The Wizard of Oz as a Metaphor for Modern Science

Emily Oster is a very well-known young-ish economist, who could be fairly characterized as a celebrity/popular economist who writes extensively on parenting and family issues. She recently published a piece in The Dispatch to explain why “it can be extremely difficult, basically impossible, to separate truth from fiction” these days, or more accurately why it has become (in her view) more difficult.

She appeals to a well-known concept in economics, signaling theory. In brief, once upon a time we had a “separating” equilibrium where one could rely on signals of something to determine the quality of opinions being offered. Now, however, we have a “pooling” equilibrium where there are no reliable signals to allow one to determine whether someone’s opinion was likely to be valid, or whether it was quackery.

Why the breakdown of the signaling equilibrium? According to Oster, it is the democraticization of access to scientific information. In the (alleged) signaling era, only specialists had access to scientific and technical information. Now, however:

Over time, access to scientific research has become more democratized. Open access to scientific journals has become more widespread, and there has been a greater push to try to help the general public get access to and understand research findings. This has a lot of benefits, but it has made it far easier for non-experts to appear like experts when they want to.

I was initially favorably disposed to this argument, but upon further consideration I think it misses the boat. To understand why requires a little background on how signaling works (in theory).

Signaling is a model of asymmetric information. Specifically, it is a “hidden type” model where people inherently differ on some dimension, but this is difference is not observable. This is in contrast to a “hidden action” asymmetric information model, where someone’s action–say, driving like a maniac–is not observable to someone with whom he contracts–like an insurance company.

A simple story. There are two kind of people, the smart and the stupid, but you can’t tell by looking at them. However, smart people incur a lower cost to buy some “signal”–like a college degree–than the stupid do. A separating equilibrium exists when the productivity difference between the two (and hence their wage difference) is smaller than the dummy’s cost of getting the signal but bigger than the smart person’s cost. Here, the smart person buys the signal, but it doesn’t pay for the dummy to do so. In this separating equilibrium, you can tell if someone is smart by seeing if they have bought the signal (the degree), or not.

Is access to information by itself a credible signal? Here’s where my skepticism about Oster’s argument arises.

In Oster’s telling, if “the messaging came from your doctor or national organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)” it was reliable because back in the day only those people had access to scientific journals and the like. Now anyone can get them online.

But is it the information access alone that matters? That is, does having an MD, or belonging to the AAP or CDC have signaling value, independent of the value of the information they disseminate when they have privileged access to it, or not?

If it doesn’t, then opening access to information doesn’t matter. There was no additional information being added by the signaling credential.

If it does, then opening access to information also won’t matter, because people were relying on the signal of the credential/affiliation of the source of the information to assess its quality.

In brief, there is a correlation-causation issue in Oster’s argument. Yes, opening access and a decline in the authority of the credentialed have occurred in parallel, but that doesn’t mean the former caused the latter. Instead, something has undermined the reliability of credentialing, professional affiliation, and “expertise” as signals.

A likely explanation of this is the Wizard of Oz effect. Toto has pulled back the curtain, and revealed the little scientist twiddling the knobs of the Authority Machine.

COVID in particular caused a huge decline in the public’s evaluation of the signal conveyed by credentials, affiliation, and professional reputation as an “expert.” It is more than ironic that Oster mentions the CDC as a reliable signaler . That agency did more than anything, and its senior personnel–notably the execrable Anthony Fauci–did more than anyone, to bring science generally, and government-approved science in particular, into disrepute.

But the entire medical community of the United States was actively complicit in the coercion and fraud imposed on the public during COVID. By doing so, they shredded the credibility of the signal of being an MD or running a hospital or a medical research institute.

Climate science (and I use the term advisably) has also served to discredit the reputation of scientists generally.

Now it is quite possible that people are overgeneralizing, and throwing the baby out with the bathwater by distrusting science generally in the aftermath of COVID and decades of climate hysteria: if so, that is another crime to lay at the feet of Fauci et al. But I think it is indisputable that trust in scientific authority, especially the authority of government or government-adjacent scientists has crashed in recent years.

So if we are now in a pooling world where people give no special credence to degreed people in white coats, it is because some (previously) prestigious degreed people in white coats were revealed to be big coercive frauds, just like the Wizard of Oz. Now the degree and the white coat signals a charlatan, not of an oracle.

