[okfn-discuss] why data and process in academic publishing matters

Mon Apr 22 16:32:56 UTC 2013

On 22 April 2013 18:26, Marc Joffe <marc at publicsectorcredit.org> wrote:
> Tony:  I think you would have to admit that the implication of your argument
> is that no empirical economics study actually impacts policy.

I think it's relatively easy to shift people's opinions (and then
policy, where those people are in a position to impact that) in small
ways, but not so much in large ways. Or, to put it differently, such
studies are a good way to help people towards a better version of
whatever they currently believe, but not so much to get them to
believe something entirely different.

Over time you can move people's opinions quite far, using the
frog-boiling method[1], but radical conversions are fairly rare, and
radical conversions based on a single study rarer still.

> It would be interesting to see some experimental research on this question.

Definitely!

Tony

[1] Or what I'm tempted to start calling the alizarin fanaloka method,
from one of the more curious books I've read recently: "On the Origin
of Tepees". It has an interesting discussion on why some "obvious"
ideas such as the wheel, actually took such a long time to evolve, in
quite a protracted step-by-step manner. He then has a peculiar aside
about how most people have no problem imagining a blue sheep, even if
they've never seen one. It's close enough to concepts they already
know to be easily imagined. But imagining a coquelicot fosa is much
harder, unless you already know what each of those things is. Simply
being told that the colour coquelicot is an orangish bright-red
poppy-like colour, and a fosa is mongoose that looks more like a
jungle cat, isn't really enough — even at a first degree of
abstraction / distance from what people are already quite intimately
familiar with, most people struggle. And even those with the most
fertile imagination will almost certainly fall over once you go
another step from there, and ask them to imagine an alizarin fanaloka,
where alizarin is a more purple-ish shade of coquelicot, and a
fanaloka is a smaller, furrier, stripier fosa. To get someone to the
point where they're comfortable with an alizarin fanaloka, requires
first getting them to the coquelicot fosa — in a much slower,
step-by-step manner.