Researchers or Corporate Allies? Think Tanks Blur the Line | Hacker News Reader

Researchers or Corporate Allies? Think Tanks Blur the Line

nytimes.com

55 pointschishaku18 comments

It's news that "think tanks" aren't always as independent and impartial as they claim? Really? Before the Brookings "controversy" nobody at the New York Times suspected that these organizations, which are closely linked to the political parties, government departments and corporate interests, might not be as independent as they claim? Now that I find hard to believe. Or maybe they had a tiny inkling and this shocking example of DC lies and corruption pushed them over the edge and they finally produced an article about their dark suspicions.

Are we to believe the "newspaper of record" has just discovered the tip of the iceberg that will eventually lead them to conclude that the Beltway think tanks are, in part, propaganda mills for the Dems or GOP, or DoS or NATO and the government's corporate sponsors? What next in this brave new world, the NYT discovering it shilled hard for the Iraq invasion of 2003 and is shilling hard for Hillary Clinton in 2016? What other "blurred lines" will this fantastically brave and honorable newspaper pull into focus for the public?

I don't know what's weirder...the article itself or the fact that it's taken at face value by the target audience. Looking at the parts in isolation but never ever zooming out and considering the links and connections between them and the whole it reveals is a sign of these interesting times. Likewise, the earnest and perplexed "study" of various symptoms like, Trump, say, but never ever honestly considering what caused them to appear in the first place.

Is it simple ignorance that drives this insane game of charades or is it something else...like a deep fear of having to face an unbearable truth...a fear so deep that outright self-delusion is preferable to holding power to account. Accepting the consequences of what an honest evaluation of government and corporate power would reveal about where American society is heading...well, that is something the mass media is definitely NOT prepared to do.

Which raises the question of what role exactly is the media playing in all of this? The Times article partially answers that question. When a person or persons repress uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, these will find an indirect outlet, often without the denier being aware that this is happening.

at some point you have to just admit and then get over the fact that the NYTimes is a naked propaganda instrument and that the target audience is actually themselves (by which I mean pundits mostly).

the paper, and its so-called "reporting", is incoherent and non-sensical from the point of view of someone just looking for information. it is ONLY a mouthpiece for institutional power and nothing else, despite the pretenses.

I strongly believe that open sourcing the analyses that are intended to influence policy would be a big step to mitigating the 'money problem' in Washington. If we could see exactly which assumptions policy researchers rely on in their analyses, we could judge the analyses more easily and more accurately.

Disclosure: I work at the open source policy center at aei.

Open data should be the rule everywhere. The internet was created to share academic and scientific data.

I dream of a world where, if you make a scientific claim, that you are bound to release the data you used to arrive at the conclusion.

I agree. In the case of fast moving policy debates, open analytical code is also important.

There are also situations when government agencies like the Congressional Budget Office, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and many many others use private data sources like tax return data. In these cases, I think they should be required to release the analytical source code as well as data dictionaries that allow others to create dummy or synthesic data. They should also release detailed summary statistics when possible-- after taking differential privacy concerns into account.

This isn't the same thing at all.

Open Data is great!

But the OP is talking about open-source models, so one can understand the assumptions that it makes.

In many cases this is much, much more important than the data itself.

For example, economic models usually rely on assumptions about changes to growth rates/interest rate/unemployment rates etc etc. These aren't really data - they may be based on data, and projected forward based on various assumptions.

Often these assumptions are reasonable, but occasionally they are completely absurd.

This is really good stuff.

People should pay more attention to this[1]. It is a complete, open source[2] mode to allow people to experiment with changes to the US Tax System.

I'm not from the US so I can't comment sensibly about how accurate or reasonable it is, but it is more than I've seen anywhere outside the FRBNY DSGE macroeconomic model[3]

[1] http://www.ospc.org/taxbrain/

[2] https://github.com/open-source-economics/Tax-Calculator

[3] https://github.com/FRBNY-DSGE

It boggles my mind. People actually think think tank are independent?

Why not?

People can be independent and still have ideas congruent with a single political party.

You vote. Does that mean that you aren't independent of that political party?

It is no different with groups of people.

>People can be independent and still have ideas congruent with a single political party.

Yes, but what are the odds?

It'd be an awful lot more believable-when-seen if we didn't have a special built-in bias mechanism whose function is to create exactly that situation.

Why would a researcher funded by government grants be more independent than a researcher at a think tank funded by a corporation?

Because gov't grants are awarded by a committee of people with lots of different opinions, while corporations have only one interest in mind.

Careful: a government board has one interest (welfare of its constituents) and multiple opinions about how to serve it. A corporate board has one interest (welfare of its shareholders) and multiple opinions above to how to serve it.

Besides that, both types of boards can have a variety of unofficial/official power structures, consideration of the welfare of non-constituents/non-shareholders, and varying degrees of competency.

This isn't to say that any type of governing body has arbitrary properties. Predictable inequalities exist.

Governments also have only one interest in mind: continuity of power and welfare of the government members. Or somebody still thinks that governments serve the people?

In theory, the government should be more transparent.

Governments are accountable to constituencies and/or electorates. Companies to directors, management, stockholders, and other stakeholders, roughly in that order (where stakeholders == employees, customers, vendors, business partners, community, etc.).

Governments can be investigated by legislators, executive agencies, and courts, as well as subject to document requests (e.g., FOIA in the US), and journalists. Governments themselves don't typically operate as an advertiser in the press, hence, putting purse control over coverage.

Governments are typically more long-lived, and hence have longer-lived planning and concern horizons, than corporations.

It's not perfect, but political power is a check on corporate or financial power, one of several.

Even this article says:

> At think tanks like Brookings, the majority of reports and events...have no obvious link to corporate donors.

So that's what Lennar is up to at Hunters' Point.[1] Build high-end condos on the waterfront, downsize the public housing,[1] push out the low-income black people. With the head of the project now a "senior fellow" of the Brookings Institution, it's easier to sell this.

[1] http://thesfshipyard.com/ [2] http://hope-sf.org/hunters.php

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