On expertise: Why bother asking a political scientist?
Taking a step back... taking a step back... Watch me not get sucked into the great, spinning vortex of the week's political lunacy. Instead, let me make some meta-comments on the process of commenting on politics-- satellite-related and otherwise.
I am, depending on whom you ask, a political scientist. While the current state of politics can cause some of us to question our life choices, those life choices are what economists call "sunk costs." As in, we sunk a helluva lot of time and money into our educations, and we maximize the marginal utility of our future efforts, given those expenditures, by continuing to practice the increasingly-dark arts of political science, wherever that leads us, or wherever we are dragged by the tides of our lunatic times. [See what I did there?]
That does mean, however, that I am often asked a variety of questions. But... why?
And here's a little secret. When people who don't know me, and probably won't interact with me again, ask what I do... I'm often evasive. I don't like admitting that I'm a political scientist, so I'll tell them something about constructing abstract mathematical and statistical models, or something. I'll get to that.
But let's take that as the proper lead-in for this morning's post, on expertise and what political scientists do.
What do you think of "science?" Do you like it? Probably. If you didn't, you wouldn't be reading some pretentious professor's bloviations on a blog. (Bayesian inference!) If a chemist tells you not to mix two household items together, do you follow that suggestion? I would. Bleach and ammonia? Bad combination. You might already have known about that one, but there are other things that can go wrong if you don't do as your friendly, neighborhood chemist advises. You know less about chemistry than a chemist. You just... do. And you probably understand that you understand less about chemistry than a chemistry professor, or, well, Walter White. You may not understand why the speed of light is a speed limit for the universe, but you might defer to the physicists who understood Einstein's explanation, and how we observe it, which is kind of cool.
Not everyone defers to "scientists." There's the conspiratorial nonsense started by Andrew Wakefield's falsified data on the MMR vaccine and autism, which appealed in particular to those who were already predisposed against science-based medicine, and that's without even bothering to get into more foundational biology.
However, the segment of the population that bought into Wakefield's falsified data, as an example, is probably not reading a professor's blog. Instead, the subpopulation that reads a professorial musing on science is more likely to say, "yay, science!"
Science, though, is a method. It is not a body of findings, nor even a group of people. "Science" is not the set of stuff written in textbooks, nor the people who wrote the textbooks, nor the people who conducted the research that was described in the textbooks, nor the people teaching the textbooks at the secondary or post-secondary level. It is a method. It just happens to be the best one we have, and the only one designed specifically to converge to the right answer. Note my wording. I didn't say that science with get the right answer. It is a process that will, over time, converge towards the correct answer as a group of people, engaged in the practice of science, test and try to replicate each other's work in order to develop better and better models, with the goal being improvement. Convergence. Here goes the George E.P. Box reminder: "All models are wrong. Some are useful." Or, in Thomas Kuhn's terms, from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, science is about working within a paradigm until a paradigm is replaced by one that solves more problems. I just like the term, "convergence," because it references a mathematical sequence or series, and the properties of that sequence or series. That's all science is, collectively.
We are Zeno.
Note, I said, "we." As in, political science is a science because it is the application of the scientific method to the study of politics. At least, that's my part of the discipline.
So, here's the thing. I do research, and I read research. Science isn't math (most biology isn't math), but for those who think in mathematical terms, there's more math in political science at the practitioner's level than an undergrad generally sees (which... can be an issue). Yeah, it's a science. Don't ever give me that "hard" science thing. As far as simplifying assumptions in our mathematical models go, physicists can hassle me when they find a universe with only two bodies in it. Until then... yeah, math is math, and we're all simplifying our models.
And yet, there's that thing about not being a "hard" science. There's something that happens when people talk about politics. What is the value of my degree? In monetary terms, I could put a number on it, factoring in tenure, and all of that, but that's not what I mean. What I mean is, the willingness of those who haven't conducted the research we have conducted or read what we have read, to listen to political scientists under the presumption that the result of us having researched and read means that there is a gap in understanding, just as there is a gap in understanding between a non-physicist and a physicist regarding physics.
