Just following up . . . this time Dr. McWilliams includes many qualifiers: “I suggested . . . I also suggested . . . Of course, this is only a possibility. I have no numbers to draw on. . . . In any case, it’s just a thought.”
This helps. As I said before, I have no problem with this sort of op-ed-style reasoning; it just seems out of place on Freakonomics. Anyway, this was part 3 of 3, so I’ll have no more to say on the topic.
I actually found this one the most interesting of the three posts and Patricia Allen and her center seem to be doing very interesting work. (though the post seems to present a pretty one-sided reading of her work – the center at UCSC does seem to work on successful local efforts, too. Why not talk about those?)
But then I get to phrases like this
and it just drives me crazy. It's not "brave" for a tenured academic to write something that may irk some political activists. The idea that there is something heroic about saying stuff that some people – especially people who are passionate about an issue – disagree with is preposterous to say the least.
I know you're more concerned about the methodological issue here – but as I've suggested before, I think the two are intertwined, with contrarianism taking the place of empiricism.