I'm reminded of the 4th & 5th season of The Wire. Those seasons in particular I find memorable for the portrayal of certain characters (Mayor Royce, The Newspaper Editors, Officer Marimow) who seem... Uncanny. Not venal, not slovenly, but rather dilligent & deluded & sincere & ineffectual in an uncanny way. Kool-Aid indeed.
Thanks for the deep write-up SK. It's... astounding & bleak.
If you take questions, I have one for you:
When you read the paper, when you read the slathering of "sciencey" fake metrics atop "objectivey-sounding" assertions that are shamelessly tenuous... What do you imagine? Are the writer(s)/ editors/ checkers actually believing that this sounds authoritative; that is, do you imagine their tone & demeanor as ingenuous, sincerely self-serious & confident in their reasonableness, or are they, in your imagination, weary, jaded, unconvinced by the "sciencey-sounding" conventions that they feel disgusted by yet helpless not to adopt?
The reason I ask is because the article is so transparently worthless in its evidentiary value & so obviously a mere vessel of assertion & opinion, and yet.. Do they know that? Is it more troubling to think that they do or don't realize that?
I would never say I envy no one; but I could never envy anyone obliged to write papers like this. A cursed thing to sign a name to.
I would say with 80% confidence these are well intentioned authors who do believe what they are doing is good and best practice.
The strange thing is, this sort of is best practice, like it’s better than guessing/doing nothing, but it’s still way more limited than I think they believe.
This is so funny 😂😭and ridiculously sad
Thanks, yes, that's a good way of putting it.
I'm reminded of the 4th & 5th season of The Wire. Those seasons in particular I find memorable for the portrayal of certain characters (Mayor Royce, The Newspaper Editors, Officer Marimow) who seem... Uncanny. Not venal, not slovenly, but rather dilligent & deluded & sincere & ineffectual in an uncanny way. Kool-Aid indeed.
Thanks for the deep write-up SK. It's... astounding & bleak.
If you take questions, I have one for you:
When you read the paper, when you read the slathering of "sciencey" fake metrics atop "objectivey-sounding" assertions that are shamelessly tenuous... What do you imagine? Are the writer(s)/ editors/ checkers actually believing that this sounds authoritative; that is, do you imagine their tone & demeanor as ingenuous, sincerely self-serious & confident in their reasonableness, or are they, in your imagination, weary, jaded, unconvinced by the "sciencey-sounding" conventions that they feel disgusted by yet helpless not to adopt?
The reason I ask is because the article is so transparently worthless in its evidentiary value & so obviously a mere vessel of assertion & opinion, and yet.. Do they know that? Is it more troubling to think that they do or don't realize that?
I would never say I envy no one; but I could never envy anyone obliged to write papers like this. A cursed thing to sign a name to.
I would say with 80% confidence these are well intentioned authors who do believe what they are doing is good and best practice.
The strange thing is, this sort of is best practice, like it’s better than guessing/doing nothing, but it’s still way more limited than I think they believe.
I would think of it as a Kool-Aid issue.