A reader writes:
As a social scientist, I have to say that Dan Cohen's essay – and especially the quote you pulled from it – has a very limited view of academia, clearly drawn from his exposure to the humanities (for some reason it's always the lit and history profs writing about the doom and gloom of academia). There's two problems with his analysis. First, there is a lot of "recursive review" going on in academic – just not in the humanities.
Many if not most economics papers that make an impact these days are working papers, and at the end of the day these things go through multiple public versions before getting published (though this has problems, as some people are pointing out). On top of that, since so much of social science is modeling, recursive review happens a lot in the process of invited talks, conferences, and comments from colleagues. Let alone the fact that peer review is recursive review.
This brings me to my second point, which is why Nate Silver is a bad example. I presume if anyone could learn from Silver, Cohen would think it would be political scientists. But, generally, he's not doing work that is "interesting" to us, at least in the academic sense. Forecasting an election in the US is important and interesting, but not as a theoretical proposition. We have a good sense of what variables matter in predicting outcomes in US elections… we have for some time. Doing it a little bit better is great, but it's hardly a breakthrough in our understanding of politics. Which is why hardly any of such stuff makes it into journals. It's not bad. Not at all. And we love reading it. But it's not advancing knowledge… it's forecasting elections. It's a whole different ballgame.
The Dish 