My opinion on this may reflect a difference in what we write about, because legal writing in general is pretty much exclusively about generating an opinion; there's no expectation that anyone is going to generate independent data. But for economics writing, the reliability of the data set matters, and that means that I have to trust that the person who generated it was at least capable of reaching a conclusion other than the one they ultimately published. I'm already reluctant to use all but the most anodyne data from think tanks--either right or left--precisely because I know that most of the scholars there knew what the answer was before they asked the question. Think tanks that fire people for ideological unsoundness do not get their papers mentioned by me.I think I was around 19 when I first noticed I hate most in others what I fear in myself, which is why rich kid entitlement reduces me to an uncensored Yosemite Sam but homophobes tempt me to pretend to be gay and hit on them.
Megan doesn't see my point, but I'll bet you can.
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2 comments:
I like this:
"There are only so many topics I can develop an informed opinion on, and national security law is not one where I have tried, so I don't really have anything to add on the substance of the article."
A nice example of what Teh Kidz like to call "The Joe Klein Defense."
Shorter (or not) McMegan: "Oh, dither, determining whether honest libertarians would or would not support a catastrophic reduction in civil liberties is just too taxing for my cerebrals. Could somebody please fix me an appltini?"
"There are only so many topics I can develop an informed opinion on..."
And we're still waiting, Megan.
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