Yesterday morning, we posted an update on the “Jesus’s wife” story, revealing that Harvard continues to promote a forged document on its website, years after the fraud was conclusively revealed.
In the comments to that thread, someone pointed out a seriously misleading headline from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This one was four weeks old and remains uncorrected and as misleading as ever. We posted on that one too.
To me, both these stories were shocking. I understand that no institution is perfect, and everyone makes mistakes. I wasn’t shocked that a Harvard professor had been conned—we’ve seen lots worse than that in recent years (Surgisphere; the disgraced primatologist; the “statistically indistinguishable from 100%” story)—what stunned me was that nobody there seemed to care that they’re still advertising the fraud as if it were true. And I wasn’t shocked that the CDC garbled the title of a press release—these people are busy, and also I wouldn’t discount the theory of various commenters that whoever wrote the headline cared more about the message than the evidence—what stunned me was that they’d leave an obviously wrong headline, on what must be the CDC’s current #1 priority or close to it, up for several weeks, so far and with no sign of a correction in the works.
When David Brooks and Nicholas Kristof don’t correct their errors, I’m like, ok, whatever, fishwrap. But Harvard and the CDC . . . they’re supposed to be the best in the world!
Anyway, here’s what really stunned me. Not that Harvard and the CDC made embarrassing stupid errors—again, we all do that; I proved a false theorem once, and one of my articles has an incorrect definition of p-values in its first sentence, granted that particular error was introduced in the editing process, but it’s still my job to read my damn articles before they go to press, right?—; and not even that they haven’t shown any interest in fixing these mistakes. No, what really bothered me was the reaction of our blog commenters.
25 comments on one post, 32 on the other, and nobody in either comments section expressed shock, surprise, or even disappointment at these institutions for letting us down. Everybody was like, oh yeah, Harvard, what can you expect, they’ll gladly trade their soul for a feature story on NPR, and, oh yeah, CDC, what can you expect, they’re so political, the science doesn’t matter to them.
This makes me so sad. No joke. I’m 100% sincere here.
These are two rich, powerful, world-renowned institutions, and when they reveal a lack of interest in the truth, the general attitude is a complete lack of surprise. It just makes me want to cry.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Harvard or the CDC or any institution deserves our deference. What I do think is that institutions are important in our society. Harvard’s supposed to be all about the truth, and the CDC is supposed to be all about evidence and communication, so when Harvard doesn’t care about promoting frauds, and the CDC doesn’t care about garbling the evidence, that should bother us. That it doesn’t, is an indication of the sad state we’ve come to, that decline in trust that has been seen for so many institutions in this country. You could say that the decline in trust is deserved, and I wouldn’t disagree with you—indeed, over the years I’ve done my part to decrease the trust in institutions such as the National Academy of Sciences and the Association for Psychological Science—; still, it seems like a sad state to be in, where these sorts of scandals don’t even bother people anymore.
Andrew –
> Everybody was like,… CDC, what can you expect, they’re so political, the science doesn’t matter to them.
I wouldn’t say that the science doesn’t mater to “them” as if the CDC is monolithic and uniformly doesn’t care about the science.
FWIW, that wasn’t the opinion I expressed.
In fact, recently, we saw some controversy with the CDC where some people there seemed to prioritize political expediency and job security and other specifically prioritized the science over political expediency and job security.
I’m fact, I think saying the science doesn’t matter to “them$ is very facile.
Nor is that how I interpreted the comment of “Josh,” which as I interpreted it I agreed with:
> I Haven’t ever worked in government but my experience in a wide range of organizations and business is that policies are rarely made solely on the basis of sound thinking. Always some politics and capriciousness. So my prior would be there’s going to be sound thinking and some of something else.
Joshua:
Point taken. I was exaggerating commenters’ nonchalance. My key point is that, for whatever reason, none of the commenters seemed particularly shocked/disappointed/dismayed that the CDC would do this. Which seems sad to me.
Andrew –
Your point is taken as well.
But I think there is a complicated mix of problems in play.
