About T_Mason

T_Mason

Location:

Columbia (65201, USA)

Joined on:

03/26/08

Occupation:

Grad Student

• The New Nostradamus

  Authored by Michael A.M. Lerner and Ethan Hill - 17 votes

• not yet rated

  Technology

  response to  fixerdave's post Has Mesquita no students?

  Should've stopped after the first sentence...

  You begin your criticism of BdM (as he's known in the discipline) as stating you do not know much about political science. You should have stopped there. Instead you continue and ask the question: "has this man no students"?

  This indicates that you probably did not read the article closely. 1) The article said that grad students in the discipline (of which I am one) are taking courses in these types of formal models. 2) He is a professor at a prestigious university. 3) His articles have appeared in the top peer reviewed journals of the discipline.

  What this implies is that his methods are being tested and replicated. 1)Game theoretical methods are taught to graduate students in poli sci departments across the country. 2) As a professor he has graduate students who are replicating his models. 3) Since he has published a large number of articles in peer reviewed journals his methodology has been double checked by other political scientists. We are a weird bunch, I have friends who run data for fun.

  What you fail to keep in mind during your criticism is the medium of the article. This is a e-magazine with popular appeal...not specifically targeted to academics or professionals in an individual field. Therefore the problems you are finding are not necessarily with the individual...but the scope of the source.

  Comments (0)

  Commented on March 26, 2008 by - T_Mason

• not yet rated

  Technology

  response to  Gooder's post Softball

  A few false assumptions...

  1) Whether it is chemistry or political science; the researcher has to always ensure that the basic input is accurate. "Garbage in, Garbage out" applies to ALL scientific endeavors.

  2) Appeals to authority are only fallacious under certain circumstances. In this case the CIA has used his services and compared them to their own analysts. The results have a direct relation to the topic of the article...ergo it is not an "empty" or fallacious appeal to authority.

  3) The article refers to PS, the PEER REVIEWED journal of the American Political Science Association and the premeir journal of the discipline in the US (an equivalent to the New England Journal of Medicine or any other peer reviewed academic journal). So to answer your questions: these methods have been and continuously are tested within the discipline.

  Finally, remember this is a e-magazine article with popular appeal...not an academic journal. It is not going to give you all the technical specifics. If you want that you need to dig deeper than a journalistic article that only scratches the surface of the topic at hand.

  Comments (0)

  Commented on March 26, 2008 by - T_Mason

• Softball

  Authored by Gooder - 2 votes