On “Studies” and Their Significance (Column 23)

With God’s help

I know that I already wrote a post this week, and I really do not have time. But I have just seen something I simply cannot let pass. The phenomenon of reports in the press about various "studies" (mainly ones from the nonsense disciplines, though not only those) has amused me for quite some time. What I really ought to do is bring a few examples (there are examples almost every day), discuss the phenomenon, and analyze it. But unfortunately I do not have time right now. Perhaps I will do so later. So for the time being I will make do with today’s example, and it seems to me that it speaks for itself. Enjoy.

"Study" on Living and Dead Psychopaths

Today (Tuesday), a sensational "study" was published that places Donald Trump ahead of Hitler on the psychopathy scale. Here are the two main passages from the report:

A new study published at Oxford University has determined that Donald Trump has more psychopathic traits than Adolf Hitler. Dr. Kevin Dutton ranked the Republican candidate and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton alongside a range of historical leaders, after experts guessed how those politicians would answer a certain series of questions.

The billionaire received 171 points, two more than the leader of Nazi Germany. Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ranked first with 189, while Clinton received 152 points, placing her in the top 20%. The method examines eight character traits typical of psychopaths, such as fearlessness and social influence.

I must say that I have not seen the original, only this short and concise report, and therefore my criticism here may be more relevant to the journalist than to the "researcher" (my impression is that there is a fair chance this was a joke floating around the corridors of Oxford and was never published anywhere, or that this report has no connection to what was actually published there). Even so, I find myself nervously pinching myself to make sure I am not hallucinating (or psychopathic). Is there really such an article? Did this really happen, or did I dream it?

Let us examine two simple questions in light of this report: 1. In what sense is this a "study"? (Hint: by no right whatsoever.) 2. What do its results tell us? (Hint: absolutely nothing.)

In the end, the truly important questions here are these: Who funds idlers who conduct "studies" like these? Who employs foolish journalists who publish them? (Perhaps Hillary’s public-relations people? Or Goebbels?), and who reads them and takes them seriously?

Why Is This Thing Defined as a "Study"?

At least according to the description given here, our "scientists" took several "experts" (who exactly is an expert for this purpose: an expert on Trump? an expert in psychopathology? an expert in surveys?) who guessed how Trump and various others would answer a series of questions. They gave them scores and then ranked them on a psychopathy scale.

I realized long ago that nowadays, in order to be considered a researcher in the relevant nonsense disciplines (see, for example, gender studies, governance and public policy, practical Kabbalah), you do not need to provide a reliable prediction (nobody checks you against the actual results). It is preferable instead to provide a sensational and politically correct prediction (that is, to be on the side of the "good guys," that is, the left). The "research" in these fields is not meant to satisfy any scientific standard. But in my innocence I thought that at least something had to be done that bore the appearance of fieldwork, something that at least tried, cautiously and systematically, to predict the results (which of course will not, and need not, stand up to any empirical test). What naivete! I was mistaken. That is sheer anachronism. Our bold "researchers" from Oxford did not even bother to ask Trump and his friends anything at all. Why do anything so foolish? Contemporary science can decide what answers Trump would give and then make an accurate diagnosis on that basis (which of course also will not stand up to any empirical test). Who needs to gather facts? Think about it: if Aristotle had paid attention to facts instead of writing down the musings of his heart (that a body falls to the ground at a speed proportional to its mass), he might have deteriorated into producing a theory that withstands empirical testing—Heaven forbid.

The Oxford people in question apparently belong to the Aristotelian anti-empirical school, and therefore they conduct studies without facts—or rather, they rely on facts manufactured by the researcher himself. So cheap and efficient. How had no one thought of this until now?! After we arrived at what in the nonsense sciences is called "qualitative research" (the contemporary name for "research" based not on facts but on impressions), the time has come to expand this cheap and efficient methodology to all areas of research. We must adopt it in physics and chemistry. For example, do you want to know whether there is a Higgs boson and what its lifetime is? No problem. Sit down ten preschoolers, call them "experts," and ask them what the Higgs boson would do after 3 picoseconds. If they were to say that it would disappear, there you have an upper bound on its lifetime. Who needs particle accelerators that cost billions?

I must say that, to an unbiased eye, this innovative-ancient methodology has enormous advantages. For example, one can study dead people as well (like Hitler) and compare them to living people (like Trump). Why give the living that advantage and ask them the questions directly? What fault is it of those who are already dead that they cannot be asked? Moreover, regarding the dead, the "experts" can predict their answers on the basis of what they actually did (that is already known). As for Trump, after all, he is a well-known mass murderer—in the future, of course. So it is good that the facts are not checked and that one merely guesses what will happen. That allows for much more comprehensive research. Why prefer the dead to the living? You must admit that such an anti-empirical methodology creates a much more just and egalitarian science. It is a science beyond time and beyond fact.