One is that institutions, and institutions of science in particular, are at least partially imbedded in a context where perverse incentives can easily come into play. I’m reluctant to pass judgment on this issue without further information. But there is no doubt that the end result reflects some kind of significant failing – and its not unlikely that some form of perverse incentives has something to do with it.
But I also think that it’s likely that part of the “problem” here is that it’s easy to hold institutions against unrealistic standards. Shit happens. Expecting that shit won’t happen is foolish and doesn’t result in positive outcomes. Nosing the fact that shit happens to confirm preexisting biases and politically- or identity-oriented antipathy is certainly sub-optimal and rampant in our societies today. I think we should tread lightly. The lack of trust we have in our institutions is partially rooted in their problems but it’s also partially rooted in our inclination to use fuck-ups to feel vindicated and to justify identify-aggressive cognitionz imo.
Finally, while it’s obvious to point fingers at the CDC and blame corruption or ineptitude or perverse incentives of another sort – the problems of the CDC likely reflect larger problems in our society. If CDC output is biased by political expediency it’s because we as a society have elevated politics as an operative mechanism in how we treat each other. We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.
I try to remember to look at a problem like this as first, an opportunity to explore whether I can explain the outcome in any way other than thinking that derives from feeling outrage at the CDC or contempt for people whose politics I don’t share. (the concept of cognitivs bias). That isn’t an excuse for bad behavior but an attempt to better understand it. Whatever the explanation is in the end, it may well be rooted in behavior and psychology that to some extent applies to me as well as to the people involved.
I think there’s usually value in adopting that as a first order approach. I don’t know what the explanation is but it may well be closely related to something I can see in myself and work on changing. If I get more information, enough to really form a clear opinion, I can always revise my thinking and come around to shaking my head at the corrupt and political bad actors at the CDC.
Joshua:
I agree. These atrocities of scientific communication are not necessarily being perpetrated by mustache-twirling bad guys. These are ordinary people responding to incentives etc. Still, it would warm my heart to think that elite institutions would have some pride: “We can’t do that, we’re Harvard!”, or “We can’t do that, we’re the CDC!” Harvard’s been around long enough that it’s perpetrated lots of bad deeds (I don’t know so much about the CDC, one way or another), but it’s still possible to have loyalty to an institution despite its flaws. Whenever I work on a project with the federal government, I always feel a responsibility—I’m doing this for my country—and I feel that even while recognizing that the U.S. government has done lots of horrible things. So it makes me sad when people at august institutions such as Harvard or the CDC don’t feel that way, and it makes me sad when lots of people don’t expect anything better from them.
Not to be the hyperbole police or anything, but statements like the CDC has “a lack of interest in the truth” or that the CDC’s news release headline was an “atrocity of scientific communication” seem far more misleading than the headline itself. I’d also say that you’re painting with a bit too broad of a brush in the sense that you’re making statements about “the CDC” when I’d imagine only a handful of the CDC’s ~11,000 employees were involved in the process of writing and clearing the “news release” and its headline.
This all seems like what the kids call a “nothing burger” — sure, it doesn’t really fit the content of the study that it’s covering and it would be nice if they changed it, but the spirit of what’s being said (i.e., that you’re better off being vaccinated than not) seems perfectly valid.
On a side note, as I’m about to click “Submit Comment” on this comment, I can’t help but think about your “Someone is wrong on the internet” post from 2012. And yet, here I am, an hour after I started writing this comment, indicating that I’m not a robot and clicking submit :/
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2012/11/04/someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet/
Vaccinated? Yes.
Guinea pig (for FREE at that) for a novel gene therapy? No thank you:)
Alas, it is more of symptom of the disease, rather than some unsightly random zit.
I remember some months back when the news story came out that Trump administration officials were overriding CDC scientists in the issuing of the MMWR – for the ale of political expediency.
From what I recall, from all we knew some of the scientists acquiesced to the political interference – presumably not wanting to risk their career to champion science – while some pushed back at some professional risk.
If we focus on the negative dynamics more than the positive dynamics, out of proportion to what actually takes place, we run the risk of only, further and unnecessarily damaging the institutions we care about.