I mean, sure, I can ramble a bit about physics, 'cuz I'm a geek. But, I'm not, like, a real physicist. I have a rudimentary understanding of what filters down to the Scientific American-reading community because I want to be able to understand the science in what gets labeled, "hard sci-fi," which is a sub-genre of science fiction that places an emphasis on real scientific principles. As an example, Neal Stephenson's Seveneves-- a couple of books back from him-- went into a lot of detail about the International Space Station, rockets, orbital mechanics, and stuff like that, and even had a character very clearly based on Neil deGrasse Tyson! If you wanted to be able to follow it, you needed to have some basic understanding of science.
Besides... space is cool!
But I'm not a physicist, and I don't delude myself about who knows more, when it comes to physics. I suspect that's true for the vast majority of people, if less true for, say, medicine, alas, along with certain other areas of science.
Ah, though, politics. Does reading the news (or watching tv) mean that one understands as well as a political scientist? If so, we're useless, and there is no reason to ask us anything. (Hence, my evasions!)
What if Trump gets impeached? What would be the electoral consequences? Here's what I know, in very brief form, because the point is not to get sucked into this today. There has been one failed impeachment in modern history-- Bill Clinton. The electoral effect was to cause a backlash that hurt the party that tried it, which was the 1998 Republican seat loss. Midterms are supposed to help the opposing party. I'm a scientist. I base my analysis on data. That's it. That's our data point. I could say more, parse the current polling data, but at the end of the day, my analysis is based on history and data. Oh, and for everything you're seeing about shifting polling, what matters? Trump's approval/disapproval numbers. Those are essentially stable, or at least, within the range that they have been. We haven't seen any important shifts (yet?). Voters are not looking at the Ukraine call and changing their opinions of Trump. What's going on is simple. Where you see increases in support for impeachment, here's what's happening. Voters who already opposed Trump have gone from opposing him but not supporting impeachment, to opposing him and supporting impeachment.
The polling is still net negative for impeachment.
Point being, anyone telling you that impeaching Trump even though he will be acquitted by the Senate will somehow help the Democrats is doing so aspirationally rather than empirically. Right now, it is less clearly disastrous for the Democrats than it was for the GOP in 1998, but the data just don't support the strategy.
And when non-political scientists ask me what will happen, and I give them a more detailed version of what I just told you, those with aspirational views of impeachment... object.
So... why ask me?
Is it possible that I'm wrong? Sure, but at this point, any claims of that are speculation at best, and the evidentiary burden is on those who argue that this time is different. Until Trump's approval/disapproval numbers actually move, we aren't there. Until impeachment support consistently crosses the 50% threshold, we aren't there. Until then, we're just in territory showing that since 1998, what Abramowitz & Webster call "negative partisanship" has become the operative factor. The data are on my side, and if people aren't willing to hear or accept "no, this is likely to help Trump after he gets acquitted by the Senate," then... why ask? (I'll get to that.)
[Really, if you are interested in what happens in 2020, watch the economy. That matters more.]
Here's another one. This is more in line with actual research I have conducted. One of my early lines of work was campaign finance, and the role of interest groups. They don't do what you think. The common myth is that interest groups, which you call "special interest groups" when they are ideologically opposed to you, just go around buying Members of Congress off, through lobbyists, with campaign contributions. Complete nonsense. There are piles of peer-reviewed research on this, some of which I have done, showing that it's just not even close to true. Interest groups give to the Members of Congress who are already predisposed to side with them, helping them to stay in office. That is a very big, and very important difference.
And "lobbying" is very different from making campaign contributions. What do lobbyists do? They do research! Then, they give that research to ideologically-aligned Members of Congress. Bribery?! Total nonsense. The extent to which this has been researched, thoroughly, by scholars like, and including me is not on the scale of the MMR vaccine, but it is quite thorough, and the results do not support any claim that lobbying is some nefarious activity. It's as simple as this. Members of Congress can't be experts on everything that they are supposed to address, given the full extent of their professional responsibilities. So, lobbying firms hire people to do research. Which lobbying firms do you trust, if you are in Congress? The ones that are ideologically aligned with you. That's how lobbying works.
