Researchprop, Academic Integrity and Crying Wolf
A recently-released Request for Proposal (RFP) has folks wondering about the ethics– or lack of ethics– in the research being done at universities. The RFP in question is the “Cry Wolf” project.
Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed describes the project this way:
The goal of Cry Wolf is to build an online database of short essays showing examples of crying wolf by the right. If people today are reminded that conservatives in the past predicted devastating impacts from minimum wage laws, or requiring cars to have seat belts, or Social Security, the theory goes, they may be more skeptical if they hear, say, that the Obama health care plan will result in the creation of death panels. A letter seeking these 2,000 word essays — and offering to pay $1,000 for them — has been circulating among liberal academics (and at least one who sent it off to conservative bloggers).
“Today, as in the past, the fight to transform American politics and policy takes place on a battlefield in which ideas, narratives, and the construction of a politically driven conventional wisdom constitutes a set of highly potent weapons,” says the letter. “We therefore need to construct a counter narrative that demonstrates the falsity or exaggeration of such claims so that the first reaction of millions of people as well as opinion leaders will be ‘there they go again!’ Such a refrain will undermine the credibility and arguments of the organizations and individuals who use such dire social and economic prognostications to thwart progressive reform.”
The letter was sent by Peter Dreier, distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College; Donald Cohen, executive director of the Center on Policy Initiatives (a liberal think tank that is coordinating the effort); and Nelson Lichtenstein, professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Patrick Courrielche at Big Journalism adds:
And their process? you may ask. Use the credibility and resources of the American higher education system to create researchprop – biased collegial research papers that serve as propaganda to support political policies.
Entitled Cry Wolf, the RFP proclaims a desire to look “for faculty and graduate students… interested in writing short (2,000 word) policy briefs” that “construct a counter narrative that demonstrates the falsity or exaggeration” of conservative claims. Writers of briefs selected by the project coordinators will receive 100,000 pennies for their thoughts.
Their hopes with this researchprop is for these papers to “become the basis for opinion pieces designed to run in the mainstream media, on line, on the air, or in the press,” with the end outcome of building the following narrative in the public consciousness: that conservative objections to their policies are just the old dirty tricks of the right-wing.
The “Cry Wolf” program isn’t limited to just a few institutions. As Courrielche notes:
But the project reaches into some of the most prestigious public and private schools of higher learning in the U.S., including MIT, Yale, Harvard, USC, Columbia, Rutgers, UC Santa Barbara, University of Pennsylvania, and President Obama’s alma mater – Occidental College.
In fact, every person associated with this project has either spent a lifetime glorifying the work of labor unions through their writings, or has published work that supports the policies that further Big Labor’s agenda.
Max Borders at the Washington Examiner writes:
Universities should be angry. Why? This is not merely academic malfeasance, but a call by credentialed scholars for budding academics also to abandon standards of research and reasoned discourse. That such abandonment is at the foundation of this scheme, though not surprising, is certainly disturbing. Are groups like this going to undermine academia as a source for credible research by letting the ends justify the means? I don’t want to be accused of ‘crying wolf,’ but couldn’t this weaken our trust in academics as subject-matter authorities if this sort of thing continues?
KC Johnson at Minding the Campus has a great take on the issue. Here are his three main points:
First, the project provides an Alice-in-Wonderland conception of what constitutes academic research. I don’t have any problem with academics citing their research to influence public policy or political debates; as in the recent faux controversy about Obama’s job offer to Joe Sestak, I sometimes do so myself. The Wolfers, however, envision faux scholarship, in which the trappings of real scholarship (they demand factual accuracy, and have established an advisory board that mimics a peer-review process) are intended to support propaganda. In the words of the project’s introductory e-mail, the CPI will pay money to “give substance and scholarly integrity” to the directors’ preferred policy outcomes on such matters as taxes and public budgets; labor market standards; financial regulations; and “inclusionary housing.” In short, the Wolfers intend to reverse customary academic procedure (researching the evidence, and then attempting to ferret out the truth). They have already established their truth: that “history shows that in almost every instance the opponents of needed social and economic change are ‘crying wolf.’” They look to pay academics to assemble evidence that will “prove” the foreordained truth.
Second, as Erin O’Connor has pointed out, the prestige of the sponsors suggests that involvement in the project promises professional advancement: “Grad students can now make fifty cents per word to scramble the difference between disinterested scholarship and agenda-driven advocacy work . . . along the way, they will make great connections that could help them with future employment.”
Third, the project’s leadership features some of the biggest names among historians of the 20th century United States. Advisory Board member Lizabeth Cohen teaches 20th century U.S. history at Harvard. Lichtenstein’s work includes a much-lauded biography of Walter Reuther. Advisory Board member and Penn professor Tom Sugrue has written two extraordinary books on racism in the North. (I’ve assigned both Lichtenstein’s and Sugrue’s books in graduate-level classes as well as Ph.D. reading lists.) This isn’t Duke’s Group of 88—these are people whose scholarship (at least in the case of Lichtenstein and Sugrue) pays attention to matters of public policy, rather than retreating into a fantasy world of all race/class/gender, all the time. Their involvement in a project of this type illuminates the depth of the corruption in the contemporary humanities.
In the end, almost no chance exists that the Wolfers will exercise any impact on any public policy debate. But little doubt exists that their project imperils academic integrity.
Dreier defends the project:
Dreier, one of the organizers of Cry Wolf, said in an interview Thursday that the furor over the project was unfair. “This is legitimate work,” he said, and the essays will be scrutinized for accuracy. The end result will simply be better organized resources that might be consulted by the public, op-ed writers or others. He also said that he didn’t view this effort as either replacing traditional scholarship or doing anything that conservative groups don’t already do. He added that the pattern of “the world is going to end” reactions to “progressive efforts” is a legitimate issue for scholars to raise and explore.
Dreier’s defense, though, isn’t convincing and doesn’t address the troubling ethical issues of starting the research effort with the outcome already decided and paying graduate students to confirm it.
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