Via P.Z. (but put under the fold so as to protect the delicate sensibilities of CT’s readership).
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Henry
So I’ve been thinking that I ought to do more posts on stuff that is happening in Italy, Germany and France but that isn’t being covered well in the English language newspapers. Such as, for example, this story about how Italy’s minister of defence, Ignazio La Russa, has gotten into trouble for saying some offensive things about the United Nations, and the UNHCR representative in Italy (who has been critical of the Berlusconi government’s nastiness to aliens). But I’m being distracted from this high minded mission by La Russa’s quite extraordinary resemblance to a left-over special effect from classic Rodenberry-era Star Trek. It’s juvenile of me, but there you go. I’m figuring him for a Romulan-Klingon hybrid, but I’m not really a Star Trek buff (haven’t seen the show in two decades or so), so am prepared to bow to superior wisdom should such exist out there on the Interwebs …
So, because I was in Europe last week, I didn’t post to my bloggingheads with Dan Drezner, talking about the joys (and limitations) of the European (for which read Dutch – EU member states differ dramatically in their provision of social services) welfare state. This was all riffing on a piece in the NYT which talks about the kinds of stuff that insurance covers in the Netherlands.
insurance covered prenatal care, the birth of their children and after-care, which began with seven days of five-hours-per-day home assistance. “That means someone comes and does your laundry, vacuums and teaches you how to care for a newborn,” Julie said.
I thought that this sounded _great_ myself, having gone through the ‘oh my god, they’ve sent us home with a baby and what the hell are we supposed to do now’ panic with our firstborn. Dan, not so much. Matt Yglesias and Matthew Continetti discussed the same article a few days later. Diavlogs below …
I was at a conference in Italy last week, where I read as much as I can about last Saturday’s meeting, brokered by Giorgio Napolitano, Italy’s President, between the widows of Giuseppe Pinelli (who, after three days of interrogation without food or sleep, either fell to his death from a window in the Milan magistracy or was pushed) and Luigi Calabresi (the magistrate who was interrogating Pinelli, and who was himself murdered a couple of years later). This hasn’t gotten any attention in the English speaking press that I can see. Still, it was a very significant event in Italian politics – an attempt by some of the parties at least to draw a close to Italy’s ‘years of lead,’ in which leftist unrest, kidnappings and murders went together with brutal state repression and tacit state help for fascists who organized large scale terrorist bombings to create the enabling conditions for a coup.1 And it is particularly interesting to me because I’ve just finished reading Phil Edwards‘s fascinating account of one very poorly understood aspect of this period – the birth of the Autonomist left, and its relationship both with terrorist groups (my term, not Phil’s) and the Italian Communist Party. This is, to say the least, a very well timed publication (although Manchester University Press’s decision to print it only in an expensive and difficult-to-find hardback edition, is arguably rather less well judged). [click to continue…]
David Brooks ponders the human condition
In the late 1930s, a group of 268 promising young men, including John F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee, entered Harvard College. By any normal measure, they had it made. … And yet the categories of journalism and the stereotypes of normal conversation are paltry when it comes to predicting a life course. Their lives played out in ways that would defy any imagination save Dostoyevsky’s … The men were the subject of one of the century’s most fascinating longitudinal studies. They were selected when they were sophomores, and they have been probed, poked and measured ever since. … captured … in an essay called “What Makes Us Happy?” by Joshua Wolf Shenk in the forthcoming issue of The Atlantic. … But it’s the baffling variety of their lives that strikes one the most. It is as if we all contain a multitude of characters and patterns of behavior, and these characters and patterns are bidden by cues we don’t even hear … There is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis simply stands mute.
The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the surge of prosperity worldwide that marked the global triumph of capitalism, the essentially conservative policies, especially in economics, of the Clinton administration, and finally the election and early years of the Bush Administration, marked the apogee of the conservative movement. But there were signs that it had not only already peaked, but was beginning to decline. Leading conservative intellectual figures grew old and died (Friedman, Hayek, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Buckley, etc.) and others as they aged became silent or less active (such as Robert Bork, Irving Kristol, and Gertrude Himmelfarb), and their successors lacked equivalent public prominence, as conservatism grew strident and populist.