I have to explain this on a regular basis. Do non-political scientists believe me?
Of course not. Why not? Have they conducted their own research, or a thorough review of the scholarly literature, or anything like that?
Nope. But, if someone on the other side of an ideological debate takes a political position they don't like/understand, it's easier for people to tell themselves that it's just that those politicians have been bribed by nefarious entities. You see, everyone really, secretly knows I'm right, and those politicians would only ever take an opposing position if they've been bribed, 'cuz it's so obvious that I'm right about everything!
Put that way, maybe you can see how anti-intellectual this mentality is.
And yet, it was the mentality behind a 2016 presidential campaign predicated on the notion that campaign finance reform was the foundational step that would turn America into a utopia, and it is the basis of this week's new proposal to tax lobbying.
Oy.
Now, people are welcome to ask political scientists about this stuff. That's why we do the research! But... if they aren't willing to listen when we say, "no, that's not how it works," then... why bother?
At this point, I come back to my evasiveness when I am asked what I do for a living. "I construct abstract mathematical models and statistical estimation procedures." It's true, as far as it goes! I'm not lying! I'm just being evasive. Why? Here's what happens, when people find out that I'm a political scientist. Sometimes, they want to learn something, and they'll listen. Sometimes, though, they want wacky, conspiratorial, or just plain wrong beliefs confirmed.
And they won't take "no" for an answer.
Look, politics are pretty crazy right now, and during the 2016 general election, amid the height of the crazy twists-and-turns, I kept posting musical clips of Mad Season's "I Don't Know Anything," on The Unmutual as a joke about the unpredictability of daily events, but there are some things that political scientists do know. The twin questions, then, are whether or not we can recognize the difference, and whether or not a potential audience can accept an informational differential when we provide an answer that might make you uncomfortable.
Otherwise, there's a lot of existential angst to go around, and that's for teenagers. Existential angst should be left behind with acne and every other awkward high school memory.
I am, depending on whom you ask, a political scientist. While the current state of politics can cause some of us to question our life choices, those life choices are what economists call "sunk costs." As in, we sunk a helluva lot of time and money into our educations, and we maximize the marginal utility of our future efforts, given those expenditures, by continuing to practice the increasingly-dark arts of political science, wherever that leads us, or wherever we are dragged by the tides of our lunatic times. [See what I did there?]
That does mean, however, that I am often asked a variety of questions. But... why?
And here's a little secret. When people who don't know me, and probably won't interact with me again, ask what I do... I'm often evasive. I don't like admitting that I'm a political scientist, so I'll tell them something about constructing abstract mathematical and statistical models, or something. I'll get to that.
But let's take that as the proper lead-in for this morning's post, on expertise and what political scientists do.
What do you think of "science?" Do you like it? Probably. If you didn't, you wouldn't be reading some pretentious professor's bloviations on a blog. (Bayesian inference!) If a chemist tells you not to mix two household items together, do you follow that suggestion? I would. Bleach and ammonia? Bad combination. You might already have known about that one, but there are other things that can go wrong if you don't do as your friendly, neighborhood chemist advises. You know less about chemistry than a chemist. You just... do. And you probably understand that you understand less about chemistry than a chemistry professor, or, well, Walter White. You may not understand why the speed of light is a speed limit for the universe, but you might defer to the physicists who understood Einstein's explanation, and how we observe it, which is kind of cool.
Not everyone defers to "scientists." There's the conspiratorial nonsense started by Andrew Wakefield's falsified data on the MMR vaccine and autism, which appealed in particular to those who were already predisposed against science-based medicine, and that's without even bothering to get into more foundational biology.
However, the segment of the population that bought into Wakefield's falsified data, as an example, is probably not reading a professor's blog. Instead, the subpopulation that reads a professorial musing on science is more likely to say, "yay, science!"
