Politics Of Information

In the course of a back and forth with Eduwonkette, Jay Greene produces a useful post on this whole issue of the politics of information.  I’ve blogged on the more general issues surrounding this and wrote an article for PDK on the social science – journalism tension, which, as Jay notes, is only more acute in the blogosphere.    But, I think his assertion that, “we have a caveat emptor market of ideas that generally works pretty well” is off-base.   Not infrequently newspapers get snookered on research and most consumers of this information lack the technical skills to evaluate much of the work for themselves.   As education research has become more quantitative — a good thing — it’s also become less accessible and there is, I’d argue, more an asymmetry to the information market out there than an fully functioning marketplace of ideas right now.  In terms of remedies there is no substitute for smart consumption of information and research, but we’re not there yet as a field.  

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