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Confession Of An Economist: Writing To Impress Rather Than Inform
If you have ever felt that in addition to being a quasi cargo cult (which in the case of central planners borders on religious dogma) rather than an actual science, not to mention far more destructive, economics was purposefully obtuse and opaque, meant to sound sophisticated and generally "baffle with bullshit" when in reality it was hollow, often contradictory and sometimes meaningless by design, then the following confession by David Hakes, professor of economics at the University of Northern Iowa is for you.
In it the economist explains how he was turned down when he wrote articles that could easily be understood by a broad audience. So he made them more difficult to understand and got published immediately.
Reader can form their own conclusion.
from Econ Journal Watch
Confession of an Economist: Writing to Impress Rather than Inform
Think back to your first years in graduate school. The most mathematically complex papers required a great deal of time and effort to ead. The papers were written as if to a private club, and we felt proud when we successfully entered the club. Although I copied the style of these overly complex and often poorly written papers in my first few research attempts, I grew out of it quite quickly. I didn’t do so on my own. I was lucky to be surrounded by mature confident researchers at my first academic appointment. They taught me that if you are confident in your research you will write to include, not exclude. You will write to inform, not impress. It is with apologies to my research and writing mentors that I report the following events.
The preference falsification in which I engaged was to intentionally take a simple clear research paper and make it so complex and obscure that it successfully impressed referees. That is, I wrote a paper to impress rather than inform—a violation of my most closely held beliefs regarding the proper intent of research. I often suspected that many papers I read were intentionally complex and obscure, and now I am part of the conspiracy.
A colleague presented a fairly complex paper on how firms might use warranties to extract rent from certain users of their products. No one in the audience seemed to follow the argument. Because I found the argument to be perfectly clear, I repeatedly defended the author and I was able to bring the audience to an understanding of the paper. The author was so pleased that I was able to understand his work and explain it to others that he asked me if I was willing to coauthor the paper with him. I said I would be delighted.
I immersed myself in the literature for a few of months so that I could more precisely fit our contribution into the existing literature. We managed to reduce the equations in the paper to six. At this stage the paper was perfectly clear and was written at a level so that it could reach a broad audience. When we submitted the paper to risk, uncertainty, and insurance journals, the referees responded that the results were self-evident. After some degree of frustration, my coauthor suggested that the problem with the paper might be that we had made the argument too easy to follow, and thus referees and editors were not sufficiently impressed. He said that he could make the paper more impressive by generalizing the model. While making the same point as the original paper, the new paper
would be more mathematically elegant, and it would become absolutely impenetrable to most readers. The resulting paper had fifteen equations, two propositions and proofs, dozens of additional mathematical expressions, and a mathematical appendix containing nineteen equations and even more mathematical expressions. I personally could no longer understand the paper and I could not possibly present the paper alone.
The paper was published in the first journal to which we submitted. It took two years to receive one referee report. The journal sent it out to a total of seven referees, but only one was able to write a report on it. Apparently he was sufficiently impressed. While the audience for the original version of the paper was broad, the audience for the published version of the paper has been reduced to a very narrow set of specialists and mathematicians. Even for mathematicians, the paper may no longer pass a cost-benefit test. That is, the time and effort necessary to read the paper may exceed the benefits received from reading it. I am now part of the conspiracy to intentionally make simple ideas obscure and complex.
The story does not end here. A year later at an economics conference I sat on a panel composed of editors of economics journals. The session was charged with instructing young professors on how to get published. Because I was involved in a number of other sessions, I paid little attention to the names and affiliations of my colleagues on the panel. When it was my turn to speak, along with other advice, I told the story described above. When the next panelist was introduced, I was embarrassed to see that he was the editor of the journal that had published our incomprehensible paper. To reduce the level of embarrassment for both of us, I explained that our paper was handled through the U.S. editorial office of his journal, not the U.K. office which he manages. As an aside, to demonstrate just how small the world has become, we later discovered that my eldest daughter had studied in the editor’s department while in the United Kingdom during the previous semester.
In conclusion, I wish I could promise that in the future I will always write to inform rather than to impress. But although confession may be good for the soul, it does not inoculate us from future sin. If in the future a referee or an editor suggests that I “generalize the model” or “make the model dynamic” when I feel that the change is an unnecessary complication which will likely cloud the issue rather than illuminate it, I will probably do as they requested rather than fight for clarity. That situation aside, I plan to redouble my efforts to write to inform rather than impress, to advise young researchers to do the same, and to be careful when criticizing referees and editors because they may be sitting next to me.
h/t zeetubes
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Julian Jaynes "theories" confirmed.
