The motive game

[erudito]

One of the more noxious "contributions" to reducing public debate to a battle of "my motives are more pure than your motives" is the wiki SourcewatchIt is based on the premise that people's motives really matter (apparently trumping any concern for intellectual worthiness in content) and are explained by the sources of their funding. As long as

Comments

[taavi]

Looks like I touched a nerve

Content

[erudito]

Arguing that tobacco smoking is not harmful against copious scientific evidence is reprehensible behaviour whether or not one is funded by a tobacco company.

Having identified rephrensible behaviour, it is reasonable to look back and explain why. That is why motive is such a big issue in detecting crime. But there has to be a crime first.

Sourcewatch works the other way around. It infers behaviour from funding. Except it doesn't when that funding is union (the Evatt Foundation) or a "virtuous" progressive think tank (the Australia Institute). If the corporate funding of the Australia Institute was spelled out, that would vitiate the underlying premise, because corporate funding would clearly have no implicit moral implication.

And don't worry, as seen in the addenda I added, plenty of folk what to "purge" the media of Bolt et al too.

Re: Content

[taavi]

If there was ever any case of the CIS, IPA, etcetera, making a recommendation that wasn't in the short-term financial interest of those who pay them, I'd be more willing to believe their so called "independence". By contrast, the Evatt foundation was gutted because it regularly pissed the Labour party off.

For example, the Sydney Institute and the IPA both take money from Phillip Morris (and the BAT in the case of the latter) and are on record as defending "smokers rights" and in the case of the latter, denying that passive smoking is a health hazard (see here). Do you consider that reprehensible behaviour?

And you haven't answered the second or third questions.

Re: Content

[erudito]

The health dangers of passive smoking have been way oversold. Smoking can get invasive and some people are particularly sensitive to it, so it is not as simple as Nahan suggests, but his point about the science is broadly correct.

And as any support for market-based policies can be argued to be in the short-term financial interest of those who pay them that would appear to be a "test" pro-market think tanks are inherently going to fail.

As for (2) I prefer to judge cases on their merits rather than go down the "good people" route. (3) Generally yes, with some caveats about persecution.

One of the seminal experiences for me in all this was trying to organise a conference on the ABC and having folk be extremely nervous about saying anything in public, one presenter who was shaking with fear (and not from public speaking) and another who told me later she had been subject to lots of damaging crap afterwards. The Progressivist Ascendancy punishes whenever it can.

Re: Content

[taavi]

"Broadly correct" my arse

Re: Content

[erudito]

There is way a difference between risks to, for example, children raised in a household with smoking parents (I have a friend who has emphysema from precisely that) or staff working continually in very smoke laden environments and risk to folk patronising establishments. It is the last bit that has been oversold. After all, the risks have to be somewhat different order of magnitude, otherwise it would not have been so clear what the risks of actively smoking were in the first place.

I wasn't criticising the scientists, merely the use to which it had been put. Hence the term oversold. I was relying on a talk given by a medical researcher who had done a lot of work on the cancer risks of smoking but was concerned about excessive claims being made about risks of casual passive smoking.

As for claims about the IPA and CIS being selectively against market-based policies, could you cite examples?

PS I despise Nahan, so it was certainly not some need to defend him which led to my comment.

Re: Content 2

[erudito]

By contrast, the Evatt foundation was gutted because it regularly pissed the Labour party off.
Which is a real problem with having a single or dominant income source, which is why the CIS, IPA et al have lots of different funding sources.

And $15,000 is not going to "buy" you much. But funding raising for a public good like participating in public debate is an uphill job so every bit helps. "Take money from Philip Morris and BAT" sounds so much more sinister than "received $15,000 each from Philip Morris and BAT".

Re: Content 3

[erudito]

The reason why my answer to (3) is "generally yes, with some caveats about persecution" is that a lot of the tradition of silent funding was based on fear of union retaliation against those who funded "the enemy". Perhaps the Evatt Foundation could do a paper on how paranoid that was?

And other sorts of retaliation. I remember being told by one PR consultant of him observing the then Age environment reporter (with photographer in tow) happily taking notes and photos as a major extension to a national park in Healesville was being opened. Right up until the point that the speaker thanked the generous donation from Western Mining. At that point the notebook abruptly went away, the journalist caught the photographers eye and drew her hand across her throat. Age readers weren't going to have their mornings "polluted" by being told that Western Mining had helped the environment.

Wrong sneer

[erudito]

Oh, and by the way, a quick Google Bolt has no cases of Bolt using the term "media elite". Probably because Andrew is eminently well aware that he, as Oz's most-read columnist (that's why the Herald-Sun runs him so often) is part of any media elite.

Of course, caricature a dissenting position and then sneer at the caricature is a common progressivist tactic.

Re: Wrong sneer

[catsidhe]

If, instead, you have a quick look for Bolt using the phrase "cultural elite", you see an surfeit of hits. With a meaning pretty damn close.

Of course, when AB uses this phrase, it's obvious that its understood meaning is “people who think for a living and with whom I disagree”.

If AB doesn't disagree with them, then no matter how much power and influence they have, they can't be part of the Cultural Elite, by definition. I love a circular argument, don't you?

Re: Wrong sneer

[erudito]

Vaguely close, but not obviously self-contradictory.

But it is a problem defining by function a group which he clearly means as defined by outlook. It's catchy, but not precise. Anyone would think he wrote for a tabloid or something.