Science, though, is a method. It is not a body of findings, nor even a group of people. "Science" is not the set of stuff written in textbooks, nor the people who wrote the textbooks, nor the people who conducted the research that was described in the textbooks, nor the people teaching the textbooks at the secondary or post-secondary level. It is a method. It just happens to be the best one we have, and the only one designed specifically to converge to the right answer. Note my wording. I didn't say that science with get the right answer. It is a process that will, over time, converge towards the correct answer as a group of people, engaged in the practice of science, test and try to replicate each other's work in order to develop better and better models, with the goal being improvement. Convergence. Here goes the George E.P. Box reminder: "All models are wrong. Some are useful." Or, in Thomas Kuhn's terms, from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, science is about working within a paradigm until a paradigm is replaced by one that solves more problems. I just like the term, "convergence," because it references a mathematical sequence or series, and the properties of that sequence or series. That's all science is, collectively.
We are Zeno.
Note, I said, "we." As in, political science is a science because it is the application of the scientific method to the study of politics. At least, that's my part of the discipline.
So, here's the thing. I do research, and I read research. Science isn't math (most biology isn't math), but for those who think in mathematical terms, there's more math in political science at the practitioner's level than an undergrad generally sees (which... can be an issue). Yeah, it's a science. Don't ever give me that "hard" science thing. As far as simplifying assumptions in our mathematical models go, physicists can hassle me when they find a universe with only two bodies in it. Until then... yeah, math is math, and we're all simplifying our models.
And yet, there's that thing about not being a "hard" science. There's something that happens when people talk about politics. What is the value of my degree? In monetary terms, I could put a number on it, factoring in tenure, and all of that, but that's not what I mean. What I mean is, the willingness of those who haven't conducted the research we have conducted or read what we have read, to listen to political scientists under the presumption that the result of us having researched and read means that there is a gap in understanding, just as there is a gap in understanding between a non-physicist and a physicist regarding physics.
I mean, sure, I can ramble a bit about physics, 'cuz I'm a geek. But, I'm not, like, a real physicist. I have a rudimentary understanding of what filters down to the Scientific American-reading community because I want to be able to understand the science in what gets labeled, "hard sci-fi," which is a sub-genre of science fiction that places an emphasis on real scientific principles. As an example, Neal Stephenson's Seveneves-- a couple of books back from him-- went into a lot of detail about the International Space Station, rockets, orbital mechanics, and stuff like that, and even had a character very clearly based on Neil deGrasse Tyson! If you wanted to be able to follow it, you needed to have some basic understanding of science.
Besides... space is cool!
But I'm not a physicist, and I don't delude myself about who knows more, when it comes to physics. I suspect that's true for the vast majority of people, if less true for, say, medicine, alas, along with certain other areas of science.
Ah, though, politics. Does reading the news (or watching tv) mean that one understands as well as a political scientist? If so, we're useless, and there is no reason to ask us anything. (Hence, my evasions!)
What if Trump gets impeached? What would be the electoral consequences? Here's what I know, in very brief form, because the point is not to get sucked into this today. There has been one failed impeachment in modern history-- Bill Clinton. The electoral effect was to cause a backlash that hurt the party that tried it, which was the 1998 Republican seat loss. Midterms are supposed to help the opposing party. I'm a scientist. I base my analysis on data. That's it. That's our data point. I could say more, parse the current polling data, but at the end of the day, my analysis is based on history and data. Oh, and for everything you're seeing about shifting polling, what matters? Trump's approval/disapproval numbers. Those are essentially stable, or at least, within the range that they have been. We haven't seen any important shifts (yet?). Voters are not looking at the Ukraine call and changing their opinions of Trump. What's going on is simple. Where you see increases in support for impeachment, here's what's happening. Voters who already opposed Trump have gone from opposing him but not supporting impeachment, to opposing him and supporting impeachment.
The polling is still net negative for impeachment.
