A journal is like a crew

The police department, is like a crew It does whatever they want to do In society you have illegal and legal We need both, to make things equal So legal is tobacco, illegal is speed Legal is aspirin, illegal is weed Crack is illegal, cause they cannot stop ya But cocaine is legal if it’s owned by a doctor Everything you do in private is illegal Everything’s legal if the government can see you Don’t get me wrong, America is great place to live But listen to the knowledge I give . . . — BDP.

Someone pointed me to an iffy paper appearing in a prestigious scientific journal. At first I was annoyed. One more??? Himmicanes, air rage, ages ending in 9, and all the rest . . . that’s not enough for them?

But then I thought, nah, it’s all good. This outlet is their journal, just like Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science is our blog. We can publish anything we want here. Through years of diligent effort, we have built an audience of people who will read what we write here, and who will give us a hearing, even if they don’t always agree with us (and even if we, the bloggers here, don’t always agree with each other).

Similarly, the organization that publishes that journal has, through many years of diligent effort, built an effective brand. They decided in their wisdom to give publishing power for their proceedings to their editors, some of whom in turn use that power to promote a certain kind of science. I’d call it junk social science or scientism; I guess they would call it the real stuff. In any case, it’s their journal! To be upset that they publish unsupported claims in social science (along with lots of good stuff too) would be like being upset that Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science publishes too many cat pictures.

P.S. I have no link to the particular paper that was sent to me, partly because I don’t actually remember what it is or even what it’s about—I wrote this post awhile ago!—and partly because the details don’t really matter. Indeed, you, the reader, might like this particular paper and not think it’s “scientistic” at all, in which case my point is better made in general terms, so that you can imagine some characteristically bad tabloid-style social science article in its place. You could also forget this particular journal entirely and think about some other journal such as the Journal of Economic Perspectives, which published and never retracted that notorious gremlins paper. The econ department is like a crew. It’s crews all the way down.

P.P.S. Again, this journal publishes lots of good stuff too including but not limited to my own publications there! I guess it’s best to think of a journal not as a unified entity but rather a loose agglomeration of mini-journals, some of which focus on the serious stuff and some of which go more for drama and publicity rather than scientific accuracy. To slam all of this journal for the bad stuff would be like slamming everything coming out of Columbia University just because we have Dr. Oz, or slamming everything coming out of the University of California just because they have that sleep guy.