Andrew Gelman

A couple weeks ago I was reading the New Yorker and came across this shocking (to me) passage about congressmember and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann: While looking over Bachmann’s State Senate campaign Web site, I [Ryan Lizza] stumbled upon a list of book recommendations. The third book on the list, which appeared just before the […]

Last month I expressed disagreement the following statement from New Republic columnist Jonathan Chait, who wrote: The old liberal slogan always demanded that we “treat teachers like professionals.” That entails some measure of accountability—we can debate the metrics—which allows both that very bad teachers be fired and that very good ones can obtain greater pay […]

I was thinking a bit more about Jonathan Rauch’s lament about the fading of the buggy-whip industry print journalism, in which he mocks bloggers, analogizes blogging to scribbling with spray paint on the side of a building, and writes that the blogosphere is “the single worst medium for sustained, and therefore grown-up, reading and writing […]

My co-bloggers John Sides and Josh Tucker responded yesterday to a recent newspaper article in which psychologist Drew Westen argues that Barack Obama made a mistake by making conciliatory noises rather than aggressive Wall-Street-blaming in his inauguration speech and after. Westen argued that had Obama set up a narrative with clearly defined bad guys, he […]

Mark Palko catches this one from New Republic columnist Jonathan Chait: The old liberal slogan always demanded that we “treat teachers like professionals.” That entails some measure of accountability—we can debate the metrics—which allows both that very bad teachers be fired and that very good ones can obtain greater pay and recognition. That’s the definition […]

Respected political scientist Tim Groseclose just came out with a book, “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.” I was familiar with Groseclose’s article (with Jeffrey Milyo) on media bias that came out several years ago—it was an interesting study but I was not convinced by its central claim that they were […]

Oooooh, I hate it when math and physics dudes think they can solve social-science problems by playing around with toy models. Here’s a particularly stupid example: Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of […]

I noticed that one of the advocacy groups in Tim Groseclose’s study of media bias is the Family Research Council. I know nothing about the Family Research Council, but based on its name I can guess that they don’t actually do any research. I’m reminded of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Back when […]

Yesterday we discussed Tim Groseclose’s Fox TV interview in which there seemed to be some confusion about who gets to be a tax-exempt 501( c)(3) group. This got me curious about the content of Groseclose’s book. Here’s what I found: Media bias aids Democratic candidates by about 8 to 10 percentage points in a typical […]

Alex Tabarrok discusses defaults and organ donation: Families often don’t know what their loves ones would have wanted because many people don’t sign their organ donor cards. In fact, the way presumed consent actually works is not by overriding the wishes of the family it’s by making the wishes of the potential donor more clearly […]