Thus, imo it’s important to carefully assess the situation before drawing conclusions.
For all of the mistakes people at the CDC have made during his pandemic, ask yourself if you can really make the argument we’d have been better off if the institution didn’t even exist.
One of the delicious ironies during this pandemic is how many government institution haters have been enamored with the public health policies in (soshlist) Sweden were there’s enormous support for public health institutions, institutions which actually have much more power to directly make and implement public health policy without “civilian” oversight.
Joshua:
It’s hard for me to assess the counterfactual that the CDC, or Harvard, didn’t even exist, as in that case maybe other institutions would take their place. I think the CDC and Harvard both do lots of great things, and I wish we could live in a world where the highest standards were expected at both institutions.
Andrew –
That’s a fair point. But I still maintain that it’s important to be disciplined when making these evaluations.
Maybe the counterfactual question has limited utility. But then again I think it’s important to look towards “harm reduction” which at some level requires some kind of differential counterfactual assessment now matter how difficult or imperfect. We know there can be a tendency towards working from a kind of “negativity bias”. It’s a kind of risk assessment.
Anyway. I think “we’ve met the enemy and the enemy is us” is a good platform work off of.
Tangential, but Sweden isn’t socialist by any reasonable definition and the “Nordic Model” doesn’t fit cleanly into the American binary.
Have you considered that the crux of differing views on the CDC and Fohm is simply their respective competence? Comparing Tegnell’s still relatively weak rule-making authority to (say) Fauci when public health mandates are almost entirely at the state level in the US is also kinda meaningless.
d –
Tegnell made fundamental errors.
In calling Sweden “soshlist,” I was mocking the selective outrage towards socialism from the rightwing.
Regarding your comment below…
I suggest that you still have almost no in-depth knowledge of the quality of output, overall, of the CDC. You have a selective view which is mostly fueled by errors being disproportionately highlighted by the media.
The CDC is mostly comprised of extremely well trained epidemiologists (I happen to have worked with some). I’ve been very impressed with how, in general, epidemiologists – as a field of science compared to other field – are very disciplined about not interpreting causality from cross-sectional data. The CDC generally has a very thorough process of review. Of course crap gets out sometimes. But you likely have a negativity bias. When have you reviewed a representative sampling of the CDC’s output?
The work of public health officials is subject to a very high standard of scrutiny. If a lot of people die they didn’t intervene strongly enough. If no one dies they intervened too strongly. Their work needs to be seen in that context.
A fake Jesus story is one thing, but Harvard also puts out health letters filled with reports of exploratory studies, that is, “X may cause Y” or “X may be associated with Y” stories. I see these because my wife gets the women’s health letter
(https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/harvard_womens_health_watch). The letters seem aimed at promoting Harvard’s “brand” rather than providing reliable information. I think this is worse.
John:
Yeah, it’s weird. Harvard has one of the best brands in the world, yet they seem to think it’s ok to compromise their integrity in order to get on NPR a lot.
Many journalists have the same problem: they complain that people don’t trust and respect them enough, while their online editions are full of sponsored content and thinly disguised press releases. They complain about online surveillance giants stealing their lunch money, while their sites are so full of trackers that it takes 30 seconds to load a page. So of course readers have questions about their commitment to the truth and to privacy!
But journalists are poor, and Harvard has so much money and social capital that its set for the forseeable future.
What if I told you that one of the reasons why Harvard was able to build one of the best brands in the world in the first place
is because they were okay with compromising their integrity a little in order to get on (whatever the past version of) NPR more.
In the end, it is all about attracting money and talent. Money and talent both respond to NPR, for better or worse.
University efforts to attract media attention to research is a pretty new thing. I think it results from a combination of more competition among media outlets seeking ways to attract readers and more competition among universities trying to build their reputation. I agree with Andrew and Sean that places like Harvard can afford to stay out of the competition, so they should be trying to set a standard of responsible behavior.