In history, for example, this methodology has long been accepted. Suppose you are interested in proving that the Palmach was a racist and murderous organization. All you have to do is sit down a few "researchers" or "experts" who say so, and there you have facts proving that the Palmach was such an organization. Too bad serious and old-fashioned historians waste their time rummaging through archives. Why preserve archives at all? It would be much cheaper to burn all the archives and sit down experts who would tell us what Dado would have done, or what Golda would have done, had the Yom Kippur War broken out by surprise, and then hand us straightaway the findings of the Agranat Commission.

Of course, this can be extended to sports competitions as well. The Olympics have just ended at a cost of billions. What idiots! They could simply have asked the "experts" who would come first in the 400-meter hurdles and known all the results, and awarded medals without a single human being—neither journalist nor athlete—even moving in the direction of Rio. One could even do live broadcasts of the experts as they sit in their armchairs and analyze what might have happened if there had been an Olympics. Think about the fact that in this way we could award medals to dead people and not only to the living. We could even award medals to fictional people, or to demons and spirits.

So too the historians and psychologists of the next generation at Oxford will sit in an armchair with a pipe and decide what Julius Caesar would have done or felt in one imaginary case or another, and then they will be able to declare that he suffered from manic depression. Alternatively, the psychologist will be able to treat each of us without ever meeting us and without asking us anything. He need only decide what I would answer and prescribe me medicines that, had I taken them, I probably would have recovered. There is no need actually to take them, incidentally (to tell the truth, I suspect the results would not be any worse than those of real treatment).

In fact, this is what people commonly call begging the question. Assume the study’s conclusion, sit down "experts" who assume the same thing you do, and there you have facts supporting your "study." That is what the "experts" did when they decided that Trump is a psychopath; from that they derived what answers he would give to various questions, and then they announced the study’s results: Trump is a bigger psychopath than Hitler. Some would define begging the question as a fallacy, but they simply are not up to date with current methodological changes.

What Exactly Does Such a "Study" Tell Us?

But let us assume that our diligent "researchers," instead of sitting in an armchair and devising the facts for themselves, had actually gone and asked Trump in person and the other figures under discussion as well (a disgraceful act from a methodological point of view, of course. See the previous section). And suppose Hitler had said that he was against killing Jews. Could one now infer that he was not a psychopath? Does the definition of a psychopath depend on what he answers to questions, or on what he actually does? If you ask two people whether they support murdering Jews and both answer yes, are they both psychopaths to the same degree? Are they both psychopaths at all? Does it not depend, for example, on the extent to which each of them would actually realize his noble and far-sighted ideas? Or on how seriously he means them? If someone says that he has no fear of society—does that mean that he really has no fear? I too can say that I have no concern whatsoever about walking straight into fire. Does that make me a psychopath, or merely detached from reality? Or perhaps I am lying because I have marketing or propagandistic goals? Or perhaps I never said it at all, and there were merely "experts" who put the words in my mouth? By the way, are you sure that Trump is really unafraid of society, or is it perhaps that he thinks what he says is what the public will like? At least at certain stages, that really did seem to be the case.

Alternatively, suppose Hitler had been very fearful and had little influence on society, but on one issue he was very resolute: murdering Jews and Roma. Then on all the questions he would have received a low score (and would have had to take the make-up exam in the Advanced Psychopathology course), yet he would still certainly deserve to be regarded as a mass murderer. By contrast, someone else answers, like Hitler, that Jews should be murdered, but in a milder tone (or in the practical component of the course in murderous psychopathology he was a bit weaker than Hitler), while answering yes to a few more questions as well (he is unafraid of society; he does good and kindness without fearing anyone). He would of course rank above Hitler on Oxford’s prestigious scale. And rightly so: after all, Hitler said he favored murdering Jews (and in practice also murdered several million of them in gas chambers, destroyed his country, and murdered tens of millions of his own people and of other peoples), and our second friend also expressed theoretical support for some kind of persecution of a few people of Jewish origin (not for actual implementation, of course). Does that not mean that the second is a greater psychopath than Hitler?

Conclusions

As noted, I strongly suspect that no such study ever existed. Perhaps there was something else there that had little connection to the report presented here. On the other hand, I have already seen quite a few such "studies" in the nonsense disciplines, and therefore I cannot ignore the possibility that perhaps this "study" really did exist, and that I did not merely dream it. At the very least, I can say with confidence that the journalist (and apparently some of the public as well) thinks that this "study" was indeed conducted and that its results are meaningful.

This phenomenon includes several elements that keep recurring in our milieu: a. a worthless academy (in the nonsense fields) that produces non-empirical "studies" in the service of politics. As is well known, there are academic fields in which there is no substance at all apart from advancing one political agenda or another, and that is what most of the "research" they produce amounts to. b. the pursuit of sensations by bored academics, which leads them to deal in headlines devoid of research value. c. journalism bereft of understanding and intelligence, which is taken in by these "studies," or hands itself over to them willingly out of a pursuit of ratings or a political agenda (I do not know which of the two possibilities is preferable: fools or liars). d. and finally, a reading public that unfortunately does not do much to challenge the low intelligence of these journalists and perhaps of these "researchers" as well.

Link to the follow-up column