New Yorker : Spy :: Kieran Healy : Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

Back in the day, the New Yorker magazine had an Olympian attitude and did not run letters. Spy magazine rectified this with a column, Letters to the Editor of the New Yorker. The New Yorker now runs letters, but Kieran Healy doesn’t have a comment section on his blog. Whassup with that?? I wanted to leave a comment saying this was funny. But there was no place for the comment. So I have to do it here.

8 thoughts on “New Yorker : Spy :: Kieran Healy : Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

  1. The first equation is obviously nonsense.

    The second equation has a minor mistake (the square root needs to extend over second integral) after that it is, to quote Lord Kelvin, as obvious as 2+2=4.

    • Rsm:

      Comments can get caught in the spam filter. You wouldn’t believe the level of spam that we get. In addition, there are no sharp lines distinguishing comments that are spam, trolling, or just off-topic. If you want to contribute to discussions on this blog, that’s great; if you just want to troll or bring up irrelevant topics, you’ll be better off on twitter, 4chan, or the comments section of your local newspaper. There are lots of places on the internet where you get into arguments with people on whatever topic you’d like. You can go there and ask hard questions, easy questions, whatever you’d like.

      • Perhaps Kieran Healy disabled comments because he doesn’t want to bother with moderation? I’ve Emailed him a few times to share that I really enjoyed a post or to ask some questions and I never get a response. Maybe he only wants to hear from his peers (i.e., other professors)?

        • Jordan:

          I don’t know about Kieran’s rationale, but a few years ago I did express frustration that Uri Simonsohn doesn’t allow comments on his blog. I guess the main issue is that it takes time to read and respond to comments. I don’t mind doing this (as you can see here), but I can understand if Kieran, Uri, etc., feel they have better things to do.

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