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Leftist Citation Practices

Submitted by chemjeff on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 15:00
in

Something I've noticed: when many leftists make a claim, they tend to use as a source (when they cite a source at all) some leftwing blog entry or opinion piece.  Do you all realize that it's not terribly convincing to cite someone's opinion as a reference for anything?  I'm beginning to get the impression that you don't even realize that a website like, say, Center for American Progress, or Huffington Post, is biased to the left.  Do you just simply accept their claims uncritically?  Don't you realize that if you read only the Huffington Post website, you will get a biased view of events, which is not the same as reality?

Frankly it's irritating when I ask for a citation and I get some random guy's blog page.  That's not a citation, that is just some guy's opinion.  A proper citation is to an authoritative source, preferably in the primary literature.  If you claim that there are 78 billion trillion uninsured Americans and I challenge your claim, I really don't care that you are able to tell me that John Podesta also agrees with you.  I'd like some actual statistics please.

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Something I've noticed

Submitted by John Smith on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 16:56.

Many "rightists" find it convenient to dismiss any person or institution who disagrees with them as a leftist and therefore wrong and not worthy of further consideration.

Given that no-nothingness is the signature of the contemporary right, this is a very useful stance - all experts on every topic can be ignored. Because expert = lefty.

Here are a few examples of the rhetorical style of this site when confronted with inconvenient facts.

  • The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal reported that the stimulus is having a demonstrable positive effect. "Oh, that is just the press".
  • The Bureau of Economic Analysis says that after 4 straight quarters of decline, GDP grew in the 3rd quarter. "Oh, those are just self-serving federal statistics".
  • To counteract an erroneous statement that the stimulus bill totaled $1 trillion, I quoted the CBO estimate of $787 billion over ten years. "Oh, those are just stats cooked up by DC bureaucrats".
  • Two professors of medicine from Harvard Medical School write a fact-filled article "oh, that is just an opinion piece on a pro-single-payer website".
  • The AARP and the AMA endorsed the house HCR bill. "oh, they just want to sell more insurance".
  • The NEJM published a survey showing that 7 out of 10 doctors support the public option in one form or another. "oh, they are just greedy, expecting to get more patients". As well as this classic:

    As far as insurance controversies are concerned, a doctor is an interested layman with lots of anecdotes and some out-of-context research ... much like an elementary schoolteacher discussing minor diseases.

And, a favorite ploy of chemjeff's - when confronted with a really inconvenient expert, dismiss the reference as "an appeal to authority".

When the Dow was at 7,000, it indicated what a poor job Obama was doing with regard to the economy. Now that it is over 10,000, it is to be ignored.

Here is another good example, albeit this time from Redstate.com. Nate Silver is an expert on statistics and polling. From time to time he calls out pollsters who he thinks are crap. Given that his most recent expose was on a pollster aligned with conservatives, the redstate boys have to condemn him as a "fraud" who should be ignored. Then, when a new commenter shows up to point out that they boys on are shaky ground with regard to their grasp of stats, he has to be attacked, mocked, and banned.

I could go on, but why.

The problem you are railing aginst is the Colbertian observation that reality has a well known liberal bias.

 

If reality has a liberal bias?

Submitted by Ironman on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 19:10.

am I to suppose Governor-elect McDonnell and Governor-elect Christie are some form of apparition? or that the voters of well-educated states like NJ and VA were under some form of delusion that liberal policies were bad public policy?

Stephen Colbert is a funny guy, but it seems, much like many liberals, you have a big problem telling the difference between entertainment and wisdom. Hey, I got the answer, let's trot out Will Ferrell as an expect on the health care debate!   

Hey, you know Newsweek is a notorious peddler of right wing slogans and distortions. So how's this "liberal reality"

Their sweeping overhaul of the health-care system—which Congress is halfway toward enacting—would almost certainly make matters worse. It would create new, open-ended medical entitlements that would probably expand deficits and do little to suppress surging health costs. The disconnect between what Obama says and what he's doing is so glaring that most people could not abide it. The president and his allies have no trouble. But reconciling blatantly contradictory objectives requires them to engage in willful self-deception, public dishonesty, or both.

Now I'm sure I'm missing something here. But I'm afraid that this mick lawyer out in the 'burbs didn;t get that special  Ivy League issued, George Soros approved secret decoder ring that will explain why this article was really a powerful endorsement of health care reform. My bad. 

 

Ironman, as you well know

Submitted by John Smith on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 19:26.

you are Exhibit A when it comes to cherrypicking. Why is the Newsweek op-ed you linked you authoritative wherewas the WSJ news item reporting the observable impact of the stimulus bill "just the press"?

I'll see your McDonnell and Christie and raise you an Owens and a Garamendi.

