Everything Old Is New Again

“economics is the physics of social science”

wow. i always thought of economics as the astrology of social science.

“economics is the physics of social science”

Well, rageahol’s retort is far more amusing than mine. But if you want to see physics-like laws in social science, don’t look in economics. See the life’s work this year’s Skytte Prize winner.

(Full disclosure: He was my grad adviser more years ago than I care to note.)

Might economics be the eugenics of social science?

To the moderator: stick an “i” in Prize!!

As a physicist, I am offended by your comparison. Physics is far more successful at describing and predicting events in its subject matter than economics ever will be. It also rests on far better foundations.

I don’t think economists even have the same personality profiles as physicists, actually. It’s not a good comparison.

We can use the power-law distribution to accurately predict the likelihood of different sized attacks occurring on any given day.

Bullshit. My physics-based scientific hypothesis is that these fellas lost a few millions trying to predict stock market fluctuation “occurring on any given day” and are now trying to get their money back by bullshitting nabobs at the DOD. And it’ll probably work too.

Carl Sagan talked about Richardson in the TV series and book Cosmos, so most American nerds of a certain age shouldn’t find this stuff novel.

Wow, this really upset me, until I got to comment number 1, with number 5 as a lovely coda.

In case anyone cares, (some of) these authors are also the fellows behind Main Street Bias (i.e., criticism of the second Lancet Iraq mortality survey). Not that there is anything wrong with that!

By the way, they cite Richardson in the very first sentence of the paper as so: “In two celebrated papers3,4 Lewis Richardson showed that war casualties . . .” Is that what Kieran means by the phrase “at least cite the Richardson” paper? There is a difference between referencing previous work in the middle of your paper [i.e., what Kieran’s description made me think they did] and leading off with words like “celebrated.”

What more would Kieran have then do? Put it in bold? When was the last time that Kieran cited an author using his full name in the opening sentence of a paper, much less included an adjective like “celebrated?”

WARNING: David Kane is a Lancet denier; he’s had many, many, many run-ins with Tim Lambert on Deltoid.

19: The point isn’t just to acknowledge and offer respect to previous scholars, so the sufficiency of a reference doesn’t depend on how many complimentary adjectives you use. I think Kieran’s complaint is that they don’t go into detail about the relationship between their findings and previous findings, noting specific places where the differences and similarities are notable, or where it might be worthwhile to combine their own results with those of previous scholars. That’s the point of such references, and, indeed, sort of why scholars bother to write down their results. So no, even if they had said, on the first page, “In two celebrated, respected, remarkable, wondrous, delightful papers,” that wouldn’t really have helped.

Also, this sort of predictability is basically the premise of Gravity’s Rainbow. Which is, what, the alchemy of literature?

Interesting post. Many predictable and boring comments. How original is #1? What’s next? Something about Ptolemy and Copernicus? Please, if you’re gonna kick economics around at least do so with a modicum of originality. Come up with some new misleading metaphors and freshly false analogies. Where’s John Emerson when you need him?

#30: “Mainstream textbooks are full of falsehoods, and the American Economic Association, as I understand it, has no code of ethics.”

George Stigler, a former President of the AEA, argued that economic theories are just like any other good: demand creates its own supply. Who, in a capitalist economy, desires economic theories and has the money to pay for them? Why large corporations and right-leaning governments, of course. Is it any surprise, then, that the the overwhelming preponderence of economic theories (and economists) in our society favour capitalist and right-leaning analyses and solutions to problems?

Asteroids come in all kinds of sizes, so you can use a power law to predict when one is going to land on your head!

Er, somehow I managed to cut off the following italicized quotation from the beginning of my last comment:

There are very few economists these days who think their subject is physics-like. The high tide of that sort of modernism was in the 60s and 70s, and it wasn’t a very high tide even then. It’s mainly a meme put about by non-economists.

The mere mention of power laws summons him. My association between power laws and Cosma is so strong that I’m pretty sure if I ever met someone who fit some data with a power law that I would say, in a shocked tone of voice, “But Cosma says that’s bad.”

They’re spruiking for their own CERAC data, right? Interestingly, the data they use for Iraq is based on 2 passive surveillance sets (including IBC!!!!!!!), and the US military. So not only does it contain a huge undercount of the number of civilian dead, but the undercount varies over time (as journalists were killed or driven out of Iraq) AND (most importantly) is heavily biassed against small or insignificant events. The authors don’t even mention this drawback of the IBC data, preferring to note that it includes a lot of homicides (gee, I wonder why?) which they exclude, and it only covers civilians. They don’t even mention that there are 3 other studies (hint hint) which serve to cast just a small amount of doubt on the IBC figures.

