I received the following (unsolicited) email:
Hello,
I wanted to see if you’d be interested in doing a review or interview with author ***. His new book, ***, comes out on November 6th. While its not a political or economic book, I know that many of your sites readers are big fans and would be very interested in hearing about this book.
The #1 bestselling author of *** and *** returns with an unforgetable novel of revenge, conspiracy, and murder that brings a band of unlikely heroes face-to-face with their greatest threat. ***, the leader of the mysterious group that calls itself the *** Club, is both feared and respected by those who’ve crossed his path. Keeping a vigilant watch over our leaders in Washington, D.C., the *** Club has won over some allies, but it has also earned formidable enemies-including those in power who will do anything to prevent *** and his friends from uncovering the hidden, secret work of the government. ***, an honorary member of the *** Club, is also the greatest con artist of her generation. She has swindled forty million dollars from casino king ***, the man who murdered her mother. Now he’s hot on her trail with only one goal in mind: *** death. But as *** and the *** Club circle the wagons to protect ***, a new opponent, who makes ***’s menace pale by comparison, suddenly arises. One by one, men from ***’s shadowy past are turning up dead. Behind this slaughter stands one man: ***. To almost all who know him, *** is a doting father and loving husband who uses his skills behind the scenes to keep our nation safe. But the other face of *** is that of an unstoppable killer who inevitably sets his lethal bull’s-eye on ***. And with ***, *** may well have met his match. As *** and the *** Club fight for their lives, the twists and turns whipsaw, leading to a finale that is as explosive as it is shattering. And when buried secrets are at last violently resurrected, the members of the *** Club left standing will be changed forever. With unrelenting pacing, stunning reversals, and two of the most compelling characters in modern fiction, *** is *** writing at his breathtaking best.
Let me know if you or someone on your staff is interested.
All the best,
***
It doesn’t sound quantitative, but it’s definitely political science . . . if anyone on the staff wants to interview this person (without, of course, taking time away from your work duties), just let me know. My favorite part is “the greatest con artist of her generation.” Now that’s something I wouldn’t mind having on my resume.
Did you mean to leave one instance of "***"unstarred?
The finale is as explosive as it is shattering! How could it not be after all that whipsawing?
G
Fixed.
A
"My favorite part is "the greatest con artist of her generation." Now that's something I wouldn't mind having on my resume."
In the original Book of Lists, the guy who got nabbed for the fraudulent autobiograph of Howard Hughes compiled a list of the top 10 frauds of all time. #1 was 'Mr. X', on the reasonable grounds that there was probably at least one really big fraud which was successful, and therefor not caught.
"My favorite part is 'the greatest con artist of her generation.' Now that's something I wouldn't mind having on my resume."
Andrew, that's not so hard to achieve. Here are two approaches.
1. (EASY) Publish your next few papers under the name "Annabelle Conroy". You can tell people about the previous book by DB about the "mysterious group that calls itself the *** Club" (the second one, since Conroy isn't in the first one) and by that time, DB's new book should be on the bestseller charts.
2. (HARD) Publish papers extolling the merits of the p-value as an all-purpose inferential tool. Convince people that, inconvenient questions such as "on what basis is the statistic T chosen?",
"what do we do about the fact that a p-value ignores the power under alternatives?", "what about the work of Jim Berger and co-authors on p-values and lower limits on Bayes factors?" and many, many, many others, are to be ignored or shunned. This is a harder way, requiring serious con man skills. Also, at the end, rather than con artist, this approach may make many remember you as a great statistical scientist. At least, you'd have the consolation (in an afterlife, if you believe in that) that it was such a great scam that people didn't figure out that it WAS a scam!
Sudip,
I expect that the hypothetical statistician in your scenario 2 would only succeed if he or she could demonstrate that his or her approach worked easily and effectively in a large number of applied problems, possibly not even recommending "the p-value as an all-purpose inferential tool" but rather using models to perform inference and prediction, and using p-values as one tool for summarizing aspects of misfit of models to data. It might even be useful for such a statistician to write a couple books full of examples illustrating the effectiveness of the methods and also, in his or her books, refer to the work of Berger, Raftery, and others so that people would have difficulty referring to him or her as "ignoring or shunning" the work of others. In these books, the statistician might further cover his or her tracks by carefully distinguishing between statistical and practical significance and making it clear the limitations of p-values.
It could also be especially helpful if the hypothetical statistician devoted a chapter of his or her first book on topics such as how the test statistic is chosen and also moved from p-values toward graphical model checks, perhaps covering the connections to exploratory data analysis in a discussion paper for a major statistical journal, and in this article emphasizing open questions in the choice of test summaries. The hypothetical statistician could even go further by including two different examples of graphical model checks as applied to real data on the covers of his or her books.
Finally, he or she could write an article directly addressing the concerns of Jim Berger and co-authors and exploring different aspects of model checking.
Nahhh . . . it'd never happen.