+1 – and other institutions are following Harvard’s lead. Consumer Reports, too with their medical wish fulfillment pubs. I guess it all fills the need for chatter.
My shocked/surprised hobby horse was breast cancer research done being done on the MDA-MB-435 cell line – a cell line serially demonstrated to have been mixed up decades ago with M14 – a cell line “… from a male donor with melanoma”. In 2018 Korch et al. did a terrific job of sleuthing on the long ago mistake, demonstrating not only how it likely happened but how breast cancer researchers kept ignoring warnings that they were studying the wrong thing. Korch, et al. concluded “investigators should be aware that MDA-MB-435 is not a female cell line and is not a suitable model for breast carcinoma.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5762610/
Did it make any difference? Well, a query on PubMed returns a mere 90 breast cancer MDA-MB-435 papers since the Korch paper was published – a rate about 1/2 of what it was four years ago and about 1/4 of what it was when in 2012 the Wall Street Journal published “Lab mistakes hobble cancer studies but scientists slow to take remedies.” (In which it was shown that researchers were too lazy to test their “breast cancer cell line”, despite warnings from a noted melanoma researcher, against the readily available M14 cell line to see if they’d made the fundamental mistake of running experiments with the wrong materials. And in 2021 NIH-funded breast cancer research on male melanoma cells continues to be published e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33948375/
Despite the fact that both of my grandmothers died of breast cancer and despite the fact that nonsensical research goes on barely abated in the face of cancer’s terrible toll I’m neither shocked nor surprised anymore. I’ve concluded that science advances one expired grant at a time. If you look up the grant number from the 2021 paper at the end of the last paragraph you’ll find it’s a multi-year multi-million dollar grant. So it’s human nature that’s to blame. After all, if you’re a frog researcher and you get a richly funded decade-long grant to study a new kind of frog but someone then comes along and says “that’s actually a lizard – here’s a paper that says so?” do you, as Meehl predicts you won’t, “contemplate with equanimity a criticism that says that [your] whole procedure is scientifically feckless and that [you] should quit doing it and do something else”? I think we know the answer for too many scientists.
It’s not just sad. It’s frightening. I do not see a way that our society can hold together when, for very good reason, nobody trusts its core institutions. This is not merely sad; it is a civilization-threatening crisis. Also frightening is that I do not, at the moment, see any solution to this problem short of burning it all down and starting over–which, when tried elsewhere in the past, has never ended well.
Many people, including me, have reviewed Sabar’s “Veritas” without giving enough commentary on “The Harvardness” of the debacle. I am referring to Sabar’s discussion in which he contrasts “The Yard” with the School of Divinity when it comes to physical location, scholarship and prestige. He suggests that the latter was in a state of decline and envious of the success of the former; thus, the push and need for bombshell publicity. And bombshell publicity is a difficult ship to steer. A possible path of least resistance is to count on public amnesia.
On the one hand, you’re correct to be shocked and disappointed that we’re all not more shocked and disappointed. Certainly my own opinion of the FDA and CDC has plummeted in the last ~15 months. However, our level of shock and disappointment may be hard to convey in blog comments, and may be larger than it seems.
On the other hand, perhaps the CDC isn’t actually aware of their post. Maybe they don’t read their own press releases, which is understandable, and no one has pointed out this (gigantic) mistake. As mentioned in the previous post, I wrote to the CDC media office ([email protected]). Lots of people read your blog — perhaps if lots of people wrote to them, they’d notice and fix the error.
My constructive suggestion, therefore, is to encourage all your readers to email the CDC, pointing out the dangerously misleading headline and asking them to fix it. Remind people of this Monday and Tuesday. See if it’s fixed by Thursday. Celebrate or despair on Friday, depending on the outcome.
I’m trying to figure out how “New CDC Study: Vaccination Offers Higher Protection than Previous COVID-19 Infection” is in any way a “dangerously” misleading headline. Are you suggesting that it’s dangerous for people — whether or not they have been previously infected — to become vaccinated?
Lying to people is, almost always, bad. An organization that lies invites people to mistrust it. Covid vaccines are great. Things that may increase the already sizeable number of people who mistrust vaccines, or increase their distrust, are bad. This is dangerous.
