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This is a 'controversial' article written for hits. There will be thorough, intelligent criticism of 538, but not until the website publishes more material. To

This is a 'controversial' article written for hits. There will be thorough, intelligent criticism of 538, but not until the website publishes more material. Towards the end of the article, the author asks "Is numeracy really what American public discourse most urgently lacks?" I cannot believe there is a red blooded American who could sincerely ask this question. Americans are paranoid that our schools are falling behind the Russians, the Danes, or the Chinese. Education is part of the American dream. The knowledge and understanding people have of the issues of the day is a metric for the strength of a democracy. The author leaves us with a final question: "What is it about conviction that frightens these people?" upon which he refuses to speculate. Although he is the literary editor of the New Republic, he does not recognize that the fox essay is in the genre of manifesto (I wouldn't have known it either, but it was written in at the top). Manifestos are meant to be self-aggrandizing and they will always define their subject over and against what already exists. Mr. Wieseltier needn't worry about the op ed page, it will survive Data Journalism.

HillRat 13y ago
Well, it's Leon Wieseltier and TNR. My expectations are set correspondingly low. However, he actually stumbles not far from an important point -- Silver is fetishizing "the side of no side," and using the cult of pretended objectivity as a blunt instrument to bash his critics with. Silver isn't doing LHC observations here: he's doing political journalism, and data in politics and economics are neither neutral nor objective. The data we select, the models we use, create toy realities that we can use to justify certain policies and philosophies. What makes Silver particularly pernicious -- and I count myself a fan of his approach to weighting election polls -- is that he pretends that data and modeling means 538's articles are endowed with an Olympian objectivity. Yet his hires suggest that his articles are going to be animated more by ideology than rigor. For example, he chose for his science writer Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist whose climate-change denialism (usually published as popular books, op-eds, and blog posts, not peer-reviewed papers) has been thoroughly debunked by practicing scientists. Not a promising beginning to his site; if I wanted to read worthless contrarianism written by unqualified hacks, I'd just renew my New Republic subscription.
- dcre 13y ago
  I'm not familiar with Wieseltier, so I don't share your negative bias against him (and maybe I should), but the "important point" he "stumbles not far from" seems to me to be the main idea of the piece.

HillRat 13y ago

Well, it's Leon Wieseltier and TNR. My expectations are set correspondingly low. However, he actually stumbles not far from an important point -- Silver is fetishizing "the side of no side," and using the cult of pretended objectivity as a blunt instrument to bash his critics with. Silver isn't doing LHC observations here: he's doing political journalism, and data in politics and economics are neither neutral nor objective. The data we select, the models we use, create toy realities that we can use to justify certain policies and philosophies. What makes Silver particularly pernicious -- and I count myself a fan of his approach to weighting election polls -- is that he pretends that data and modeling means 538's articles are endowed with an Olympian objectivity. Yet his hires suggest that his articles are going to be animated more by ideology than rigor. For example, he chose for his science writer Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist whose climate-change denialism (usually published as popular books, op-eds, and blog posts, not peer-reviewed papers) has been thoroughly debunked by practicing scientists. Not a promising beginning to his site; if I wanted to read worthless contrarianism written by unqualified hacks, I'd just renew my New Republic subscription.

dcre 13y ago
I'm not familiar with Wieseltier, so I don't share your negative bias against him (and maybe I should), but the "important point" he "stumbles not far from" seems to me to be the main idea of the piece.