By the end of the Clinton administration, I was content to celebrate the triumph of conservatism as I understood it, and had no desire for other than incremental changes in the economic and social structure of the United States. I saw no need for the estate tax to be abolished, marginal personal-income tax rates further reduced, the government shrunk, pragmatism in constitutional law jettisoned in favor of “originalism,” the rights of gun owners enlarged, our military posture strengthened, the rise of homosexual rights resisted, or the role of religion in the public sphere expanded. All these became causes embraced by the new conservatism that crested with the reelection of Bush in 2004.
My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising … By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.
Discuss.
Via BoingBoing, Ben Goldacre tells us that the Elsevier journal scam went even further then originally reported.
In a statement to The Scientist magazine, Elsevier at first said the company “does not today consider a compilation of reprinted articles a ‘journal'”. I would like to expand on this statement: It was a collection of academic journal articles, published by the academic journal publisher Elsevier, in an academic journal-shaped package. Perhaps if it wasn’t an academic journal they could have made this clearer in the title which, I should have mentioned, was named: The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine.
Things have deteriorated since. It turns out that Elsevier put out six such journals, sponsored by industry. The Elsevier chief executive, Michael Hansen, has now admitted that they were made to look like journals, and lacked proper disclosure. “This was an unacceptable practice and we regret that it took place,” he said.
You’ve got to love that ‘mistakes were made’ passive-voice shtick. But the interesting question for me as an academic, is how we should treat Elsevier journals going forth? I really think that the base presumption has to be that if Elsevier was pulling manifestly dishonest stunts like this, it has also been up to lots of borderline unethical activities too. When you see the creation of a _complete line_ of astroturf journals, presumably with the sign-off of senior executives in the company, you aren’t just talking about a couple of bad apples. So what do we do?
Most obviously, we shouldn’t publish in Elsevier journals. This is easy for me to say – I am in a field where Elsevier isn’t especially strong – but I hope that I would say it if I were in a field where Elsevier journals dominated. In general, I would prefer my own work not to be used to add cover and credibility to manifestly bogus and unethical publication strategies. Furthermore, I don’t think we should review for Elsevier journals either. There are obviously a lot of honest scholars who edit journals for Elsevier (one would hope that they are in a majority), but they should really be devoting their efforts elsewhere – and polite but firm negative responses to review requests might help generate the necessary norm shift that would encourage them to move. Finally, I am quite attracted to the idea of registering disapproval when one cites to work that has been published in Elsevier journals. Some boilerplate language along the lines of
bq. Timewaster(2009) finds _x_ to be the case. Although these results were reported in a journal published by Elsevier, the company responsible for deliberately publishing pseudo-journals such as _The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine_, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that these particular findings are problematic.
might usefully serve to communicate to academics that publishing with Elsevier is a net reputational negative.
Also, and by the way, there is plenty more in Goldacre’s piece about Merck’s response to critics – hitlists of doctors to be ‘neutralized’ or ‘discredited,’ hints of drying up of funds to academic institutions that asked unfortunate questions etc. Discovery can be an awful lot of fun.
I really, _really_ liked this insight from a post by Jo Walton on Ishiguro’s _Never Let Me Go._
Some critics have suggested it’s implausible that a whole class of people could be created to donate and die and yet been permitted to drive around from centre to centre and go into shops and service stations. I have no problem with it. The worst tortures are the ones you do to yourself. They are a class, they know their place.
[Stolen wholesale from The Irish Economy, a very interesting blog, which I recommend to you all].
The last time the world experienced an economic catastrophe on the present scale, governments in Latin America and elsewhere drew the conclusion that reliance on fickle overseas markets was a dangerous thing. World War II only served to reinforce this conclusion.