I’d argue there’s more “danger” in spreading baseless allegations that the CDC is *lying* about the effectiveness of vaccines, but perhaps that’s just me :/
Anyhoo, lots of conspiracy theorists up in here.
No conspiracy theories. The article contradicts the headline. The headline is wrong.
Andrew: Harvard and the CDC and many other institutions (such as the mainstream media) have gone full Marxist/CRT/Socialist/Communist/identity politics/intersectionality – what many call the Far Left. When you do that, you abandon the correspondence theory of truth (which says that a statement can be evaluated for its truth on the basis of whether it corresponds to reality) in favor of the Marxist theory of truth (which either says, per the CRT, that truth is in the mouth of the oppressed person, or for full-blown communism, that truth is whatever those in power say it is). Either of those latter two options are completely absurd, of course. Truth consists of those statements that correspond to reality, regardless of who says it. The entire disciplines of statistics, mathematics, science, engineering, etc., all assume the correspondence theory, as do all the humanities when done rightly. So when the Far Left says outlandish things that sound like the people holding to those ideologies are out-of-touch with reality, that’s because they literally _are_ out-of-touch with reality. They think they can make up their own reality.
I am not shocked by these sorts of things, because the Far Left’s mistaken fundamental assumptions will invariably lead them to say this sort of nonsense. I am disappointed, because the Far Left’s entire philosophical framework is, quite simply, wrong, all the way from fundamental assumptions, through its “reasoning system”, to its higher-level applications. Not only does it have nothing of value to offer whatsoever, it is of value actively to reject it. Far Left ideologies destroy everything it touches.
The crude propaganda of that comment makes me embarrassed to be on the side of the correspondence theory. You’re saying that CRT/Identity politics/intersectionality is a form of of this:
“The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.”
The source of that quote is not obscure. In other words, whatever their shared flaws Marxism and Idpol are ideological opposites.
As for the shared flaws, the tendency to make up stories and lie to justify self-interest, ideological positions, etc. is unfortunately universal. It is found at the core of all traditional religions. Are you positive that there’s no log in your eye?
Michael,
Idpol shares the same Marxist axioms that socialism and communism do, such as the ham-fisted and naive re-interpretation of all history as oppressor versus oppressed: both reject the correspondence theory of truth in favor of the theory of truth I mentioned above, and both advocate for revolution over reform. Hence Marxism and Idpol are by no means ideological opposites, despite having the difference you pointed out. There is much more the same than what is different. People much smarter than I (such as Voddie Baucham, Os Guinness, Neil Shenvi, Al Mohler, Jordan Peterson, Thomas Sowell, etc.), have pointed out the striking commonalities among all these ideologies. Conservatism would be much more the opposite of these Marxists systems than any of them are to each other.
I’m _not_ saying all these ideologies are _identical_. I’m saying they share some of the same absurd fundamental assumptions that make their whole worldview suspect. How can you build on such a foundation?
As for logs in my own eye, I’ll cheerfully admit they are legion. I’m not saying I agree with you that I’m making up stories or lying or writing down propaganda; you haven’t shown me that. But how does your condescending tone, as indicated by phrases such as “crude propaganda” and “makes me embarrassed” advance your cause? Doesn’t that attack me instead of my ideas and so commit the ad hominem fallacy?
Adrian
Sorry, but your comments do nothing for me. Perhaps you will dismiss this as an attack on you rather than your ideas, but I frankly can’t tell what your ideas are. Declarations as to what Harvard or the CDC represent (“Full Marxist” in your terms) seem absolutist in a world that is far from that. Whatever inclinations I might have to agree with some of your sentiments are overwhelmed by your declarations of truths – truths that are far from obvious to me.
