Mike Edwards's Blog, page 5
June 28, 2012
An Example of True Media Bias
The news coverage surrounding this morning’s Supreme Court ruling which largely upheld President Obama’s 2010 Health Care law was a great example of how a well-meaning news media can perpetuate and expand misinformation. First, I should note that the law itself is extremely complex and widely misunderstood. Second, the court’s decision was extremely complicated, with four concurring opinions making up the majority, and two different dissenting opinions making up the minority. And yet the diff...
June 21, 2012
A Portal onto Procedural Justice
I’m not sure why, but I see a common bias thathierarchiesare more efficient than “flat” organizational structures. In fact, life isn’t nearly so simple; there are plenty ofcircumstancesin which flat organizational structures have proven to be as or more effective that hierarchical organizational structures. For instance, check out this Yahoo article which discusses the success at Valve Games (makers of Portal), Gore-Tex, and several other extremely successful companies and which credit that s...
June 10, 2012
It’s not so obvious after all…
We’ve all seen them – headlines about scientific findings that cause people to roll their eyes and say “but that’s obvious – I can’t believe my tax dollars were wasted on doing a study on that”. You know the sort of thing I’m talking about “Study shows that abused children are less trusting”, “Study shows Jews are less likely to vote for anti-semitic candidates”, “Study shows that students addicted to heroine do worse in school”. I made those particular headlines up, but those sorts of headli...
June 6, 2012
Good Analysis, Bad Analysis
Why did Scott Walker defeat Tom Barrett in yesterday’s Wisconsingubernatorialrecall election? There is no single, simple answer to that question, any more than there is a single, simple answer to the question of why the Celtics defeated the Heat last night. But based on our knowledge of elections, we can identify some guideposts. Any reasonable analysis of an election’s outcome should start with this list:
– Physical characteristics of the candidates. Generally speaking, candidates that appear...
June 5, 2012
When parking decides elections
Today was the New Jersey primary, and it was the first time I’ve voted since redistricting took place. My new polling location was in easy walking distance of my apartment. Which is good, because there was no parking.
I suppose that one could park in a public lot a couple of blocks away – assuming you knew where the lot was, or were willing to take the time to try and find it. And there were handicapped spaces near the building – so if you were willing to risk a ticket and seriously inconvenie...
Risky Business
The national presidential election has lately revolved around the notion of experience. What kinds of experience matter? Romney wants voters to believe that business experience is paramount. He touts his own resume; Romney has even proposed a constitutional amendment requiring at least three years of business experience before one can qualify for the ballot. Obama, meanwhile, has been trying to argue that Romney’s experience at an investment firm is completely unrelated to thekinds of economi...
June 1, 2012
Irrationality in Action
“Republicans Assail Obama in Wake of Disappointing Jobs Report” says the New York Times headline. This is also the dominant talking point on cable news today, and most people agree that it is likely to lead to a drop in Obama’s poll numbers. But let’s think about that headline for a moment.
1) The Republican belief that Obama’s handling of the economy has been bad is actually independent of the details of the jobs report; in previous months, when jobs reports have been better, they have attac...
May 29, 2012
Why We Wrote The Book
The intellectual justification for the book that Danny and I wrote is simple: democracy is far from perfect, but if you don’t know exactly what’s broke and what’s working, you can’t possibly know how to go about fixing our problems. The alternative is to end up with pieces like “Our ImbecilicConstitution,” a blog post in the New York Times today by law professor Samuel Levinson.
Dr. Levinson is clearly frustrated with the current election and what it says about our current political system. An...
May 25, 2012
The Science In Social Science
I frequently run across attacks on the scientific credentials of the social sciences. Most of the time, these attacks take the form of pot-shots aimed at economics, political science, or any other attempt to use game-theoretic modeling, statistical techniques, or even laboratory experiments to explain human behavior. As an example of what I mean, check out this New York Times blogger’s diatribe against using social science to inform public policy. So allow me a moment to defend Social Science...
May 17, 2012
Wired Gets It Wrong
Wired magazine just published an absolutely wrong-headed piece advocating “small group” or lottery voting systems. Why do I mention it, if it’s so bad? Because on pages 169-171 of my book, I lay out exactly why. Gosh, makes me feel prophetic. I won’t bother to repeat it here; suffice it to say that basically everything that basically everything he says in that article is exactly wrong. If you want to know more, go buy a copy of my book–or just find a local bookstore that carries it and read p...
