In a recent post on the ethics of quotation, I referred to a doctored quote by environmentalist Stephen Schneider, in which he is made out to advocate scientific fraud in the interests of the environment. As I’ll argue, the use of this quote has served to show up, as dishonest or inexcusably sloppy, dozens of Schneider’s opponents, while doing only modest damage to Schneider himself.

(Warning: Long post follows)
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Paul Krugman is routinely called ‘shrill’ for his attacks on Bush’s economic policy, and particularly the shift to large and chronic budget deficits. He certainly invites this, with routine comparisons to banana republics like Argentina. So Krugman took some satisfaction a couple of days ago, in pointing out that former Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin is now speaking in similarly shrill tones.

Now the IMF is getting shrill too.

Update This is front-page news in most of the Oz papers today, but bloggers got to read it yesterday

Talking of the NYT, it ran this AP piece headed Powell Refutes Report Saying U.S. Overstated Iraq Threat. The body of the article makes it clear that Powell said he disagreed but produced nothing that would prove the report false (in debating terms, he rebutted the article, but in logical terms, he did not refute it).

At least in educated Australian English the use of “refute” for “deny” is still, I think, unacceptable. Has the language changed in the US, or has the NYT slipped up on this one?

Update watch 13 game of death in divx download hottie and the nottie the free Reader Sven notes that the NYT has changed “refutes” to “dismisses”. The blogosphere at work or just the sub-editors coming back from a long lunch?

The question of quotes has come up once again. This piece by Daniel Okrent called The Quote, the Whole Quote and Nothing but the Quote
from the New York Times gives a pretty good discussion of news ethics regarding quotes. The Times policy states that it’s completely illegitimate to change the actual words of a quote

Readers should be able to assume that every word between quotation marks is what the speaker or writer said,” according to the paper’s ”Guidelines on Our Integrity.” ”The Times does not ‘clean up’ quotations.

and the discussion makes it clear that it’s also illegimate to elide words or sentences from a quote without a clear indication that this has been done. In a newspaper, this would normally be done by separating the parts of the quote with additional text. In academic writing, it’s usually acceptable to mark an elision with dots … on the assumption that the omitted material was not relevant to the point being made.

This still leaves open the question of when a quote should begin and end. As Okrent observes a quote, by its nature, is always “taken out of context”.

except when a newspaper prints verbatim transcripts, all quotations are taken out of context. The context is the actual conversation or press conference in which words get uttered; the printed pages of a newspaper can only rudely duplicate it.

The rule Oklert suggests is that the quote cannot be shortened in a way that changes its meaning, for example by the omission of significant qualifications. The main discussion concerns a quoted statement by President Bush that ”I will support a constitutional amendment which would honor marriage between a man and a woman, codify that.” In fact, he said “If necessary, I will support a constitutional amendment which would honor marriage between a man and a woman, codify that.” without stating precisely the conditions that would make such an amendment necessary. The NY Times had to apologise for this error, but the initial apology wasn’t considered unconditional enough – hence Okrent’s article.

All of this is of interest in view of the controversy over the (in)famously doctored quotation by Stephen Schneider which has been reproduced all over the blogosphere, in which Schneider is made out to advocate scientific fraud in the interests of the environment. I’ll post more about this shortly.

Everyone who’s ever done research has run into cases where the data fail to match up to prior expectations. As the saying has it, there’s nothing so tragic as a beautiful hypothesis slain by an ugly fact. I’ve just run into something of this kind in relation to the debate over road safety that’s been going on for some time on this blog. I’m still thinking about how to interpret the data I’ve found, but for the moment I’ll just report it.
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On the principle that we’ll remember it if he’s right, and forget it if he’s wrong, Chris Sheil predicts electoral defeat for Bush and Howard in 2004. A loss by Howard is certainly a possibility, particularly if the housing market tanks rapidly, but I think the odds in favour of Bush are strong.

Now that Saddam has been captured, I think Iraq will be, at worst, neutral for Bush. I think a substantial US pullout is on the cards once the June deadline is met. If there are genuine elections and a reasonably stable government by that time, it will be reasonable to claim ex post that the benefits of the invasion exceeded the costs. Even if this isn’t the case, the Republican base and much of the swing vote will be satisfied with shooting Saddam and pulling out.