Dale,
I would never interpret a comment such as, “I can’t tell what your ideas are” as a personal attack. Apparently, I haven’t been very clear, and I’d be happy to make myself clearer. Perhaps it’s my original statement that Harvard and the CDC have gone “full Marxist”? There are non-Marxists at both locations, though they are getting fewer. I meant that the ideology has been pretty fully embraced and that those two institutions are heading full-tilt in the Marxist direction, not that absolutely everyone there is Marxist. That is, it’s the fullness of the idea that is their target. Does that answer your question?
I’d be happy to further explain anything else I’ve said that isn’t clear! Just let me know which ones. I especially enjoy talking about fundamental assumptions, both because the air seems a bit clearer down there, so to speak, and because people tend to be a bit less emotionally attached to their fundamental assumptions.
I definitely believe in absolute truth, since the statement, “There is no absolute truth” is self-contradictory and absurd. So it’s not a question of whether there _are_ absolute truths, but _which_ statements are absolutely true.
It’s disappointing but not shocking. This ain’t the first canary to drop. The mine has been gradually filling with gas for a while.
The simple reality is:
a) government science organizations are increasingly becoming political propaganda agencies for policy positions.
b) Uni’s are increasingly about the money they generate and decreasingly about the quality of the science/information they generate.
Both are extremely dangerous. While I’d say in general (a) is worse, together both are undermining the integrity of US science, education and government. But despite blogs like this one, which is a bright spot in the dark clouds, the winds of this storm are still rising.
I’m (of course) disappointed, but I’m not shocked or surprised. Institutions are collections of people. And, most people are not as competent as you would hope.
Probably learned helplessness. Whether governments or large corporations, the scale of these faceless bureaucracies is often arresting for a single individual. One needs to devote hundreds or thousands of hours of one’s life to create a political action group to *maybe* grow popular enough to *maybe* fix things. The Bayesian prior of success on the former is largely driven by existing clout, which most of us don’t have, although we’re glad people like you with clout do speak up. But even for people like you, it would seem like a Sisyphean task because the structural incentives will likely drive a reversion to the mean of incompetence. Of course, we should all try to do the best we can in our own sphere of influence, but, personally, it seems to me that we’re approaching Soviet and Maoist levels of politicization and centralization. Imagine being a Soviet citizen in Moscow in 1963 wanting to change the system. This is why I personally believe decentralization is so important even if it has certain negative potentialities, because it’s hard for many to finding meaning and purpose in the context of these grey behemoths.
An important aspect of the collective loss of faith in the CDC is just our increased familiarity with them. Prior to 2020 my opinion of the CDC was derived more or less from movies like Outbreak and Contagion. I realize now that the DMV would have frankly been a better basis for my prior on their competence than Hollywood super-hero scientists.
Because while I agree completely with the criticism of the previous post, almost more shocking than the misleading/politicized headlines are just their seriously poor quality of work. Like, forget study design and quality of analysis, I’m talking basic arithmetic errors in policy presentations.
I think we may want to avoid assuming that just because a research product is produced by someone in X institution (e.g. Harvard, CDC, etc.) and because X has been famous for its merits in the relevant field that it must follow through with their guiding principles (e.g. be truthful, shows integrity, etc.). Institutions X can be Harvard, Yale, CDC, Tesla, Chevron, news media, Bill Gates foundation, etc. with whatever assumption our society has about them.
As someone who has interacted with medical education (regarded as a prestigious and noble role in society) and higher academic education (regarded as another prestigious role in society and in academic circles) is that those institutions do not cultivate good virtues (e.g. truthful, not afraid to acknowledge and correct mistakes, do research for public goods, continuously learn, etc.) even when they are written in their policies (what Andrew says). I have almost never found people who work in these institutions who know or care about these policies. There is a widespread assumption that once you are “in” these institutions then you are more likely to have better virtues and values; so, no questions asked. However, I am not saying that they are malevolent. It can mean that they believe what they do collectively is virtuous without examining the details and processes behind their research outputs.
