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In a quick skim, I couldn't actually find the complaint. The freakonomics guys have been proven wrong before, and update their texts when they can to reflect t

In a quick skim, I couldn't actually find the complaint. The freakonomics guys have been proven wrong before, and update their texts when they can to reflect those things. I'm sure if some contrary evidence were presented to them, they would gladly consider it, and maybe even have this person on their podcast to refute it!

idle_zealot 2y ago
The complaint is that they're consistently irresponsibly gullible.
- randomdata 2y ago
  The complaint seems to be that Freaknomics and related Podcasts, which are created for the sake of entertainment, are not the peer-reviewed journals he wishes they were.
  - cholantesh 2y ago
    This is an utter cop-out that is a hair's length away from "this interviewer was combative and biased". In fact, it is entirely possible to thread the needle of being engaging without also being a total rube.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      It’s not a cop-out to complain, but one has to remember that complaints only mean so much. McDonald’s isn’t becoming a Michelin Star restaurant because you complain its food isn’t fancy enough either. It not like there can only be one Podcast. If you see that the world is missing something, create it! Nobody else is going to do it. If they would, you already wouldn’t have found it lacking.
      - cholantesh 2y ago
        The cop-out in question is not the complaint but the rote and glib response that a podcast isn't an academic venue. The two things are not at cross purposes, and quite a lot of popular media, including outlets in which Gelman has relayed his concerns about Langer, where the goal is quite specifically to critique dubious claims. And even otherwise, people form their view of the world based on the media they consume. Levitt knows this and leverages this, along with being an academic, to boost his platform, which in turn is used to boost the profile of his guests. The argument that he bears no responsibility at all for what and how he presents to his audience is dubious. >It not like there can only be one Podcast. If you see that the world is missing something, create it! Nobody else is going to do it. If they would, you already wouldn’t have found it lacking. I would have thought the past decade would have put this marketplace of ideas hokum to rest, but here we are.
jeffbee 2y ago
The author has a long-standing beef with the statistically insignificant and irreproducible claims of the subject Langer. See for example this latest paper: https://stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/healing.pdf https://stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/heali...
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  That paper is actually worth the read (and if you don't want/have time to read the whole thing, ChatGPT does a great job of summarizing it IMO). Langer's research appears to generally be in the "mind over matter" genre, and this genre seems to be especially rife with the misuse of statistics. It actually seems very similar to me to what happened with Amy Cuddy's "power posing" research (made famous by this TED talk, https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_shape_who_you_are https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_s...), which was eventually pretty thoroughly disproven and even repudiated by some of the original coauthors of Cuddy's papers. The other question I have is that the paper you linked gives makes some very clear, "no gray area" arguments about why some T-values that Langer calculated for one of her papers is just flat out wrong. He's saying "I'm a statistician, and you did the statistics wrong." I'm very curious if Langer ever responded to this, because the argument seems pretty black-and-white.
mvdtnz 2y ago
I'm no fan of Freakonomics and their whole genre of "wow isn't that surprising" pop science (Ariely, Gladwell et. al.) but I agree with you here. He goes through several paragraphs of criticising Levitt for believing his interviewee without mentioning what claim the interviewee is making. So some chambermaids were told their work is exercise, didn't change their behaviour and then.... What?
- kenjackson 2y ago
  Isn't most science in the "wow isn't that surprising" genre? I feel like my whole life science has pretty much been "hmm... wouldn't have guessed that". Basic facts like fire burning oxygen -- I remember literally as a kid thinking -- of all the things it consumes what we also breathe? Or gravity being a function of mass -- that one still trips me a little bit. I think what these authors do is apply science to human interactions -- a tilt toward social science -- but science to me is usually surprising. (Or I'm just really bad at science).
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Freakonomics is less “check out this surprising science!” and more “economist makes spurious but cute connections based on way too little information over and over—the book!”
  - kelipso 2y ago
    Have to push back on this. When you are learning a subject, you learn a lot of surprising things. But you learn enough that you have a good model in your head and a good intuition, then things that are surprising to you remain improbable.
k4j8 2y ago
The author disagrees with Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, whom Levitt interviewed on his podcast, People I Mostly Admire, which is part of the Freakonomics radio network but not the main show, Freakonomics. The author thinks Levitt should have been more critical of his guest. Perhaps, but this is a podcast and not a peer review. In my opinion, Levitt didn't even say he agreed with Langer, although he did compliment her work. Disclaimer: I'm a hug fan on all the Freakonomics shows. I appreciate the author pointing out some opposing views and think the post is well-written, although exaggerated and overly emotional.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  > The author disagrees with Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, He might, he might not. What he definitely does think is that there have been several in-depth critiques of Langer's work, and that it does the listener of Freakonomics a disservice by apparently not taking them into account in an way (certainly not mentioning them). The critiques are not of the form "Langer is wrong". They are of the form "the experimental design, sample size and statistical analysis do not support the claims Langer is making".