Boris is like to make impression on bad economist with knuckle of right hand.
OMG! How I hate to watch that sanctimonious Krugman trying to tell everyone what to do whilst stroking his hairy pussy! Fuck off and die, Krugman!
Linked article makes it clear despite all the Fed's bullshit and jawboning...all they do is raise rates as core population decelerates and congress runs larger deficits. Reverse when core population was on the rise...it's that simple.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3522366-demographics-the-real-opponent-the-fed-has-been-fighting-for-decades
All their models, theories, formula's, curves...entirely baffling bullshit.
Cat people tend to have emotional/social problems so remind me again why we are listening to a self proclaimed messiah that only knows how to Pile it Higher and Deeper?!
That was funny as hell!
That poor fucking cat...
Remember always to skin before cook. Hair is not so palatable.
Yea all the charlatans coming clean at the last minute. Big fucking deal.
This is not confined to economics. Medical research is full of assholes taking money from corporations to come up with the 'correct' result. The cesspool is just getting wider and deeper...
All you guys are just mad because you can't understand the brilliance of Paul krugman....
Perhaps Money Counterfeiter didn't notice the article was published in Sep 2009.
Cat...the other white meat!
Oh my god. So the rumors are true? So small he can . .
That pic always makes me think of him as though he's some queer Ernst Stavro Blofeld-like economist.
"That poor fucking cat..."
Krugman's cat: simultaneously a male named Ben and a female named Janet. But when you lift its tail, there are no sex organs, just a fleshy appendage that looks like Keynes.
Using statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post, for support rather than illumination.
This is very clever smart prose for small bear cub!
dumb as a box of rocks, I stole it.
But it is take for smart use in right place, no?
Picnic basket prose.
Baffle them with bullshit is absolutely true. Seen it too many times in Corporate field. Simple stuff insanely made complex designed to protect positions and jobs, even create jobs where none is needed. Recall Peter Drucker - find the indispensable man and fire him....one reason is because that is the guy making things complex when there is no need to.
Great pic.
I'll keep my comments to myself.
Freedom of comments?
Screw them I'm starting at the begining and reading the Lever of Riches by Joel Mokyr.
No Q, start with your property tax bill.
thats why he is a cock sucker as well
Occam's doesn't apply to the "science" of economics?
“If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”? W.C. Fields
At the beginning of this current depression, "imbalances" was all the rage. Now it's "inequality". Next will be "unevenness".
"unexpectedly" of course.
You can tell which ancient societies had elite, well paid scribes by how complex their written language was.
Pointless complexity greatly inhibits progress. Fitting then that it should rear it's head so strongly in economics.
One of the things you're usually taught in engineering classes (as opposed to classes in pretend sciences) is the importance of significant figures.
Take the example of the phonied up article the author cites. You've got 19 different equations with who knows how many numbers that have to be input representing who knows how many different parameters.
Let's say you have 30 different data points that have to be used in those equations. Let's imagine that 27 of them are supposed to be accurate to 4 digits past the decimal point or ten thousandths. Two more are presumed accurate to the hundred thousandth and the remaining one is accurate to one tenth. All that conglomeration of equations is accurate to no better than one tenth. I would bet that the reality of significant figures is ignored in most such papers and in a circumstance such as I outline above they would profess accuracy to the ten thousandth in the final result.
FH, you nailed it, and I can relate as it applies to what I do at work.
Furthermore, people whose lives don't depend on that type of precision can't realate to it, and TPTB and agenda-driven a0holes know this well. In my work, if we don't work out to the 4th or sometimes even 5th decimal place, the potential for death is great.
Tell someone that if the minor diameter on just one thread on an airplane is not right that the plane might fall out of the sky, and their eyes glaze over. If it doesn't have to do with feelings, Dancing With The Has Beens, or the Kardashians, they're not interested.
+ 1 Those precision ground ballscrews I sold for 27 years, with a tolerance of plus or minus .0002/foot are damm important for keeping planes in the air.
Good points Falling Down & Fred!