On the individual level of interactions, I have found that 80-90% of individuals who ended up in these institutions were there because they want riches, prestige, acknowledgment, power, and the academic degrees that will enable them to materialistically “thrive” in our society. I will regard these values as the “value set X” from here onwards. Given how common value set X is in higher academic settings, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we have less-desirable collective behaviors (e.g. virtue signaling, click-baiting, unwillingness to acknowledge/correct mistakes, narrow-mindedness, etc.) coming from these institutions. After all, both these institutions and us as a society inadvertently promise value set X to anyone who joins these institutions. Why “us” too, you may ask?
Our society regards people with higher “power” as more desirable because only then you can “thrive”. “Thrive” in a sense that people will be more likely to follow your wishes, more likely to be paid better, worry less about being rejected by society among other things. So, institutions that promise value set X have a strong place in society because society deems it to be more desirable. So, we wouldn’t be surprised if these institutions are doing what society deems as more desirable, no?
Despite all that, I am not saying that these institutions provide 0 public goods. It’s more like these institutions maybe provide some public goods out of all the less desirable research outputs that have wide societal impacts. How much is the ratio? I am not sure. I hope my personal experience is not representative of the entire academic community because it was too gruesome.
I guess, in agreement with Joshua, it’s more complicated than just revered institutions are unwilling to follow their policies. If we want to have institutions that value different “value sets” than what is desired by society, we need a major paradigm shift at a societal level. How can that happen? or What it looks like? I don’t have enough prior knowledge to answer that. Maybe some historians/philosophers/sociologists can provide more insights into this?
I think of Harvard (Columbia, too) as a highly regarded for-profit business, a la Goldman Sachs, say. The managements of both institutions wants to increase their influence and its power globally; they want to attract and retain top talent, want to expand successful departments, construct new buildings… Of course they both have to achieve their minimum missions: Harvard has to engage in excellent research and, GS has to make profits. But there’s much more: both institutions have to create and sustain massive branding strategies. The brands thus created have to, in turn, be monetized to contribute back to the branding. We all know this: Universities are ranked by the size of their endowments!
Re fixing the error about Jesus’ wife: seems like the following calculation was made at time t=0: What public knowledge is better for Harvard’s brand? a) that Harvard has been duped into believing and has propagated a massive fraud for years, or, b) that Harvard exhibits integrity by withdrawing faulty research. Looks like they picked b) at time = 0, when the largest damage could occur. After a suitable period of time, the web page will be redesigned and the offending article will disappear.
I guess what you are seeing is that people think it’s naive to expect Harvard to behave in a way different than any other global institution that cares about its image.
Incase we forget, Harvard’s Kennedy School gave a Visiting Fellowship to Sean “Trump’s inauguration crowd was largest ever, period!” Spicer after he left the White House.
Sorry, I’m not shocked about the Harvard thing. This is a web page that appears to have been created in 2014, and I can’t find any links to it at the Harvard site other than in contemporaneous news-type articles. I’ve created a few zombie web pages in my time at a university, and I know at least one or two are of embarrassing quality. If someone came to me and said “hey, this web page that you no longer link to is wrong”, fixing it would be very low on my priority list. I could tell some IT person to track it down and delete it, but I’d rather they spent their time figuring out why Jupyter won’t run on my grad student’s computer (which is what they’re doing right now).
John:
Yeah, I guess the real problem was that they created that webpage in 2014—they already should’ve known better back then! I get that it’s not their highest priority, but they’ve had 7 years already to fix it! Anyway, sure, no need to be shocked by this; I was just sharing my own reaction.
Part of the reason for lack of outrage may be that people see a Catch 22-like situation. It seems likely the situation arose because the person(s) responsible for creating and maintaining pages for the organizations are responsible for the pages but do not have the authority to change them. Those with authority have no responsibility for the process. Organizational processes may be the reason for the issues, shifting the question over to whether the people designing the admin structure are doing a good job. Probably not good enough for issues like this because they are not deemed important.
Andrew,
It looks like you may have gotten the attention of someone at Harvard. The link no longer works (I tried it last night and again this afternoon) and I see the following Browser error message, “Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site. We can’t connect to the server at gospelofjesusswife.hds.harvard.edu.”
Ben:
Cool. Not as good as putting up an error message an apology, but taking it down is better than doing nothing.