4 ms·

This is a laughably bad take, sorry. For example, the University of Chicago and its connected education institutions get a large portion of their funding by fal

by chaps 4y ago

This is a laughably bad take, sorry. For example, the University of Chicago and its connected education institutions get a large portion of their funding by falling to the interests of the Chicago's mayor's office and the police department, which largely stems from rhetoric. They wouldn't be able to fund their projects if they didn't do that. Academic researchers can lose their funding if they, as individuals, publicly criticize certain organizations. In other words, "validate our political rhetoric with a smile, or lose your funding." It skews academic research, and these incentives exist practically everywhere.

yodon 4y ago
The University of Chicago is a private institution with a research budget of many billions of dollars per year. Given the extreme difficulty of believing the government of the city of Chicago provides even a tiny fraction of those billions of dollars in research funding, I'll have to ask you for citations or data to support those aspersions you're casting on the university and it's researchers. We live in a time when there are strong anti-intellectual threads and forces among some parts of the media. It's easy to cast aspersions against researchers. The fact that you've heard someone in the media say these things doesn't make the aspersions true.
- chaps 4y ago
  The fact that you've heard someone in the media say these things doesn't make the aspersions true. Good one. I'm a journalist who's done extensive research on this exact subject in Chicago and have spent hundreds of hours spent looking through leaked documents, FOIA request documents, network graphs, etc etc. I'm not going to write a long post about the subject for you, but I can point you in the right direction if you're actually curious about diving into this. I hope you are, because you seem to be very resistant to even attempting to believe. A lot of it is hush-hush, mired in layers of obfuscation, but one of the better places to start is by looking into the funding of the University of Chicago's "Crime Lab" in connection with the Chicago Police Department's SDSC program. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/10-million-grant-will-support-crime-lab-collaboration-police-innovation https://news.uchicago.edu/story/10-million-grant-will-suppor... Leaked documents between the Chicago Mayor's office and executive staff at University of Chicago is a great resource as well. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20639065-re_-quiet-time-2-year-rct-results_26-07-2019pdf https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20639065-re_-quiet-t... https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20651206-re_-fundraising_21-09-2020_138pdf https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20651206-re_-fundrai... Do a search for "uchicago.org" here: https://www.documentcloud.org/app?q=%2Bproject%3Aemails-202859%20 https://www.documentcloud.org/app?q=%2Bproject%3Aemails-2028... And have a look at how often Chicago's worked directly with the Uchicago over the past 15 years: https://observablehq.com/d/22a60bb00bade634 https://observablehq.com/d/22a60bb00bade634 The funding organization that threatened to cut funding of a program after tweets were made can't be shared because they were deleted after they were bullied by their funders.
  - yodon 4y ago
    I'm not seeing the smoking gun here in your documents. I'm aware of many academics who work with city governments, including at least one researcher not from Chicago who works closely with the city of Chicago. He does so precisely because there are big problems there. The city of Chicago may even contribute to the funding of the work he does (it's helpful for the city to have skin in the game), but they certainly don't provide the lion's share of the funding and if the city were uncooperative he'd simply shift his work to another urban area. He's not going to waste his time and career as some sort of controlled victim of an evil governmental moneybags, particularly when he's the one bringing funding to the projects. Happy to continue reading docs, but thus far I'm not seeing the conspiracy.
    - chaps 4y ago
      The point I'm hoping to show isn't a "smoking gun" (frankly, I doubt any single document, or set of documents, would meet your criteria), but to show that research is deeply motivated by funding rather than for "pure science". Bad results that don't fit the narrative of the funders or political body's interest either don't get published, or are downplayed to the extent that they're effectively unpublished. Anything remotely positive is exploded through the roof. I recommend checking out Robert Vargas on twitter. He's a tenured professor at University of Chicago who's written a lot about this subject. https://twitter.com/robvargas21 https://twitter.com/robvargas21 This post describes a lot of the problems well: https://crimethoughts.com/year/04/24/readi-chicago-and-inconvenient-null-results/ https://crimethoughts.com/year/04/24/readi-chicago-and-incon...
      - yodon 4y ago
        Reading your second set of links, it sounds like much more a case of "the media does a bad job of reporting on science" than "the research is corrupt." If you want to improve the quality of science reporting, that's probably better handled by criticizing the reporters than by criticizing the researchers (most researchers already work hard to keep their work out of the popular press, precisely because the popular press does such a bad job of reporting on research). Among the first tweets in the twitter stream you provided is a University of Chicago researcher actively criticizing the actions of the Chicago PD. That doesn't seem to support your narrative that the U of C research is corrupt and in the pocket of city government. I certainly can believe research is being poorly and inaccurately reported in the press, but again I think if you want to affect change you'll be more effective if you focus your efforts on the reporting press who seem by your own description to be the ones at fault.