On the economy, I think there’s probably enough momentum in the recovery to carry Bush through to November even if long-term interest rates rise substantially (as they ought to, in view of the CAD and budget deficits). Again, I see this as a near-neutral issue rather than a big winner for Bush.

The big advantage for Bush is that, given his political position, he doesn’t face a budget constraint. Bush can promise more tax cuts and more military expenditure while matching the Democrats on any domestic expenditure issue that has electoral bite. Of course, this will imply unsustainable budget deficits, but it’s already clear that no-one outside the Democrat camp is going to call him on this. The NYT Op-Ed page may not like the deficit but its news columns are sticking to “he said, she said”. If the Republicans say they have a magic money tree, that will be reported in the headline and any refutation will be buried in the body of the report.

It’s politically impossible for a Democratic candidate to match Bush on this, and even if this weren’t the case it would be most unwise. The adverse consequences of chronic deficits won’t emerge for a few years yet. For Bush that means, in effect, that the problems can be left to his successors. But for a first-term Democrat it would spell disaster. And the worst possible outcome would be for a Democrat to try and outbid Bush, then lose anyway.

If a victory is not to prove worse than a defeat,the Democrats have to run on the complete repeal of the Bush tax cuts (this is Dean’s position and, I think, Gephardt’s also). Unfortunately, I don’t think it will be possible to win on this platform.

While I’m linking to Chris, I’ll note that he picked up the slack while I was off air with this post which was better than what I would have written on the same point.

At least one reader was kind enough to nominate this blog as the best leftwing blog in the Koufax awards being run at Wampum (I’m backing my memory for the assertion that Sandy Koufax was a well-known left-handed pitcher, but Google makes recall of such trivial knowledge increasingly irrelevant). Looking at the excellent and popular blogs on the list, I don’t think there’s any serious prospect of making the cut for the top ten, but thanks to whichever reader(s) nominated me.

It’s 36 hours late, but here’s the Monday Message Board for this week. Fire away on any topic (as usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language, please).

With some excellent help from Pat Kelly (aka theMacGuy pkelly@themacguy.com.au if you are in Canberra and have any Mac tech support needs) I’m back on air. Things may be a bit flaky for a while, but seminormal blogging should be restored soon.

Tony Blair likes to be thought of as a ‘moderniser’. So it’s startling to see that, on a basic constitutional issue, his position is identical to that held by Australian reactionaries in the 19th century, namely that the Upper House should be nominated and not elected. Athough there are some differences between Blair’s position and that of the Australian opponents of democracy, they are minor and not all in Blair’s favour.

To begin with, it’s fair to concede that, relative to the starting point of a largely hereditary Upper House, almost any change would be an improvement. Proposals for a hereditary peerage in Australia, mainly put forward by WC Wentworth were laughed out of existence as a bunyip aristocracy, but Wentworth’s fallback position under which members were appointed for life was successful. This is, as far as I can tell, exactly the model proposed by Tony Blair. Similar models were adopted in other states.

A notable difference between Blair and Wentworth is that Wentworth wanted to constrain the democratically elected lower house, which he feared might undertake radical action, whereas Blair wants to avoid any check on the power of the House of Commons. But given that most recent British governments have had the support of less than 40 per cent of the electorate and that Blair opposes any reform to the electoral system for the Commons, it seems likely that an elected Upper House would be more democratically representative than the Lower House. The differences between Wentworth and Blair are marginal, at best. Moreover, even if Wentworth’s proposals were stacked in favour of his own social class, the idea that government should be subject to checks and balances is a sound one.

In Australia, the struggle for democratic election of both Houses of Parliament commenced with self-government and has continued for 150 years. Queensland Labor took the direct route, packing the Upper House with an appointed ‘suicide squad’ who voted themselves out of existence, but this cleared the way to a series of Lower House gerrymanders introduced first by Labor and then adopted and extended by the conservatives.

In the other states, progress has been gradual and mixed, but the ultimate outcome seems likely to be the same everywhere – an Upper House elected by proportional representation, with a term twice that of the Lower House and no power to overturn the government by blocking money bills.

This is, in my view, an excellent compromise, giving a legislature that is at least partly independent of the executive while maintaining the principal that the executive is responsible to the legislature.

Of course, these merits are precisely why Blair doesn’t support democratic reform. He doesn’t want any parliamentary check on the power of the executive government – in practice the PM. If he were honest, he’d advocate abolition of the House of Lords and not reform. If he were really honest, he’d advocate an elective dictatorship.