Imagine you are considering a career as a paid policy wonk. You wonder which policy area to work in, and which institutions to affiliate with. If you want to influence actual policy, rather than just enjoying money and status, your should ask yourself: do those who sponsor or cite efforts in this area do so more to get support for pre-determined conclusions, or more to get info to help them make choices?
Well I'm not sure how the frequencies break down (more often looked at for good reasons or bad reasons) but I would certainly agree it is a clue to look for and once noticed I think we can usually distinguish the cases prestige is playing a strong role in choice of advisors at for appropriate and inappropriate reasons. So I guess I'm just nitpicking. I find the overall thrust of your post convincing.
I do worry that, as a practical matter (and nothing to do with your suggestions) all the subtlety here (sometimes prestigious advisors are chosen for perfectly normal reasons) provides people a great deal of opportunity to let the very kind of bias you warn about influence their judgement of whether bias exists in that area. Just remarking that it is, of course, a hard thing to do consistently not disagreeing.
Since when do sponsors need the appearance of objectivity? It can help with effectiveness of persuasion and result, but if you have already decided, it can get in the way of selling with inconvenient facts. Marketing is marketing. You would be hack than wonk but hack generally pays better with less work and is at least as much in demand.
Also, I'm not sure that 1 is quite right either. Seems to me what matters isn't so much predictability but whether or not the policy analysis agrees with peoples (and policy consumers) prior expectations.
For instance, it is very predictable that the most respected economic policy analysts will almost always recommend more free trade and less tariffs. However, the fact that this is *so* predictable and yet so frequently in tension with peoples (including policy consumers) prior expectations is evidence against the idea that this conclusion is driven by the fact that sponsors reward that kind of consistency.
I'm not sure #2 really pushes in the direction you suggest. If I really have no idea about a subject or how to evaluate it then paying attention to anyone but the most prestigious opinions in the area is suggestive of cherry picking.
Being open to analysis by low prestige institutions and individuals presupposes the ability of the consumer to evaluate the quality of the analysis themselves which often isn't the case.
For instance, I think most politicians when deciding how to allocate money between various space missions or particle physics experiments would be best served by only listening to the opinions of the most prestigious institutions/members in the astronomy and physics community simply because they have no way of evaluating for themselves whether any particular proposal is worthwhile or not.
Alas and alack, each clue is wonky by itself and probably not the same area of expertise one is considering as a base for their career.
Well I'm not sure how the frequencies break down (more often looked at for good reasons or bad reasons) but I would certainly agree it is a clue to look for and once noticed I think we can usually distinguish the cases prestige is playing a strong role in choice of advisors at for appropriate and inappropriate reasons. So I guess I'm just nitpicking. I find the overall thrust of your post convincing.
I do worry that, as a practical matter (and nothing to do with your suggestions) all the subtlety here (sometimes prestigious advisors are chosen for perfectly normal reasons) provides people a great deal of opportunity to let the very kind of bias you warn about influence their judgement of whether bias exists in that area. Just remarking that it is, of course, a hard thing to do consistently not disagreeing.
Since when do sponsors need the appearance of objectivity? It can help with effectiveness of persuasion and result, but if you have already decided, it can get in the way of selling with inconvenient facts. Marketing is marketing. You would be hack than wonk but hack generally pays better with less work and is at least as much in demand.
If you have data on the answers that sponsors and consumers of policy analysis want to get, yes of course you can use that clue as well.
I didn't say that this is the only reason one might focus on prestige. But all else equal it adds.
Also, I'm not sure that 1 is quite right either. Seems to me what matters isn't so much predictability but whether or not the policy analysis agrees with peoples (and policy consumers) prior expectations.
For instance, it is very predictable that the most respected economic policy analysts will almost always recommend more free trade and less tariffs. However, the fact that this is *so* predictable and yet so frequently in tension with peoples (including policy consumers) prior expectations is evidence against the idea that this conclusion is driven by the fact that sponsors reward that kind of consistency.
I'm not sure #2 really pushes in the direction you suggest. If I really have no idea about a subject or how to evaluate it then paying attention to anyone but the most prestigious opinions in the area is suggestive of cherry picking.
Being open to analysis by low prestige institutions and individuals presupposes the ability of the consumer to evaluate the quality of the analysis themselves which often isn't the case.
For instance, I think most politicians when deciding how to allocate money between various space missions or particle physics experiments would be best served by only listening to the opinions of the most prestigious institutions/members in the astronomy and physics community simply because they have no way of evaluating for themselves whether any particular proposal is worthwhile or not.