As you've demonstrated elsewhere, you have no conception of general vs. the specific.

Chris Christie won by twice as many votes

Submitted by Ironman on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 19:49.

as Christie Whitman won in both her re-elects. I dunno, is winning a landslide in one of the nation's larger states irrelevant, but two by-elections (one in a safe D district and the other highly fluky and still being counted)  highly relevant?

Since your into cherrypicking, I'll leave your name with the local orchards.

And of course, John never responds to mainstream press or polls which are inconsistent with his world view, now does he?

I've already seen your Chris Christie

Submitted by John Smith on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 20:12.

with my Bill Owens.

Christie will be in Drumthawacket years after....

Submitted by Ironman on Tue, 11/17/2009 - 06:41.

Bill Owens is back in Plattsburgh doing estate planning....

Wow-a 3,000 vote lead after getting Scozza's endorsement. My that's a veritable tsunami. We expect a wave of Republican candidates endorsing their Democratic opponents 48 hours before the election all over the country in '10. (what was your snaky point about specific v. general).  And hmm, Owens won a 7,000 vote edge in his home county and Scozza's...he lost  7 of the other 9 counties by a net 4,000 as of today. There's a broad based coalition for the Democrats . ( Christie, hmmmm, won 13 of NJ's 21 counties; including 3 of the 5 largest counties in votes cast)  

On the other hand, we might see liberal incumbents try and smear their opponents, massively outspend them on negative ads to win ugly in '10; and that, somewhat more common situation, was an EPIC FAIL for the Democrats.

Let's see if Bill Owens buys in DC. Methinks he's renting. And I suppose you don't play chess. A megastate governor is akin to a rook. You just exchanged a house seat, which is akin to a pawn.  Can we make this trade in some other major states?  Maybe we can trade an obscure House seat for the NY governorship?  

conservative criticism

Submitted by chemjeff on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 19:57.

Okay, I think I understand now.

You think that reality really does favor the liberal worldview.

So to cite, say, the Center for American Progress, or single-payer-advocacy websites, as authoritative references, is perfectly okay for you because, well, they are liberals too and therefore more grounded in reality.  According to you.  So there's no reason to seek out "both sides" of an issue, because only one side - the liberal side - is reality-based.  The other side is not worth considering.  Am I in the ballpark here?  I sense that I am.

 all experts on every topic can be ignored. Because expert = lefty.

That has never been my view.  But, here's the difference - there is a distinction to be made between an expert's opinion and an expert's analysis.  You deliberately conflate the two.  So if Professor Bigshot at Harvard writes a letter praising single-payer, you take that as authoritative support.  It's not.  It's Professor Bigshot's opinion, nothing more.  His mere opinion means nothing more to me than the next guy's.  Now, if Professor Bigshot conducts a study or an analysis and comes to the conclusion that single-payer is better, THEN we can discuss the merits of Professor Bigshot's conclusion, because we have some factual basis - the merits or demerits of his study - to critically assess his conclusion.

  • The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal reported that the stimulus is having a demonstrable positive effect. "Oh, that is just the press".

  • The Bureau of Economic Analysis says that after 4 straight quarters of decline, GDP grew in the 3rd quarter. "Oh, those are just self-serving federal statistics".

  • To counteract an erroneous statement that the stimulus bill totaled $1 trillion, I quoted the CBO estimate of $787 billion over ten years. "Oh, those are just stats cooked up by DC bureaucrats".

  • Two professors of medicine from Harvard Medical School write a fact-filled article "oh, that is just an opinion piece on a pro-single-payer website".

  • The AARP and the AMA endorsed the house HCR bill. "oh, they just want to sell more insurance".

  • The NEJM published a survey showing that 7 out of 10 doctors support the public option in one form or another. "oh, they are just greedy, expecting to get more patients".

In truth - there is some merit to all of the criticisms that you just casually dismiss.  For instance, even though the CBO estimated the cost of the stimulus bill to be $787 billion, the CBO has strict accounting rules that it must follow, rules that don't necessarily reflect reality (see: static scoring vs. dynamic scoring).  In particular, the CBO's cost estimate did not include the cost of borrowing the money needed to pay for the stimulus, and that's estimated to be over $1.2 trillion.

But I think I now understand why you just blithely dismiss conservative criticism.  It's not worth considering.  It's not "reality-based".

And the phenomenon that you describe as "no-nothingness" is actually a distinction between knowledge and wisdom.  We conservatives tend to favor wisdom over knowledge, and we recognize that learned scholars tend to be long on knowledge but short on wisdom.  That is why you appear to see knee-jerk resistance to the opinions of experts.

OK then, lets see the list of things which can be cited.

Submitted by John Smith on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 20:14.