Point being, anyone telling you that impeaching Trump even though he will be acquitted by the Senate will somehow help the Democrats is doing so aspirationally rather than empirically. Right now, it is less clearly disastrous for the Democrats than it was for the GOP in 1998, but the data just don't support the strategy.
And when non-political scientists ask me what will happen, and I give them a more detailed version of what I just told you, those with aspirational views of impeachment... object.
So... why ask me?
Is it possible that I'm wrong? Sure, but at this point, any claims of that are speculation at best, and the evidentiary burden is on those who argue that this time is different. Until Trump's approval/disapproval numbers actually move, we aren't there. Until impeachment support consistently crosses the 50% threshold, we aren't there. Until then, we're just in territory showing that since 1998, what Abramowitz & Webster call "negative partisanship" has become the operative factor. The data are on my side, and if people aren't willing to hear or accept "no, this is likely to help Trump after he gets acquitted by the Senate," then... why ask? (I'll get to that.)
[Really, if you are interested in what happens in 2020, watch the economy. That matters more.]
Here's another one. This is more in line with actual research I have conducted. One of my early lines of work was campaign finance, and the role of interest groups. They don't do what you think. The common myth is that interest groups, which you call "special interest groups" when they are ideologically opposed to you, just go around buying Members of Congress off, through lobbyists, with campaign contributions. Complete nonsense. There are piles of peer-reviewed research on this, some of which I have done, showing that it's just not even close to true. Interest groups give to the Members of Congress who are already predisposed to side with them, helping them to stay in office. That is a very big, and very important difference.
And "lobbying" is very different from making campaign contributions. What do lobbyists do? They do research! Then, they give that research to ideologically-aligned Members of Congress. Bribery?! Total nonsense. The extent to which this has been researched, thoroughly, by scholars like, and including me is not on the scale of the MMR vaccine, but it is quite thorough, and the results do not support any claim that lobbying is some nefarious activity. It's as simple as this. Members of Congress can't be experts on everything that they are supposed to address, given the full extent of their professional responsibilities. So, lobbying firms hire people to do research. Which lobbying firms do you trust, if you are in Congress? The ones that are ideologically aligned with you. That's how lobbying works.
I have to explain this on a regular basis. Do non-political scientists believe me?
Of course not. Why not? Have they conducted their own research, or a thorough review of the scholarly literature, or anything like that?
Nope. But, if someone on the other side of an ideological debate takes a political position they don't like/understand, it's easier for people to tell themselves that it's just that those politicians have been bribed by nefarious entities. You see, everyone really, secretly knows I'm right, and those politicians would only ever take an opposing position if they've been bribed, 'cuz it's so obvious that I'm right about everything!
Put that way, maybe you can see how anti-intellectual this mentality is.
And yet, it was the mentality behind a 2016 presidential campaign predicated on the notion that campaign finance reform was the foundational step that would turn America into a utopia, and it is the basis of this week's new proposal to tax lobbying.
Oy.
Now, people are welcome to ask political scientists about this stuff. That's why we do the research! But... if they aren't willing to listen when we say, "no, that's not how it works," then... why bother?
At this point, I come back to my evasiveness when I am asked what I do for a living. "I construct abstract mathematical models and statistical estimation procedures." It's true, as far as it goes! I'm not lying! I'm just being evasive. Why? Here's what happens, when people find out that I'm a political scientist. Sometimes, they want to learn something, and they'll listen. Sometimes, though, they want wacky, conspiratorial, or just plain wrong beliefs confirmed.
And they won't take "no" for an answer.
Look, politics are pretty crazy right now, and during the 2016 general election, amid the height of the crazy twists-and-turns, I kept posting musical clips of Mad Season's "I Don't Know Anything," on The Unmutual as a joke about the unpredictability of daily events, but there are some things that political scientists do know. The twin questions, then, are whether or not we can recognize the difference, and whether or not a potential audience can accept an informational differential when we provide an answer that might make you uncomfortable.
Otherwise, there's a lot of existential angst to go around, and that's for teenagers. Existential angst should be left behind with acne and every other awkward high school memory.
Comments
Post a Comment