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    > What he definitely does think is that there have been several in-depth critiques of Langer's work And one of those in-depth critiques, which is linked to in the post, is by the author of the article himself. > The critiques are not of the form "Langer is wrong". They are of the form "the experimental design, sample size and statistical analysis do not support the claims Langer is making". This seems like a distinction that's not really worth making. The author of the post is a statistician, and he's published a detailed critique (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41974050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41974050 ) that says that Langer did the stats wrong. So sure, he is saying "the experimental design, sample size and statistical analysis do not support the claims Langer is making", which seems equivalent to "she is wrong" when you're a statistician.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
> In a quick skim, I couldn't actually find the complaint. I agree (I think) with what you're getting at, but then I reread TFA and I've come to see it from the author's point of view. That is, reading between the lines of what you've written, I think you're saying that TFA doesn't actually talk in specifics about (a) what Ellen Langer's research purports to say, and (b) what the particular objections to the conclusions of her research actually are. And I totally agree that I think talking in specifics, giving real examples (and beyond just links to dense, 18-page studies and research where the point is buried somewhere within), etc. makes it much easier for the reader to actually figure out why I should care about this in the first place. But on the other hand, I think the author of TFA is purposefully trying to refrain from "getting into the weeds" as he puts it because his main point is really along the lines of "extraordinary results should require extraordinary evidence". That is, he gives quotes from Steven Levitt about how Langer's research is completely contrary to what he would expect, but then Levitt barely even challenges how she got such unusual results to begin with. I.e. his point is rather than give an unfiltered bullhorn to a researcher with questionable (or at least controversial) results, why aren't you pushing back by at least asking how she would respond to her critics? So the article is really about "How and why you should be skeptical of unexpected results", and much less so about any singular instance of unexpected results. That said, again I agree that going into more detail of a singular instance would have helped the author's argument immensely.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  This is Steven Levitt's whole schtick IMO. He finds contrarian results, strips out any nuance, and presents them as if they cover a much broader domain than they really do. After listening to freakenomics and his personal podcast for years, I have come to the conclusion he is more misleading than educational unless people follow up and read the actual papers.
  - esperent 2y ago
    > Steven Levitt's whole schtick IMO. He finds contrarian results, strips out any nuance, and presents them as if they cover a much broader domain than they really do Isn't that pretty similar to what you just did? Reduced his entire ouvre to a snappy criticism without nuance and then used it to dismiss him.
nabla9 2y ago
>Freakonomics team has never backed down on many ridiculous causes they have promoted, including the innumerate claim that beautiful parents are 36% more likely to have girls and some climate change denial. >And, as I’ve said many times before, Freakonomics has so much good stuff. That’s why I’m disappointed, first when they lower their standards and second when they don’t acknowledge or wrestle with their past mistakes. It’s not too late! They could still do a few shows—or even write a book!—on various erroneous claims they’ve promoted over the years. It would be interesting, it would fit their brand, it could be educational and also lots of fun. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/09/14/freakonomics-asks-why-is-there-so-much-fraud-in-academia-but-without-addressing-one-big-incentive-for-fraud-which-is-that-if-you-make-grabby-enough-claims-you-can-get-features-in-freako/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/09/14/freakonomi...
chollida1 2y ago
Yep, it seems like a rant fitting of Hacker news where they break apart someone's text and pinpoint tiny sections to pick at without actually making a point in general. Not sure why this rant was posted to HN. Also the postcast wasn't freakonomics, it was an offshoot one where they don't critique a users work, they just interview them as a friendly conversation. Getting upset like the author did indicates that the author doesn't know the difference between a podcast and an academic paper.
gs17 2y ago
Freakonomics has a history (IMO) of being way too uncritical of the podcast's guests and PIMA seems worse about it. Personally, I think the article is a bit too harsh, but it's in the same direction as why I stopped listening. > First, Levitt starts out by accepting that a certain suspect claim “actually has been replicated a number of times.” Going with your interviewee can make sense in a podcast, but, again, it’s counter to Levitt’s earlier goal of asking, “How do you know whether you should believe surprising results?” I haven't listened to the episode, but Levitt really should have pushed back a bit more. The conversation went (paraphrased) "Here's a surprising result" "Really? Has that been replicated?" "Yes, many times sort of, now here's another surprising result from myself". She really should have been asked about replications done by other groups at least. The replication question kind of gets dodged and then they drop it for the rest of the hour-long discussion (according to the transcript: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/pay-attention-your-body-will-thank-you/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/pay-attention-your-body-wil... ), which is a bit odd when he made “How do you know whether you should believe surprising results?” a theme of the episode. If her work had good replications, it would be more believable.
- tdeck 2y ago
  I stopped listening over a decade ago for this exact reason. Dr. Oz (I prefer to think of him as Mr. Oz) has been a friend of the show for years, but this is the episode that put me over the edge: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-power-of-poop https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-power-of-poop This guy claims he can cure Parkinson's with a fecal transplant and they just let him frame the conversion and the medical community's skepticism however he wants like it's a given that he is a misunderstood genius. It was so obvious the hosts lacked the basic tools of skepticism. Now if you look up that doctor 13 years later he's been promoting ivermectin as a cure for COVID which is totally on brand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Borody https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Borody
  - throwawaythekey 2y ago
    Cure is a strong word but there's plenty of research which supports ivermectin being effective against COVID. https://c19ivm.org/ https://c19ivm.org/ The medical commmunity will almost always be skeptical of new theories, sometimes this is well placed but sometimes it isn't. That's neither here nor there though, the main takeaway is you probably shouldn't go to economists for medical advice.