It is against this background that one has to understand the rather broad support for the war on Harvard, and higher education generally. For universities were at the forefront of bad COVID advice, and COVID coercion.

But they just don’t get it. At all. The credentialed class still lives in the dream world in which their credentials confer status, rather than scorn.

Look no further than the hysterical reaction of scientists to Trump’s recent Executive Order mandating adherence to basic scientific standards. You know, extremely controversial things like being “reproducible; transparent; open about error and uncertainty; collaborative and interdisciplinary; sceptical of its findings and assumptions; falsifiable; subject to unbiased peer-review; accepting of negative results as positive outcomes and without conflicts of interest.”

Outrageous, right? Well, some scientists think so. In a cri de coeur published in the Guardian, a group of scientists (including the especially execrable Michael “Hockey Stick Shtick” Mann), claim that the EO will “destroy American science as we know it.”

As if that’s a bad thing! (More on this below).

Rising from her fainting couch and clutching her pearls, the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists frets that “It all sounds very non-objectional, but it’s extremely dangerous in its details and subtext.”

How’s that for a post-modern, post-truth view of science, with its emphasis on the textual? What is the subtext of reproducibility, exactly? Falsifiability?

The oh-so-concerned scientists claim that since political appointees will judge adherence to the “gold standard” laid down in the EO, science will be politicized, and hence a big step on the road to Lysenkoism. Yes. They really cite Lysenko as their primary example.

First, a huge reason for the aforementioned loss of trust in science is that it is quite obviously already quite politicized. So what these “scientists” really object to is what politician is in control. They have been in control heretofore, and they have been the ones exercising political influence over the direction of science, mainly through influence over the distribution of grants and control of the peer review process.

May I remind you of Michael Mann’s prominent role in Climategate? What he and his confreres object to is somebody raiding their floating crap game. Methinks they doth protest too much. Their protests wreak of defensiveness about what prying eyes are likely to find.

Hilariously, the article contains an unintentional confession of their politicization by stating “the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet and wreaking havoc on our climate” is a “robust, valid conclusion,” when in fact it is a highly politicized and disputed one, and an opinion that Mann specifically has defended not by legitimate scientific arguments, but by obfuscation, conspiratorial attempts to hide evidence (remember “hide the decline”?) and to prevent publication of contrary findings, and malicious litigation. Almost two decades after the Wegman Report utterly demolished the reliability of his hockey shtick, Mann continues to pose as the exemplar of science. He is utterly shameless.

Second, these “scientists” are clearly quite happy to take money obtained through a political process and through government bodies–they just don’t want to have any accountability to those who provide the money.

Which is just another variant of the Harvard Problem.

As for “destroying American science as we know it,” well the problem is that it is now known to be largely extremely dubious, especially in any field that is remotely political (again COVID, vaccines, and climate being the premier examples). Moreover, it is highly doubtful that government largesse produces anything of value remotely approaching the expense.

Going back to Oster, her basic claim is that there are a lot of bad studies out there. Look at the graphs in the linked William Briggs blog post above. Output–measured by number of publications–has skyrocketed, likely due to (a) a reduction in the cost of research (due to increased computational power in large part), and (b) an increase in funding–supply up, demand up, “output” up. But a likely result of this–indeed, a near certainty–is that the marginal and average value of these publications has gone down, likely substantially. That means a higher number of bad studies, which is the real problem that Oster has identified.

Measuring the output of science by looking at expenditures on scientists is ridiculous. The EO is at most a first step in weeding out wasteful expenditure–expenditure that is also likely to be harmful because it produces misleading or actually false information. Requiring adherence to the most basic scientific standards–indeed, the standards that distinguish science from other endeavors of inquiry–will perhaps reduce the frequency of egregious misconduct perpetrated on the taxpayer’s dime, but no more than that. A lot of bad stuff will continue to flow.

So in a way we are in a pooling equilibrium in science and scientific knowledge–a cesspool. Trust the Science is no longer a signal we can trust because too many scientists have proved untrustworthy. Rather than whining about the unfairness of efforts to restore trust like the Executive Order, scientists should be grateful for them, and look in the mirror, see what others see, and reform themselves.

And if they don’t? Well, if they think it’s bad now, just wait.