Rajiv Sethi: On Blogs and Economic Discourse
Rajiv Sethi:
Rajiv Sethi: Athreya argued... that most such blogging is done by ill-informed hacks who ought to be ignored while properly trained experts (such as himself) are left in peace.... The original post has been taken down but (as a telling reminder that no public statement can subsequently be made private in this day and age) a copy may be viewed here.
The response from the accused was swift and brutal....
I'd like to take this opportunity to reiterate and expand upon a couple of points that I have made in previous posts about the rapidly changing role of blogs in economic discourse.
My view of the matter is almost diametrically opposed to that of Athreya: I consider these changes to be both irreversible and potentially very healthy. In a post commemorating the birthdays of two excellent economics blogs, I made this point as follows (see also Andrew Gelman's follow-up):
The community of academic economists is increasingly coming to be judged not simply by peer reviewers at journals or by carefully screened and selected cohorts of students, but by a global audience of curious individuals spanning multiple disciplines and specializations. Voices that have long been silenced in mainstream journals now insist on being heard on an equal footing. Arguments on blogs seem to be judged largely on their merits, independently of the professional stature of those making them. This has allowed economists in far-flung places with heavy teaching loads, or those who pursued non-academic career paths, to join debates. Even anonymous writers and autodidacts can wield considerable influence in this environment, and a number of genuinely interdisciplinary blogs have emerged...
This has got to be a healthy development. One might persuade a referee or seminar audience that a particular assumption is justified simply because there is a large literature that builds on it, or that tractability concerns preclude reasonable alternatives. But this broader audience is not so easy to convince. Persuading a multitude of informed, thoughtful, intelligent readers of the relevance and validity of one's arguments using words rather than formal models is a far more challenging task than persuading one's own students or peers. If one can separate the wheat from the chaff, the reasoned argument from the noise, this process should result in a more dynamic and robust discipline in the long run...