idle_zealot 2y ago

The complaint is that they're consistently irresponsibly gullible.

randomdata 2y ago
The complaint seems to be that Freaknomics and related Podcasts, which are created for the sake of entertainment, are not the peer-reviewed journals he wishes they were.
- cholantesh 2y ago
  This is an utter cop-out that is a hair's length away from "this interviewer was combative and biased". In fact, it is entirely possible to thread the needle of being engaging without also being a total rube.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    It’s not a cop-out to complain, but one has to remember that complaints only mean so much. McDonald’s isn’t becoming a Michelin Star restaurant because you complain its food isn’t fancy enough either. It not like there can only be one Podcast. If you see that the world is missing something, create it! Nobody else is going to do it. If they would, you already wouldn’t have found it lacking.
    - cholantesh 2y ago
      The cop-out in question is not the complaint but the rote and glib response that a podcast isn't an academic venue. The two things are not at cross purposes, and quite a lot of popular media, including outlets in which Gelman has relayed his concerns about Langer, where the goal is quite specifically to critique dubious claims. And even otherwise, people form their view of the world based on the media they consume. Levitt knows this and leverages this, along with being an academic, to boost his platform, which in turn is used to boost the profile of his guests. The argument that he bears no responsibility at all for what and how he presents to his audience is dubious. >It not like there can only be one Podcast. If you see that the world is missing something, create it! Nobody else is going to do it. If they would, you already wouldn’t have found it lacking. I would have thought the past decade would have put this marketplace of ideas hokum to rest, but here we are.

jeffbee 2y ago

The author has a long-standing beef with the statistically insignificant and irreproducible claims of the subject Langer. See for example this latest paper: https://stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/healing.pdf https://stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/heali...