Similar lessons are being drawn today, with one crucial difference. Back then, the decision was made to artificially decouple national economies from the international economy by developing protected industries that would service the home market. Now, the focus is on lessening export dependence by boosting local demand, which will involve temporary stimulus measures in the short run, but more structural measures in the longer term, for example promoting “social safety nets to give Asian consumers, especially the poor, the confidence to spend”. Moving towards higher wages, a more equal income distribution, and lower savings rates in countries like China, so that more of what is produced there is consumed there, would seem to be among the more benign adjustment scenarios available to the world economy today.
Elsevier already has an awesomely wonderful reputation as an academic publisher, but even by their standards, this (free reg. required) is pretty extraordinary.
Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles–most of which presented data favorable to Merck products–that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship.
…The _Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine,_ which was published by Exerpta [HF-sic] Medica, a division of scientific publishing juggernaut Elsevier, is not indexed in the MEDLINE database, and has no website (not even a defunct one).
… In testimony provided at the trial last week, which was obtained by The Scientist, George Jelinek, an Australian physician and long-time member of the World Association of Medical Editors, reviewed four issues of the journal that were published from 2003-2004. An “average reader” (presumably a doctor) could easily mistake the publication for a “genuine” peer reviewed medical journal, he said in his testimony. “Only close inspection of the journals, along with knowledge of medical journals and publishing conventions, enabled me to determine that the Journal was not, in fact, a peer reviewed medical journal, but instead a marketing publication for MSD[A].”
He also stated that four of the 21 articles featured in the first issue he reviewed referred to Fosamax. In the second issue, nine of the 29 articles related to Vioxx, and another 12 to Fosamax. All of these articles presented positive conclusions regarding the MSDA drugs. “I can understand why a pharmaceutical company would collect a number of research papers with results favourable to their products and make these available to doctors,” Jelinek said at the trial. “This is straightforward marketing.”
… Lurie, in examining two of the issues for _The Scientist,_ agreed that one particularly strange element of the _Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine_ is that it contains “review” articles that cite just one or two references. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” he said. “Reviews are usually swimming in references.”
Elsevier acknowledged that Merck had sponsored the publication, but did not disclose the amount the drug company paid. In a statement emailed to The Scientist, Elsevier said that the company “does not today consider a compilation of reprinted articles a ‘Journal’.”
“Elsevier acknowledges the concern that the journals in question didn’t have the appropriate disclosures,” the statement continued. “It is worth noting that project in question was produced 6 years ago and disclosure protocols have evolved since 2003. Elsevier’s current disclosure policies meet the rigor and requirements of the current publishing environment.”
Welcome to a new Crooked Timber seminar, this one on Steve Teles’ recent book _The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law_ (Amazon, Powells). This has already become a landmark book in the burgeoning literature on American conservatism, charting out the organizational strategies through which economic conservatives and libertarians (as the book notes, it doesn’t have much to say about religious conservatism) sought to respond to the liberal legal culture of 1960s America, and to turn it back. It’s a great story, not least because Teles talks about the mistakes that the conservatives made as well as their successes. There is a tendency on the left to see the conservative movement as an incredibly efficient institutional Borg that adopted a masterplan in the 1960s, implemented it through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and then saw it all collapse in the last couple of years. Teles gives this account the lie, showing us the organizational false starts as well as the success stories.
We have a great series of responses to Teles’ book – see below for links to all of them. Those who prefer to read this seminar as a PDF can find it here.
As with other seminars, all the contents are made available under a Creative Commons With Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike license. To make it easier for people to remix the content as they will, we are making the TeX file for the seminar available here.
Our contributors this week:
Jack Balkin is Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment. He blogs at Balkinization. His contribution – What Teles Can Tell Us About Constitutional Change.
Tyler Cowen is professor of economics at George Mason University, and author of the forthcoming book Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World. He blogs at Marginal Revolution. His contribution – One Economist’s Perspective on the Law and Economics Movement.
