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edward schneier's avatar

I too would rather see the butcher's thumb. But what I think you might add is that having a PhD in political science should-- and usually does-- teach you to challenge your own assumptions. If anything this tends to make us too cautious (regardless of ideology). My one-time colleague and friend, the late Stanley Kelley, liked to say that the best answer when asked to predict the impact of events on the future was "nothing much will come of it." Stan was admittedly wrong when applying it to the early years of Viet Nam, but I think most of us tend, too often perhaps, to invoke Kelley's law.

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John David Smith's avatar

The fiction that we can act (or write) without bias is costly -- to everyone. Better to expose, reflect and discuss our biases (e.g., priors) as thoroughly as we can.

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