Arrgh, I've been name-shamed by Marc F. Bellemare!!!

Over at the interestingly named Marc F. Bellemare.com, there is a pro-IV post.

A very good point is actually raised, namely that in some very cool cases you can get random assignment of the instrument. Here I totally agree that you are on solid ground.

I can actually argue further against my former self and point out that Fuzzy RD models ARE IV models.

Whoever writes at Marc F. Bellemare.com also appears to somewhat agree with me saying that,

Don’t get me wrong: If you are going to use an observational IV, you do need to think very carefully about how and why it meets the exclusion restriction. And if it does meet it, you need to pray that it will be a relevant IV. But there are clear cases where IV works, and that is especially the case in a setting where you randomly assign the IV, or in quasi experimental settings where people are assigned to some treatment at random (e.g., Angrist’s famous Vietnam draft lottery setting).

Again, I agree these are clear cases. But they are a tiny minority of the cases where IV is used.

Look at a typical dynamic panel paper. it uses a test for no second order autocorrelation, generally accepting if the P level is worse than 0.10,  so all variables lagged twice or more can be instruments. Then a second test, Sargan or affiliated, of OVERidentification again accepting the null with a P worse that say 0.10, and then claim to have validated their identification strategy.

Two consecutive filters with little to no power to fail to reject a false null, a test that doesn't test what you are claiming, and voila, SCIENCE.

In other news, Me and Mungowitz are looking into legally changing our blog's name to Marc F. Bellemare.org.

Wish us luck!

Light Causes Heat

A study of interest to the LMM:

Incandescent Affect: Turning On The Hot Emotional System With Bright Light 

Alison Jing Xu & Aparna Labroo 
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming 

Abstract: We propose turning on the light can turn on the hot emotional system. Across six studies we show that ambient brightness makes people feel warmer, which increases intensity of affective response, including sensation seeking from spicy-hot foods, perception of aggression and sexiness (“hotness”) in others, and generating more extreme affective reactions toward positive and negative words and drinks. We suggest these effects arise because light underlies perception of heat, and perception of heat can trigger the hot emotional system. Thus, turning down the light, effortless and unassuming as it may seem, can reduce emotionality in everyday decisions, most of which take place under bright light.

FOOF!

I had never heard of these substances.  Now I want some.

What's the WORST thing that can happen with a pressure cooker?

Dioxygen diflouride: foof!

The sand next time.

The Perfect KPC Post

 David Allen Coe agreed when Steve Goodman and John Prine claimed to have written the "Perfect Country Song."  It is worth listening to.  Here is Steve Goodman's version.

I now claim to have the Perfect KPC post.  It raises substantive social, political, economic, and scientific issues.  And if you read it you will understand the difference between a ruddy duck penis and the penis of a ruddy duck.  Most importantly, you will once again see an example of how people on the right are getting it wrong.

Nod to Angry Alex.

Super Cows

Genetically modified cattle, in Europe.

Except that the genetic modifications are selective breeding, not chemicals.  What is the difference?  I have no idea.  These are still genetic modifications.  The EU seems confused, because people insist they don't want genetically modified food.  I guess they think they are eating aurochs?



UPDATE:  MAG sends this link.  Spectacular.

The Internet

Why was the internet invented?  So you can read about a Vietnamese fish with its penis on its chin.

Now you know.

RIP, Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz, 1920-2012--NYTimes Obit

Reason article.  Very interesting.

As the Reason article points out, Dr. Szasz never denied that there are physical and neurological causes for some brain "illnesses."  What he objected to were the "diseases" that were fabricated, for the purpose of (1) enriching the pharm-industrial complex, and/or (2) treating personal quirks as pathologies, as a means of social control and repression.

We'll miss him.

With a nod to Angry Alex, who a lot of folks would like to put in the nuthouse.

Mars Schmarz

Maybe I'm the only one, but I do not give a #^#$% about the latest Mars rover.

Well, actually I do.  I dislike it and wish we'd stop wasting money on crap like this.

People, have we not been getting photos of Mars from rovers since 2004? Is this not old hat? Will we ever find Mars' "good side" and get the photo we've been looking for?

This latest photo shoot cost $2.5 billion (about a billion over budget). Apparently we want to find out if life ever existed there.

Of course life existed on Mars. Has NASA never watched Bugs Bunny?

Why is the JPL the lucky recipient of a seemingly permanent, federally funded, high wage, full employment program? They've been on the gravy train long enough!