So is there a list somewhere of the sources that can be cited?

There's no "list".

Submitted by chemjeff on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 23:10.

There's no "list".  You do whatever you want, I"ll just tell you what I do.  When I choose sources to cite, I try to choose ones that I think will be persuasive in conveying my argument.  Choosing sources from obviously biased places isn't terribly persuasive because they are skewed, distorted, selective in their reporting, or otherwise unreliable.  When possible I'll go to primary sources: directly to IRS or Census Bureau statistics, for example.  I wouldn't dream of, say, citing a World Net Daily diary as "proof" of anything, because you won't believe it anyway and it will only cast doubt on my argument as reeking of partisanship, rather than one that is cogent and thoughtful.

But if you want to continue citing Center for the American Progress and Media Matters stories, go right ahead.  It won't add credibility to your argument and it will lead me to the opinion that you are only interested in the narrow leftwing point of view instead of broadly interested in the topic generally.  But hey, it's a free country.  (For now.)

chemjeff you argue like the kind who

Submitted by Remains of the ... on Tue, 11/17/2009 - 03:24.

 

create conservapedia to counter wikipedia.

Here's the thing: I will consider even a World Net Daily diary or a Red State diary or a Free Republic post or another Next Right diary, as long as the quoted post has facts and evidence.  I am not talking about the interpretatation of those facts. Or the opnions. If I disagree with the analysis, I will tell you why it is so based on the facts they quoted or  with new facts that support my rebuttal.  Take Media Matters for ex., it has a left wing bias in that their research is focussed on the opposition, rarely on their own,  but you can't wish away all their original research. You can disagree with their analysis though, but for that you need to have your own facts supporting your claims. It seems that since you find it hard to defend your claims with facts (from your non-aligned primary sources or artciles quoting primary sources or whatever), you make a blanket attack on lefty sources or any source that is not your primary source but one which has an effect of weakening your argument or contradicting the premise of your claim entirely.

 PS. Tthe reason why most saner republicans don't quote World Net Daily is that their research(Obama birther claims for ex.) sucks ...unlike say a democrat quoting Media Matter (which cites all their claims--most of the time at least--you know like wikipedia...you can visit the citation and verify it for yourself for further credibility.)

  chemjeff you argue like the

Submitted by chemjeff on Tue, 11/17/2009 - 13:30.

 

chemjeff you argue like the kind whoSubmitted by Remains of the ... on Tue, 11/17/2009 - 02:24.

 

create conservapedia to counter wikipedia.

This is really funny, since the guidelines I set forth for citation is what any student would be expected to observe in a standard college-level argumentation class.  I didn't get it from Rush Limbaugh 101 or anything.

Take Media Matters for ex., it has a left wing bias in that their research is focussed on the opposition, rarely on their own,  but you can't wish away all their original research.

Because they are very clearly biased, though, you never know what facts they have selected to omit from their report.  Their articles are designed to push an agenda, not discover the truth.  So - lo and behold - all of their 'research' uncovers nothing but Republican perfidy!

That's the insidious problem of relying on facts from biased sources.  The facts standing alone look reasonable enough, but you don't know how those facts were cherry-picked or are divorced from the larger context that the biased researcher chose to distort.

Here's an example of rightist false credibility practices

Submitted by Remains of the ... on Tue, 11/17/2009 - 03:41.

 

Health Care Reform Opponents Try To Buy Report From Economist To Support Their Views

Now don't blame me for linking to a lefty source. You will find the lefty blogger linking to "mainstream" media, WaPo, which links to the actual email by the rigth wingers outlining their plan.

 

While you are at it, check this out too.  You can use a report to dishonestly support your agenda. And the rightists are very good at this (this is different from common political and policy spin and exaggerated claims by both left and the right):

 

Can The Republicans Fool Enough Of The People With This Report?

November 15, 2009 — Ron Chusid

While the Republican Party might have little meaningful to say on today’s issues, you have to concede they sure beat the Democrats when it comes to showing chutzpah. They are making a lot of noise over a report (pdf here) from a CMS actuary which means far less than they are claiming.

The first point of interest is that the Congressional Republicans have event turned to a CMS actuary. During the battle over George Bush’s Medicare Part D program, the Bush administration had threatened to fire a CMS actuary if he reported to Congress about the true cost of the program.

With this report the Republicans were able to obtain the answers they want due to the limitations placed upon the data requested. The report basically says that if you ignore 1) potential cost savings and 2) any increases in any forms of taxes, then health care reform will increase government expenses. You hardly needed an actuary to tell you that. [...]Read more

 

Any time a pejorative term is use a bias is presented.

Submitted by Wayne from Jere... on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 19:16.

Now I happen to favor a bias in favor of the US