Five top Democratic economists are criticizing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and the left-leaning Brookings Institution for forcing one of its nonresident economic fellows to resign.
Read the whole thing. I don’t see how Brookings can say it is defending its integrity by caving into bullying. As I said earlier, you can either defend the research or you cannot. If Brookings had focused on the issue of whether or not the study is valid, they would have been fine. Instead, they let Senator Warren discredit the researcher, regardless of whether the study is valid.
You may remember that I did not like it when Congress beat up on Jonathan Gruber, either.
This Brookings incident has made me angry with many people on many levels.
Strove Talbot
Some vigorous criticism from 2012 of Litan and Singer’s work (Singer being one of the letter writers).
http://www.felixsalmon.com/2012/08/annals-of-dubious-research-401k-loan-default-edition/
He critiques the facts of the paper in addition to addressing the potential conflict of interest. You can dispute a paper and even dismiss it outright, but you can’t claim it is automatically invalid and thus fraud simply because it was funded- unless it is in YOUR unobjective interests to do so.
I have no problem with Brookings and their internal rule and if severing is their policy then fine. But I doubt that it is and I am certain it isn’t “dump anyone who comes under fire from petty unobjective politician.” And I am quite sure their position is not that any research automatically reflects the direct interests and agenda of the funding source.
I wonder if a government official or politician ever exaggerated a number to please their benefactors. Nah. Couldn’t happen. The government is us.
Fair enough. But Gruber wasn’t forced to resign. He has comfortable tenure. And he cashed in to the turn of $6 million in fees to implement a bill he helped write.
Nice work if you get it, and keep it.
There are similarities and differences. The key to me is the notion that researchers funded by industry are automatically corrupt while those funded by government are beyond reproach because “they are accountable to the people!”
Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Speaking of Gruber, I take it that a number of policy decisions were made based on the output of his model. Has anyone checked to see if they were correct?