More fakery from the professional fakers to keep us all dumb and distracted. This London cab driver has figured it all out.
https://youtu.be/nmM5_ZfkJ2A
The subject of peer review came up with a bunch of egg head types withI know, they've worked on a range of stuff in their long, and short, careers. The HPV vaccine. Lasers. Nanotech. Etc.
When I brought up peer review, they all kinda smiled, because they know the deal, as this author does. It's a bunch of hooey. Get published in some hokey journal for all of their 'peers' to read, and it pads thier resumes and cann assist their efforts to get gubmint cheese for "research".
Just as bad as economics is the global warming/climate change BS. A bunch of useful idiots who never had a real job, but went to school for 8 years for maffs and some science, are going to tell the rest of us proles that we need to sacrifice for the weather. I've been following the subject for close to 35 years, when I was in grade school, and became super-skeptical 20+ years ago.
Bottom line is any time these people write articles and throw out stats from studies, it's part of an agenda, whether it be personal or more macro than that, or both.
Serious question, I thought 35 years ago they were worried about global cooling?
So it is also with religion, history and science (all of which seemingly converge on very simple terms). The content is not as important as kowtowing to the right power.
Oh hell. I wrote most of my best stuff with crayons. Nobody took me seriously. But then I hired a marketing assistant with enormous, firm, gushing breasts, and now I've got 2.3 million twitter followers. It's the American dream!
Richard Feynman often worked on napkins at the go-go bar.
Krugman has an Ipad next to the litter box.
Ha! Comment of the Day!
Yes, I've been drinking, okay?
This unfortunately, is the prevailing attitude of most college professors and deans of departments at our schools of "higher education", and has filtered down to even the high school and elementary "educators".
Brief, concise and unfootnoted answers are considered "bad form".
Teaching to educate has taken a backseat to proving how "smart " you sound, especially to your peers...The Corporate World has operated like this for many years too.
Remind me again why economists get nobels...
Tesla 1926.
“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain.... We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”
Nikola Tesla, inventor, futurist and engineer, c. 1926.
Krugman 1998
"By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."
Paul Krugman, economist, 1998.
It isn't only economics. There is much verbosity in other fields and on occasion writers like to change the terminology to confuse further.
Law is a good example or what they describe on a special ballot in which yes often means no and no yes so the promoters of whatever is on the ballot win by confusion. I don't know if this stuff is to make these over educated clowns feel more important or they believe in the garbage they put out there. In any case, if we can't communicate in the same language how do they expect us to get along.
As a Canadian I voted for Free Trade as I was led to believe we could bring goods across the border without paying duty or tax. That was a joke.
All of it is a joke.
Accept the bovine excrement for what it is.
Excrement catapult anyone?
Guess they don't call it the "dismal science" for nothing.
https://ixquick-proxy.com/do/show_picture.pl?l=english&rais=1&oiu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.catster.com%2Ffiles%2Fcats-of-Star-Trek-Isis-G7.jpg&sp=7654bf418156ec567c1790468cf91ac6
"He said that he could make the paper more impressive by generalizing the model. While making the same point as the original paper, the new paper
would be more mathematically elegant, and it would become absolutely impenetrable to most readers. The resulting paper had fifteen equations, two propositions and proofs, dozens of additional mathematical expressions, and a mathematical appendix containing."
It is unfortunate, but probably true that poor ol' Leslie Lamport has, through his introduction of LaTeX on top of Knuth's masterpiece, done more to encourage this pseudo-scientific cant than anything else. Learning the arcana of LaTeX had to be another screening process to find the true acolytes to feed into the Fed Reserve System and (with no knowledge on my part, but after all "the Cambridge Economists acted stupidly") I extend this arcana to the worlds' Central Bankerz.
- Ned
" The most mathematically complex papers required a great deal of time and effort to ead."
... but not to proofead.
That economist DON'T KNOW their readers KNOWS their bullshit long ago??
Same like doctor use latin names for sickness that in layman's terms equals to "you have shit problem!!"
you mean like "corporaphagic homosexual orientation" just just another way to say "shit-eating cocksucker"?
Imagine the sophistication and knowledge that would pass through these journals and the general public if the emphasis was on making things easier to understand I.e. the 6 model one rather than 15 model.
This is also true of physics, such as zero point energy, anti gravity and to an extent time travel. Is very easy to explain. The monstrosity for what passes as mainstream physics is overtechnical and opaque.