And they say that political science research is useless and should be defunded! While that may be true, it's way way way better than the NASA-JPL cabal.

More Equations, Fewer Citations?

Heavy use of equations impedes communication among biologists

Tim Fawcett & Andrew Higginson
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 July 2012, Pages 11735-11739

Abstract: Most research in biology is empirical, yet empirical studies rely fundamentally on theoretical work for generating testable predictions and interpreting observations. Despite this interdependence, many empirical studies build largely on other empirical studies with little direct reference to relevant theory, suggesting a failure of communication that may hinder scientific progress. To investigate the extent of this problem, we analyzed how the use of mathematical equations affects the scientific impact of studies in ecology and evolution. The density of equations in an article has a significant negative impact on citation rates, with papers receiving 28% fewer citations overall for each additional equation per page in the main text. Long, equation-dense papers tend to be more frequently cited by other theoretical papers, but this increase is outweighed by a sharp drop in citations from nontheoretical papers (35% fewer citations for each additional equation per page in the main text). In contrast, equations presented in an accompanying appendix do not lessen a paper’s impact. Our analysis suggests possible strategies for enhancing the presentation of mathematical models to facilitate progress in disciplines that rely on the tight integration of theoretical and empirical work.

Interesting.  I wonder if the same holds for economics and political science.    My five most cited works vary quite a bit. Two are books, with some equations, but mostly text.  The 1986 APSR is almost pure equations, and no emprical work, but we did try to make it accessible with the accompanying text.  And the 1989 and 1994 APSRs are mostly empirical, with some equations as estimations.

Angus's top five (we share the 1994 APSR, of course) is not terribly equation-heavy.  The largest one, the paper with Tullock in 1989, has nearly 1,000 cites (you think that's easy?  try it at home).  And Grier-Tullock 1989 is almost Hemingway-esque in its pared down simplicity and clarity. 

So, a conjecture:  obfuscating meaning with equations may help you get a paper published in the first place, especially at a lesser journal.  So the "survival test" is biased toward junking the paper up. But clarity and careful presentation help published papers have more impact.

What think you, folk?

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Not so fast, Noah!

Noah Smith lets his freak/scientist flag fly. Says he can't conform to tribal thought because he has to follow scientific principals.

Sounds good, and I agree with a lot of what he's saying.

But then he lets fly with this:

"RBC models say that small government is good."

YIKES!

Where to start?

Real Business Cycle models do not "speak" with one voice.

Most people who advocate for small government wouldn't know an RBC model if it bit them it the butt.

Very few people actually use RBC models in this day and age. Virtually all models now have monetary sectors and some form of monetary non-neutrality and are thus referred to more generally as DSGE (dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium) models. RBC theory is a useful teaching tool, but I don't know anyone using it as a guide to policy.

I have never seen in any RBC or DSGE paper I've read (which easily would be 100+ papers) a statement like "thus we see small government raises welfare". Perhaps Noah is inferring his statement from the fact that some early RBC models didn't have government in them? Or that some early RBC models argued that business cycle fluctuations were optimal? I'd be very curious to see the money quotes to support Noah's statement.

If I do think to think about some type of generic RBC model, the government could easily have a large and important role as a funder of basic research leading to improved technological progress.

Mungowitz drops the ball

Perhaps due to his Pisco intake, or his fear of being caught up in an similar situation in South America, my esteemed co-blogger really buried the lede yesterday in his short note about UNC professor Paul Frampton.

I rise this morning to revise and extend my colleague's remarks.

This January, Frampton was arrested in Buenos Aires for boarding a plane with a suitcase containing a fair amount of Bolivian marching powder. He claims innocence and I believe him because, judging by his statements in this article, his drug of choice is LSD (that is to say, homie be trippin').

First off, he appears to believe he is working somewhere other than where he is working:

“The university has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to help me,” he said. “You would expect a university of that caliber would do everything possible to get me out of prison.”

He also has a theory of why mighty UNC is not helping; the provost is too jealous to do his duty!

Carney had long been jealous, he said, because Frampton had earned tenure much more quickly and because Carney’s academic accomplishments were paltry compared to his own.


 “I am one of the most published physicists, and really he hasn’t done much that is of interest,” Frampton said, Carney had taken advantage of Frampton’s helpless position to stop his pay and hinder any notion of the university helping him.

The university has put him on a leave of absence and stopped paying him because he's not teaching his class.

