I made the mistake of googling myself (I know, I know . . .) and came across a couple of rude bloggers criticizing something I’d written. I don’t mind criticism, and lord knows I can be a rude blogger myself at times, but these criticisms were really bad, a mix of already-refuted arguments and new claims that were just flat-out ridiculous. Really bad stuff. I then spent about an hour, on and off, writing a long long post explaining why they were wrong and how they could make their arguments better. But then, before I hit Send, I realized it would a mistake to post my response. Getting into a fight with these people whom I’d never heard of before . . . what’s the point? If they want to comment on my blog, I will respond (within reason), or if they are well known researchers or journalists, it’s perhaps worth correcting them. Or if they made an interesting argument, sure. But there’s no point in scouring the web looking for bad arguments to refute. That way lies madness.
I was then reminded of the famous line about someone being wrong on the internet. And I finally understood. Blogs look so authoritative. Get a good layout and some good fonts, and you look as authoritative as any other site. Anyway, this is not news to most of you, I’m sure. But somehow it suddenly hit me, just today.
P.S. The hour wasn’t wasted. In writing my pointless refutation, I realized something I hadn’t thought of before. Which I will blog (or incorporate into a paper) sometime. In the meantime, I’ll have to stop googling myself.
A wise decision, much better to ignore them.
Inevitable that someone posts this: http://xkcd.com/386/
I was about to post the link!
There’s also this
http://www.systemcomic.com/2011/08/03/so-youre-mad-about-something-on-the-internet/
Amen, Andrew, amen! Been there….indeed pointless. Who was that Quixote guy?
Frank
Professor Emeritus
Mississippi State University
I wonder how many thoughtful, qualified writers have refrained from making posts refuting something you’ve said for just this very reason.
It goes back to a useful Bertrand Russel quotation: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” Doubt may not be the right thing, since probably you don’t doubt that your critics are wrong, and your critics don’t doubt that you are wrong. But there is some selection bias in terms of the stupid tending to write more criticism than the informed.
Viz. Tyler Cowen’s recent post on betting being a tax on bullshit, I wish more criticism required betting something besides just diffuse concepts of reputation. I wish this was true of the peer review process as well. Some system where community members have to put up reputation, kind of like bounties on StackOverflow, could prove interesting.
Anyway, blog criticism doesn’t require much of a bet, so more people will do it, thus most of it will be poorly formed and incorrect. And in fact, there is probably a strong correlation between being a perceptive enough person to actually construct useful criticism and not spending one’s time engaged in writing criticism.
Ely:
It’s tricky. On one hand, there’s no way to respond to all online criticism; it would be like trying to correct everyone’s homework. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s good that people such as Steven Levitt almost never respond to disagreement. And then there’s Gregg Easterbrook, who alters his blog posts in respond to criticism without ever acknowledging the source of the correction.
I got a good laugh at “lord knows I can be a rude blogger myself at times”. Andrew, you’re not rude. Sometimes you’re direct. And sometimes, on a good day, you’re direct without the customary flowery caveats (“your wrong” instead of “with all due respect, your wrong”), but I don’t recall a single instance of actual rudeness (example: “you’re wrong and your Momma dresses you funny”). This is a good illustration of why all those sensitive souls in math, physics, and statistics graduate school wouldn’t have lasted the first day at Marine bootcamp. Although “Mathematicians in the Marines” would make a great reality TV show.
My wrong?
Yes. You can pick up “wrongs” at Target for $1.99/dozen. Sometimes though no one knows who owns the “wrong” so when sorting out ownership they might say “your wrong”, “my wrong”, “their wrong”, or “our wrong”. Why what did you think I was trying to say?
And across the internet, innocent bloggers who saw “andrew gelman” in their search engine referral logs are examining their consciences…
On one of my posts at Sociological Images, someone commented, “Wow SocImages, when you miss you really miss.” And that comment got nine “likes.” For a day or so, my mind kept coming back to that comment — what could anyone have found objectionable in the post? — and how I could respond until I finally realized that I couldn’t.
The good news is that I googled “Andrew Gelman” and, as far as the eye can see, there were no link to rude/critical postings about your work. Google personalizes searches, and I suspect that, for some reason, it *really* likes to antagonize you.
Personally, I find this one of the most thoughtful blogs about Statistics and Political Science out there.
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