Anyone who attended Wade Locke’s presentation on Muskrat Falls got a tiny glimpse of the vicious world that is modern academics. it came in the unusually large bit where Locke sliced into his colleague Jim Feehan. Locke even made a strawman and set fire to it – figuratively of course – just to make sure he had a really persuasive argument. (<--- sarcasm)
Well, it turns out that the field of economics is just seething with this sort of stuff. Statistics and political science prof Andrew Gelman writes:
Some attitudes surprise me. For example, on his blog, journal editor Steven Levitt wrote, “Is it surprising that scientists would try to keep work that disagrees with their findings out of journals? . . . Within the field of economics, academics work behind the scenes constantly trying to undermine each other.” See my discussion here.
Academics work behind the scenes to undermine each other.
Wow.
Read the link. The whole discussion is way more interesting than just that bit.
-srbp-