, if all government funding ended tomorrow, very little would change tomorrow. But some changes would probably occur over time.
More importantly, while it is true that individual people would maintain their ideologies over time (and across the change), it is not clear that everyone would maintain their professions in the same way. So you might find that, 30 years after this change, there has been almost no change in the ideologies of "people who were researchers 30 years ago", as compared to the ideologies of those same people 30 years ago - but that there has been significant change in the ideologies of "researchers [now]", as compared to "researchers [30 years ago]".
Even if your beliefs are all sincerely held, independant of your funding source, and totally uninfluenced by your funding source (for what it's worth, I believe this is true in your case), your funding source may be relevant and worrying if one is concerned that the reason you have a platform at all is that someone with money has used their money to amplify the message of a writer who sincerely believes in ideas the funder want to spread.
You might believe both
1. Ideology biases research conclusions more than funding
2. We should prioritize coi disclosures for funding over disclosures for ideology
Reasons:
- funding is easier to measure, harder for researchers to mislead
- funding is easier to regulate and easier to change
- if funding biases research conclusions, this is plausibly worse than ideology doing so. Different ideological groups can cancel each other out; but funding will systematically bias conclusions to favor the rich, who already have excessive economic and social influence
I think we should try to tackle both sources of bias
Well no, the conflict of interest problem is actually a thing in academia and elsewhere. Getting funding from a source that has a pecuniary or political interest in the substance of your research findings is not proof of your insincerity, but it does suggest to the audience that you are advancing a particular agenda that the sponsor approves of.
Apart from issues of truthfulness, there are also issues of relevance and the particular Overton window the sponsor is willing to tolerate. In the case of the Koch brothers, there have been instances where they have purged people from their organizations who don't follow their line.
Prestige as well. Perhaps that falls into the “Friends” category. Many a rich entertainment celebrity keeps to crazy and highly destructive ideas to gain moral points (friends?), and many a rich scientific or political celebrity couldn’t be bought by a Koch brother, but would feign adherence to an ideology to maintain their prestige within that group. Is this just somewhere in between ideology and friends?
In any case, you’re right that there are incentives that trump money by a long, deep shot.
"Citation needed" on this entire piece. Very strong statements, very little evidence.
What a fantastic piece.
The only way I can think to improve it is if it included a line saying “where people include their pronouns, they need to include their ideology.”
OTOH, anyone who published their pronouns has either revealed their ideology (most likely), or at minimum revealed the ideology of their friends…
I dont think COI is much of a driver there,simply adopting the ideology of judging people not as individuals but as member of a group based on race/gender/sexual orientation,and that the moral purpose of any political discourse is reducing inequalities with these groups,then not publishing research,cherry picking/manipulating data and obscuring the truth are the natural processes.You don't need government funding,social capital,prestige or even friends and family acceptance to justify these actions,you just lie because its the good thing a person does to improve the world,how a beauty pageant winner wishes for world peace or a christian lights a candle in church
in some academic areas (e.g., feminist and queer studies), its even worse than confirming hypotheses that suit your ideology; it's creating entire imaginary worlds.