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
That paper is actually worth the read (and if you don't want/have time to read the whole thing, ChatGPT does a great job of summarizing it IMO). Langer's research appears to generally be in the "mind over matter" genre, and this genre seems to be especially rife with the misuse of statistics. It actually seems very similar to me to what happened with Amy Cuddy's "power posing" research (made famous by this TED talk, https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_shape_who_you_are https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_s...), which was eventually pretty thoroughly disproven and even repudiated by some of the original coauthors of Cuddy's papers. The other question I have is that the paper you linked gives makes some very clear, "no gray area" arguments about why some T-values that Langer calculated for one of her papers is just flat out wrong. He's saying "I'm a statistician, and you did the statistics wrong." I'm very curious if Langer ever responded to this, because the argument seems pretty black-and-white.

mvdtnz 2y ago

I'm no fan of Freakonomics and their whole genre of "wow isn't that surprising" pop science (Ariely, Gladwell et. al.) but I agree with you here. He goes through several paragraphs of criticising Levitt for believing his interviewee without mentioning what claim the interviewee is making. So some chambermaids were told their work is exercise, didn't change their behaviour and then.... What?

kenjackson 2y ago
Isn't most science in the "wow isn't that surprising" genre? I feel like my whole life science has pretty much been "hmm... wouldn't have guessed that". Basic facts like fire burning oxygen -- I remember literally as a kid thinking -- of all the things it consumes what we also breathe? Or gravity being a function of mass -- that one still trips me a little bit. I think what these authors do is apply science to human interactions -- a tilt toward social science -- but science to me is usually surprising. (Or I'm just really bad at science).
- vundercind 2y ago
  Freakonomics is less “check out this surprising science!” and more “economist makes spurious but cute connections based on way too little information over and over—the book!”
- kelipso 2y ago
  Have to push back on this. When you are learning a subject, you learn a lot of surprising things. But you learn enough that you have a good model in your head and a good intuition, then things that are surprising to you remain improbable.

k4j8 2y ago

The author disagrees with Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, whom Levitt interviewed on his podcast, People I Mostly Admire, which is part of the Freakonomics radio network but not the main show, Freakonomics. The author thinks Levitt should have been more critical of his guest. Perhaps, but this is a podcast and not a peer review. In my opinion, Levitt didn't even say he agreed with Langer, although he did compliment her work. Disclaimer: I'm a hug fan on all the Freakonomics shows. I appreciate the author pointing out some opposing views and think the post is well-written, although exaggerated and overly emotional.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
> The author disagrees with Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, He might, he might not. What he definitely does think is that there have been several in-depth critiques of Langer's work, and that it does the listener of Freakonomics a disservice by apparently not taking them into account in an way (certainly not mentioning them). The critiques are not of the form "Langer is wrong". They are of the form "the experimental design, sample size and statistical analysis do not support the claims Langer is making".
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  > What he definitely does think is that there have been several in-depth critiques of Langer's work And one of those in-depth critiques, which is linked to in the post, is by the author of the article himself. > The critiques are not of the form "Langer is wrong". They are of the form "the experimental design, sample size and statistical analysis do not support the claims Langer is making". This seems like a distinction that's not really worth making. The author of the post is a statistician, and he's published a detailed critique (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41974050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41974050 ) that says that Langer did the stats wrong. So sure, he is saying "the experimental design, sample size and statistical analysis do not support the claims Langer is making", which seems equivalent to "she is wrong" when you're a statistician.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