E=mc2, Bitchez! Doesn't get much simplerer than that...
Except Einstein used a fudge factor; look it up. Physicists already know that the speed of light is not always constant nor can it have been since it is both particle and wave. In fact, the speed of light is faster in other place in the universe and at the beginning it had to be even faster than today. They have measurement that go back at least 150 years and this has been proven to be true. Never as easy as it may seem. Logic can make that conclusion since it contains particles that can cause "drag".
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/08/light-traveled-faster-in-th...
http://www.livescience.com/29111-speed-of-light-not-constant.html
http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module6_constant.htm
http://news.discovery.com/space/speed-of-light-einstein-physics-130428.h...
http://www.iflscience.com/physics/speed-light-can-vary-vacuum
The only true constant in our universe is the truth of God's word; He does not change; I find that comforting to know that there is stability. Knowing the word of God and knowing the universe is young; God built the appearance of "age" into the universe. The starting point of origins, billions of years verses thousands of years will determine how one interprets any given set of facts and it is that misinterpretation that leads to all these "changes" in the world of science as we have all witnessed.
OK..let's go over this again...
BS degree = Bull Shit
MS degree = More Shit
PhD degree = Piled Higher & Deeper
There aren’t two economists in the world who agree on everything,
And there are never more than three economists in the world who agree on anything,
And the best part of being an economist isn’t the rare occasions that you appear to be right, it’s that you can never be proven wrong.
The picture of Krugman stroking his big pussy is priceless.
Economics is not a science. The behavior of money is entirely dependent on the people who handle it.
All the economic theories are just that-theories. All the technical language is just there to make a guess sound like it's not a guess.
Also, economists were invented to make weathermen and astrologers look good.
Most of what is called science is "consensus science" and scientist have been caught lying, cheating and stealing because they to are human. If we knew the extent of the lies in science; we would be tempted to believe gravity isn't real. Look at how the children are taught they came from apes as mentioned in the opening paragraph as theory, then taught as fact. Go to a zoo or aquarium and look at the signs; they teach it in society as fact; yet they already know from DNA science that it cannot possibly be true. This exposes the real agenda; to rid themselves of any possibility that the God of Scripture is right, for if He is (and He is), then they see themselves accountable. They would rather bury their heads in the sand, than to face the truth of that reality.
Hey Croc, I was wondering. Does God have a penis?
If so, what does he do with it? Urinate, procreate, swing it around or just let it hang without purpose?
If not, then he must be androgenous, or at least dickless.
I thank you in advance for a simple, non-baffling answer.
Priests and Shamans have always communicated in incomprehensible jibberish to protect their craft
Like Obama's constant contradictory double and triple speak.
Like Protestants who were burned for translating Bible into English.
Like doctors writing scripts in Latin.
Like Hindus and all those elephants with six arms
Like Masonic Secrets.
Catholic Mass In Latin Ad Altare Dei
Like Sean Penn and Dennis Rodman and George Clooney
Like Climate Alarmists and their Computer Model Software
Like psychics on Coast To Coast
Like Psychologists and Sociologists
Like University Presidents modifying speech and behavior
Like Krugman
This article is spot on but miss a domecile point - just look at writings from the UK vs US. You will find two things that are striking. The complexety of formulating and the amount of words used to get the point through. I have never seen anything in academics or else where texts are short and clear from the US and opposit from the UK. It must be related to renumeration and how to differ from the plebs. The spoken word is a factor here. In british there are never any doubt about a persons status when the spoken. In the US that status comes with the words used, complex = educated, that filters to the written word. As for renuneration I would say that quantity vs quality also is the hall mark and consequence of this differance. On ZH this is also very clear. - keep it simple and keep it short.
I have spoke.
So, the only person who can understand some crap written by an non-entity is Krugman and that makes everyone else wrong? He (Krugman) is totally fucking deluded by granduer. Worrying, is so deluded, that he even believes only he (for only the "great" (pussy) Krugman can understand anything,) has the right to "anoint" some half wit economist as genius.
SUMMARY: My conscience has gotten to me in recent memory and I plan on teaching others to do as I say, not as I do; I'll likely violate my conscience when asked to do so. You see I have no integrity and never have.
Do you apply the same standard to Edward Snowden? Who amongst us is without sin?! While I don't like that the author did what he did, I completely understand it and am glad he had the balls to spill it.