Devin Finbarr offers up a challenge for Progressives who prefer reading contemporary, reputable, academic sources on the issues:
Our first method to determine whether an institution is a good filter of the truth is to look at the feedback loop. I trust that the linebacker coach for the New England Patriots knows a heck of a lot more about football than me, because the NFL has a feedback loop where coaches who lose games get fired. This feedback loop does not exist in academia.
Professors in the social science to do not get fired or demoted if they get things wrong. They do not get additional grad students if they are right. The grad school and peer review process reward one thing — conforming to the current intellectual fashions. For example read here, here, and here. This is the selection process for a priesthood, not for truth. As the history of organized religion shows, when the selection process of an institution is based on ideological self-selection, the views of that institution can diverge an arbitrary amount from reality.
The second method to judge an institution or person is to look at predictions. I fired the New York Times years ago because it kept making horrible predictions. Now my blog roll is filled with people considered “cranks” by the mainstream yet they consistently make better predictions than the NY Times.
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The final way to judge academia is to pick an issue and check the source material yourself. Read everything you can find — primary sources, secondary sources, victorian era sources, new sources. Look for recommendations from the far left, center, universities, far-right, and the Sith. Actually read the studies that people cite and examine the assumptions and the math. Compile your own stats, do your own calculations, and build your own toy models.This process is extremely laborious. It’s not for the policy dilettante. But its one of the only true ways to find out if academia is properly filtering information and finding truth. You may find out that it is — you find the far out sources are indeed cranks, they are making up facts, using poor logic, making bad predictions etc. But you may find out the opposite. You find a an entire world of brilliant, perceptive sources that academia has excluded for reasons of fashion and politics. You may find that academia is not a filter for quickly finding the truth, but a priesthood that produces a black and white, cartoon version of events.
Over the past years I have subjected myself to the intellectual detoxification treatment. The results have been quite disturbing. A few years ago I was an optimistic, generally progressive, academia believing Obama voter. But as I began examining issues more closely I found the mainstream academic view to be far adrift from reality. Part of the reason I issue this challenge is so that I can get a second opinion on whether I’m crazy or everyone else is.
So my challenge to you, dear progressive reader, is to pick a topic and undergo the same intellectual detox process.
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This challenge is not for everyone. Historical detective work is not most people’s favorite hobby. But if you decline the challenge, keep one thing in mind. As a progressive you may have at one point looked down on the religious folk of old, who believed whatever their priests told them without ever reading the Bible or thinking for their selves. Yet, if you believe academia without ever reading the original sources, you make the same mistake. You believe what you believe based on the thoughts of self-selected robed authority figures preaching at a unitarian seminary. Feel free to ignore the challenge and stay with the vast multitudes who believe received wisdom. But if you’re intrigued and curious, take the challenge and mold yourself into one of the true free thinkers of your age.
(Hat tip to Foseti.)