> In a quick skim, I couldn't actually find the complaint. I agree (I think) with what you're getting at, but then I reread TFA and I've come to see it from the author's point of view. That is, reading between the lines of what you've written, I think you're saying that TFA doesn't actually talk in specifics about (a) what Ellen Langer's research purports to say, and (b) what the particular objections to the conclusions of her research actually are. And I totally agree that I think talking in specifics, giving real examples (and beyond just links to dense, 18-page studies and research where the point is buried somewhere within), etc. makes it much easier for the reader to actually figure out why I should care about this in the first place. But on the other hand, I think the author of TFA is purposefully trying to refrain from "getting into the weeds" as he puts it because his main point is really along the lines of "extraordinary results should require extraordinary evidence". That is, he gives quotes from Steven Levitt about how Langer's research is completely contrary to what he would expect, but then Levitt barely even challenges how she got such unusual results to begin with. I.e. his point is rather than give an unfiltered bullhorn to a researcher with questionable (or at least controversial) results, why aren't you pushing back by at least asking how she would respond to her critics? So the article is really about "How and why you should be skeptical of unexpected results", and much less so about any singular instance of unexpected results. That said, again I agree that going into more detail of a singular instance would have helped the author's argument immensely.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
This is Steven Levitt's whole schtick IMO. He finds contrarian results, strips out any nuance, and presents them as if they cover a much broader domain than they really do. After listening to freakenomics and his personal podcast for years, I have come to the conclusion he is more misleading than educational unless people follow up and read the actual papers.
- esperent 2y ago
  > Steven Levitt's whole schtick IMO. He finds contrarian results, strips out any nuance, and presents them as if they cover a much broader domain than they really do Isn't that pretty similar to what you just did? Reduced his entire ouvre to a snappy criticism without nuance and then used it to dismiss him.

nabla9 2y ago

>Freakonomics team has never backed down on many ridiculous causes they have promoted, including the innumerate claim that beautiful parents are 36% more likely to have girls and some climate change denial. >And, as I’ve said many times before, Freakonomics has so much good stuff. That’s why I’m disappointed, first when they lower their standards and second when they don’t acknowledge or wrestle with their past mistakes. It’s not too late! They could still do a few shows—or even write a book!—on various erroneous claims they’ve promoted over the years. It would be interesting, it would fit their brand, it could be educational and also lots of fun. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/09/14/freakonomics-asks-why-is-there-so-much-fraud-in-academia-but-without-addressing-one-big-incentive-for-fraud-which-is-that-if-you-make-grabby-enough-claims-you-can-get-features-in-freako/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/09/14/freakonomi...

chollida1 2y ago

Yep, it seems like a rant fitting of Hacker news where they break apart someone's text and pinpoint tiny sections to pick at without actually making a point in general. Not sure why this rant was posted to HN. Also the postcast wasn't freakonomics, it was an offshoot one where they don't critique a users work, they just interview them as a friendly conversation. Getting upset like the author did indicates that the author doesn't know the difference between a podcast and an academic paper.

gs17 2y ago

Freakonomics has a history (IMO) of being way too uncritical of the podcast's guests and PIMA seems worse about it. Personally, I think the article is a bit too harsh, but it's in the same direction as why I stopped listening. > First, Levitt starts out by accepting that a certain suspect claim “actually has been replicated a number of times.” Going with your interviewee can make sense in a podcast, but, again, it’s counter to Levitt’s earlier goal of asking, “How do you know whether you should believe surprising results?” I haven't listened to the episode, but Levitt really should have pushed back a bit more. The conversation went (paraphrased) "Here's a surprising result" "Really? Has that been replicated?" "Yes, many times sort of, now here's another surprising result from myself". She really should have been asked about replications done by other groups at least. The replication question kind of gets dodged and then they drop it for the rest of the hour-long discussion (according to the transcript: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/pay-attention-your-body-will-thank-you/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/pay-attention-your-body-wil... ), which is a bit odd when he made “How do you know whether you should believe surprising results?” a theme of the episode. If her work had good replications, it would be more believable.

tdeck 2y ago
I stopped listening over a decade ago for this exact reason. Dr. Oz (I prefer to think of him as Mr. Oz) has been a friend of the show for years, but this is the episode that put me over the edge: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-power-of-poop https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-power-of-poop This guy claims he can cure Parkinson's with a fecal transplant and they just let him frame the conversion and the medical community's skepticism however he wants like it's a given that he is a misunderstood genius. It was so obvious the hosts lacked the basic tools of skepticism. Now if you look up that doctor 13 years later he's been promoting ivermectin as a cure for COVID which is totally on brand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Borody https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Borody
- throwawaythekey 2y ago
  Cure is a strong word but there's plenty of research which supports ivermectin being effective against COVID. https://c19ivm.org/ https://c19ivm.org/ The medical commmunity will almost always be skeptical of new theories, sometimes this is well placed but sometimes it isn't. That's neither here nor there though, the main takeaway is you probably shouldn't go to economists for medical advice.