 But Frampton says that this is unfair because the class was already being cancelled due to low enrollment (1 student signed up and 5 is the minimum class size)!

 Wow!

There is one part of the story that does make me thing Frampton may be guilty (remember he's been in jail since January 23rd:


Frampton said he was actually working more than 40 hours a week in prison, and had already written four scholarly papers this year.

Bruno's Idiocy Comes Home to Roost

Bruno Latour (who should have been a porn star, with that name. Far better than the intellectual pornography he sold as scholarship!) is surprised anyone took him seriously.

Okay, he's got a point. No one should have taken him seriously. He claimed that planes don't fly, that color tvs don't really work, and that nothing really is real. It's all socially constructed.

And somehow he got this from misreading Kuhn. (Don't just read on, that link is cool!). Latour wrote drivel like this. (Feel FREE to skip that link).

I have long been amused at how many people whose bizarre minds give them no hope of understanding science use Kuhn as a shield, saying there is no SUCH THING as science. Yeah, I hope that works out for you, pumpkin. Read some more French philosophers, by all means. And get hilariously hoodwinked by Dr. Sokol, of course.

Anyway, having sown the wind, now they can reap the climate change denier whirlwind. Far and away most Americans believe that climate science is fabricated, at least in part. Socially constructed, indeed.

And the response by Bruno Latour? Two parts, both delightful.

1. I never really meant that. Never meant what I said I meant, it was all just an intellectual exercise. Lighten up!
2. Besides, in spite of everything I said about science being socially constructed and unreliable, and measurement being impossible, we ALL KNOW that global warming is real, a fact, an undeniable truth.

Golly, Bruno, and you know that...how?

The answer, as always with the left, is that their feelings, their group-think intuitions, generally anything they happen to believe? THOSE are facts.

Actual facts? Things like prices, scarcity, logic, evidence? THOSE are socially constructed. Nice.

Clouded Memory

Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at
Our Fingertips

Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu & Daniel Wegner
Science, forthcoming

Abstract: The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines,
has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can "Google" the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

What do Miles Davis and Kevin Love have in common?

No, it's not that each one has an uncle in the Beach Boys!

The answer is here.

Best.Title.Ever

"You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations"

Published in Organization Studies. paper available here.

Science marches on!

Farting as a Defence Against Unspeakable Dread. Journal of Analytical Psychology

In the paper Fordham's views of development and Anzieu's concept of psychic envelopes constitute the theoretical underpinning. Bion's concepts of beta- and alpha-elements are discussed in relation to Jung's views on symbolic development and psychological containment.

The Effect of Country Music on Suicide. Social Forces

In this article, we explore the link between a particular form of popular music (country music) and metropolitan suicide rates. We contend that the themes found in country music foster a suicidal mood among people already at risk of suicide and that it is thereby associated with a high suicide rate. The effect is buttressed by the country subculture and a link between this subculture and a racial status related to an increased suicide risk.

No nod to KL, I did this all by myself!

The Africa paradox?

While walking Mr. Tooty this morning Mrs. Angus and I were discussing why Americans visiting in Africa so often conclude that Africans are intrinsically more "joyful" and don't care about material things.

She suggested an analogy to the literature showing that people have a very hard time predicting the emotional consequences of being in unfamiliar, unfavorable situations.

For example, healthy people overwhelmingly say they'd be unhappy with their life if they lost a limb or were in a wheelchair, but people actually in those situations often report that they are happy. Here is a recent example regarding people with "locked in" syndrome. There is a term for this phenomenon; the disability paradox.

So maybe, when rich Westerners visit in Africa, they project their expectations of how happy they would be if they lived in the situations they see onto the local people. When these local people demonstrate that they are actually happy, it causes cognitive dissonance and the westerners attribute the paradox to some intrinsic otherness or lack of materialism, rather than recognizing that external circumstances do not determine happiness.

I am NOT saying poverty is a disability, I AM saying that the phenomenon of inaccurately predicting happiness in unfamiliar, adverse situations may apply more broadly than just to cases of physical disabilities.

the element "woman"

(click for more readable, and of course glorious, image)

(Nod to the LMM)

Paint By Number Science "Article"

Cute. Very cute. Article on articles about scientific articles.

(Nod to Angry Alex)

Ph(UNNIES)d

The Ward Boss supplies some excellent comic material, here.

I would add, to the list of things you will never see in a published paper:

"The reason that some of the indep vars are logged and some are squared and some are linear is that none of the results come out right otherwise."