by chaps 4y ago

yodon 4y ago

The University of Chicago is a private institution with a research budget of many billions of dollars per year. Given the extreme difficulty of believing the government of the city of Chicago provides even a tiny fraction of those billions of dollars in research funding, I'll have to ask you for citations or data to support those aspersions you're casting on the university and it's researchers. We live in a time when there are strong anti-intellectual threads and forces among some parts of the media. It's easy to cast aspersions against researchers. The fact that you've heard someone in the media say these things doesn't make the aspersions true.

chaps 4y ago
The fact that you've heard someone in the media say these things doesn't make the aspersions true. Good one. I'm a journalist who's done extensive research on this exact subject in Chicago and have spent hundreds of hours spent looking through leaked documents, FOIA request documents, network graphs, etc etc. I'm not going to write a long post about the subject for you, but I can point you in the right direction if you're actually curious about diving into this. I hope you are, because you seem to be very resistant to even attempting to believe. A lot of it is hush-hush, mired in layers of obfuscation, but one of the better places to start is by looking into the funding of the University of Chicago's "Crime Lab" in connection with the Chicago Police Department's SDSC program. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/10-million-grant-will-support-crime-lab-collaboration-police-innovation https://news.uchicago.edu/story/10-million-grant-will-suppor... Leaked documents between the Chicago Mayor's office and executive staff at University of Chicago is a great resource as well. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20639065-re_-quiet-time-2-year-rct-results_26-07-2019pdf https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20639065-re_-quiet-t... https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20651206-re_-fundraising_21-09-2020_138pdf https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20651206-re_-fundrai... Do a search for "uchicago.org" here: https://www.documentcloud.org/app?q=%2Bproject%3Aemails-202859%20 https://www.documentcloud.org/app?q=%2Bproject%3Aemails-2028... And have a look at how often Chicago's worked directly with the Uchicago over the past 15 years: https://observablehq.com/d/22a60bb00bade634 https://observablehq.com/d/22a60bb00bade634 The funding organization that threatened to cut funding of a program after tweets were made can't be shared because they were deleted after they were bullied by their funders.
- yodon 4y ago
  I'm not seeing the smoking gun here in your documents. I'm aware of many academics who work with city governments, including at least one researcher not from Chicago who works closely with the city of Chicago. He does so precisely because there are big problems there. The city of Chicago may even contribute to the funding of the work he does (it's helpful for the city to have skin in the game), but they certainly don't provide the lion's share of the funding and if the city were uncooperative he'd simply shift his work to another urban area. He's not going to waste his time and career as some sort of controlled victim of an evil governmental moneybags, particularly when he's the one bringing funding to the projects. Happy to continue reading docs, but thus far I'm not seeing the conspiracy.
  - chaps 4y ago
    The point I'm hoping to show isn't a "smoking gun" (frankly, I doubt any single document, or set of documents, would meet your criteria), but to show that research is deeply motivated by funding rather than for "pure science". Bad results that don't fit the narrative of the funders or political body's interest either don't get published, or are downplayed to the extent that they're effectively unpublished. Anything remotely positive is exploded through the roof. I recommend checking out Robert Vargas on twitter. He's a tenured professor at University of Chicago who's written a lot about this subject. https://twitter.com/robvargas21 https://twitter.com/robvargas21 This post describes a lot of the problems well: https://crimethoughts.com/year/04/24/readi-chicago-and-inconvenient-null-results/ https://crimethoughts.com/year/04/24/readi-chicago-and-incon...
    - yodon 4y ago
      Reading your second set of links, it sounds like much more a case of "the media does a bad job of reporting on science" than "the research is corrupt." If you want to improve the quality of science reporting, that's probably better handled by criticizing the reporters than by criticizing the researchers (most researchers already work hard to keep their work out of the popular press, precisely because the popular press does such a bad job of reporting on research). Among the first tweets in the twitter stream you provided is a University of Chicago researcher actively criticizing the actions of the Chicago PD. That doesn't seem to support your narrative that the U of C research is corrupt and in the pocket of city government. I certainly can believe research is being poorly and inaccurately reported in the press, but again I think if you want to affect change you'll be more effective if you focus your efforts on the reporting press who seem by your own description to be the ones at fault.