The BMJ has an article this month pointing out the extent to which passive surveillance systems fail, but the CERAC mob are going to avoid this issue like the plague because they don’t want to use data they have to collect themselves. So they use their dodgy surveillance data here, and pretend they’ve found a power law in Iraq even though there is a differential bias against a multitude of small events being reported.

These people are cowboys.

Kieran writes, reasonably enough:

The point is not just to cite the beginning of a research program and then jump over everything else. So, I would have them engage with the subsequent literature, together with submission to a relevant peer-reviewed journal.

1) Who could be against engagement with the literature? Not I! This issue is one on constraints and priorities. Consider the first paper Kieran links to. It is 10 pages long, plus supplementary materials. But the first page is the abstract, the last page references and the figures take up around 3 pages. So, there are 5 pages left for everything else. How much space does Kieran expect them to devote to “engag[ing] with the subsequent literature?” By my count, they give it about 1/2 a page or 10% of the space. Isn’t that reasonable? They provide 10 references. Are there any that Kieran objects to? Any that he would remove and replace with something else?

2) Does Kieran not think that they will soon be submitting (or already have) to a peer-reviewed journal? They are academics! Of course this will be (or has been) submitted. Presumably Kieran insists on the right to determine what is a “relevant” journal. Perhaps some guidance is in order. It is the editors job to determine which articles are “relevant” to her journal, not Kieran’s. I suppose that if this article is published in some physics journal, Kieran will object while if the exact same article appeared in, say, American Political Science Review, that would be fine. But why? Isn’t the editor of the physics journal as qualified as Kieran to decide what is relevant for her journal?

I think that many/most of the points that Cosma makes on this topic are spot on in general and, perhaps, with regard to this article as well. I have not dived into the details. But neither, it seems, has Kieran! He just seems to assert that anytime anyone other than a political scientist or sociologist writes on war or writes in a way that is different from the style/procedures used in these fields, there is something wrong. There may be! But Kieran needs to make that case, not just assert it.

Kieran closes with:

What irks in these cases is the seeming disregard for existing research, the avoidance of a distribution channel where reviewers might make one aware of that research, and the presence of a decent PR division and journalists who like to write stories about how the boffins are discovering amazing, new, never-before-seen truths about society.

Kieran has no meaningful evidence that these authors demonstrate a “disregard for existing research” given the space constraints they face. Indeed, he seems to (mostly) agree with them on what the most important references are!

The trick these people are pulling is patently obvious too. They have a model of self-organised cells for insurgent activity (it even has stupid pictures!) which they want to test against experimental evidence, and they need to find it fits the experimental evidence because their business (CERAC) will be boosted by such an achievement. But their model patently and obviously ignores the possibility that a large portion of deaths in one or both of their sample countries are caused by death squads, either because that’s too simple or it doesn’t suit their ideological agenda.

In the case of Iraq, they have excluded 13000 observations which support the death squad model. And these aren’t insignificant in the scheme of things – they themselves claim that there are 3333 events in the time period under consideration, but they admit that these 13000 excluded observations are from “low intensity” events (which the authors claim are criminal). So the 13000 excluded deaths correspond with anywhere between 3000 and 9000 events, all at the low-intensity, high frequency end of the spectrum.

Including the data would bollocks up the fit of their theoretical model, therefore bollocksing up their claim to be intelligent observers of conflict and infinitesimally reducing the seriousness of their thinktank.

And Abb1 was right on the money – their model is straight out of finance maths.

SG writes:

I don’t know where you got your quote from, but it isn’t in the paper linked to here. Time for you to break out some italics and start obfuscating, David.

Please read Kieran’s post.

This one has all the ingredients: a few economists, some physicists, a couple of papers on arxiv, power laws …

He links to two papers. I was quoting from the first one. The part of post #41 when I write, “the first paper Kieran links to” should have clued you in to this. Perhaps not. Would italics have helped?

And, again, if you read what Kieran wrote, you would understand that “disregard for existing research” has nothing to do with research on Iraq. Kieran is talking about research in political science, sociology and so on about the general topic, not about Iraq (or Columbia) in particular.

David, the second paper says on its very first page that it is an update of the first paper. You know, the bit in bold in the box beneath the abstract. In their revision the authors have removed all their glowing references to prior work, presumably because they feel they are doing such a better job of it.

Clearly you think that “disregard for existing research” should be taken to have a special meaning of sociology only – after all, you yourself have shown a flagrant disregard for existing research into relative risks and mortality rates, but it didn’t exactly stop you in the past did it?

This research is ignorant and mendacious, just like their last “research” (which also replicated existing work without proper recognition). Ignorant and mendacious research, David – what a surprise to find you supporting something like that!!