Henry Farrell blogs here. His contribution – Fabians and Gramscians in Law and Economics.
Kimberly Morgan is associate professor of political science at the George Washington University. She is author of Working Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politics of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe and the United States. Her contribution –
Legal Conservatives as Closet Gramscians.
David Post is I. Herman Stern Professor of Law at Temple University. He has just written In Search of Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace. He blogs at The Volokh Conspiracy. His contribution – Living Life Forwards.
Rick Perlstein is author of _Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus_ and _Nixonland_, which has just come out in paperback. His contribution – What Liberals Shouldn’t Learn from Conservatives.
Fabio Rojas is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indiana University. He blogs at OrgTheory. He is author of From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline. His contribution – The Failed Conservative Revolution.
Mark Schmitt is executive editor of _The American Prospect._ He previously has been a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, Director of Policy and Research at the Open Society Institute, and a speechwriter for Senator Bill Bradley. He was also the author of much-missed blog, _The Decembrist._ His contribution – Bunglers, Egos, and Law vs. Politics.
Aaron Swartz co-founded Reddit, and is now an activist, writer and hacker. He is involved or has been involved in Change Congress, the Open Library project, the Sunlight Foundation’s Open Congress project, and other stuff too multitudinous to list. He blogs at Raw Thoughts. His contribution – Political Entrepreneurs and Lunatics with Money.
Steve Teles is associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. He is also a fellow at the New America Foundation. His response to all the above is here.
Since my first attempt to critique Clive Crook on torture seems to have ended rather badly, here’s a second go. NB that this post is _not_ an obviation of the apology below for my initial misunderstanding and mischaracterization of his position. That stands – if I screwed up in reading him, I screwed up in reading him, and am perfectly prepared to take my lumps. It is, instead, a reflection of the fact that my perplexity has in part increased as he has sought to explain himself and his position further. I am quite confused about the logical connections that are supposed to pull key parts of his argument together. Now this confusion could be a reflection of my ‘remarkable incompetence’ as a reader, or alternatively of my ‘total lack of good faith.’ Or it could be a result of incoherencies either in Crook’s views themselves, or in his presentation of same. Because I simply don’t get the argument that he is making (and from the evidence of our comments section, at least some others are similarly confused). And I’ll try to present my understanding of it as non-snarkily as possible in the hope that if I don’t use words like ‘reprehensible,’ he won’t continue to suggest that I am an idiotic hack and a disgrace to the legacy of the blessed Isaiah Berlin, if indeed he bothers to reply at all. [click to continue…]
One important part of Steve Teles’ story is the rise of law and economics as a major approach to understanding how the law and regulation does (and should) work. Steve has a nice discussion of how law and economics became institutionalized, despite the opposition of various law professors, in two key ways. First, rich donors (and especially John M. Olin) helped support law and economics programs in a variety of law schools around the country (including non-conservative schools such as the Boalt school in Berkeley). Second, Henry Manne built up George Mason University’s Law School as an explicitly libertarian institution.
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Help requested – I am frantically writing a paper, and trying to remember where I came across a particular datum from a historian (which was, I think, cited in a more general text – perhaps James Scott’s _Seeing Like A State_; perhaps not) The datum was that peasants in mediaeval societies knew only a very limited number of other people, and that the average peasant in France (or perhaps the UK), would meet only eighty people or so over the course of his/her life. Anyone out there know where this claim comes from?
From the Irish Times today …
IRELAND IS set for the sharpest fall in economic growth experienced by an industrialised country since the Great Depression, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) says in a report published today. The institute’s spring quarterly economic commentary estimates that gross national product will fall by 9.2 per cent this year. “Our forecasts suggest that Ireland’s economy will contract by around 14 per cent over the three years 2008 to 2010. By historic and international standards this is a truly dramatic development. “Prior to this the largest decline for an industrialised country since the 1930s had been in Finland, where real gross domestic product declined by 11 per cent between 1990 and 1993,” according to the ESRI.