Everyone knows the Democratic Party is the party of science. So why are they waging war on one of the Internet’s most respected purveyors of cold, hard, factual data?
Statistical wunderkind Nate Silver rose to national prominence in 2012 after correctly predicting President Obama’s reelection. However, his most recent election forecast shows Republicans with a good chance of retaking the Senate in November. It’s not a particularly groundbreaking prediction, given the fact that almost everyone, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), seems to agree with it. But that hasn’t stopped Democrats from waging a war on science.
Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), pushed back against Silver's projection in an anti-science diatribe disputing the wonk's claims. Republicans can’t possibly win in November, Cecil argued, because all their candidates are "embracing the reckless and irresponsible agenda of the Koch Brothers."
But just to be safe, the DSCC has been peddling Silver’s doom-mongering pseudo analysis in panicked fundraising emails with subject lines such as "Nate Silver’s terrifying math," and "Nate Silver reports: (doomed)."
Other Democratic flaks such as Paul Krugman have joined the witch hunt. In less than a week, the New York Times columnist has authored three blog posts attacking Silver’s credibility. Krugman’s beef has less to do with Silver’s dour predictions about the Democrats’ midterm prospects than it does with Silver’s troubling lack of reliance on "experts" like Paul Krugman:
Timothy Egan joins the chorus of those dismayed by Nate Silver’s new FiveThirtyEight. I’m sorry, but I have to agree: so far it looks like something between a disappointment and a disaster.
But I’d argue that many of the critics are getting the problem wrong. It’s not the reliance on data; numbers can be good, and can even be revelatory. But data never tell a story on their own. They need to be viewed through the lens of some kind of model, and it’s very important to do your best to get a good model. And that usually means turning to experts in whatever field you’re addressing.
He also wants the record to reflect the fact that, despite the mascot Silver has chosen for his new venture at ESPN (a fox), Paul Krugman is actually a more "foxlike" figure:
First, a personal note: As an economist, I’m actually much more a fox than a hedgehog. In my home field of international economics, the great majority of researchers are either "real trade" people — using microeconomic models to understand international specialization and trade — or "international finance" types — using macroeconomic models to understand currency movements and the balance of payments. Only a relative handful of people straddle that divide; as someone who right from the beginning of my career was writing both about increasing returns and about currency crises, about economic geography and exchange rate regimes, I was pretty unusual. When I branched out into straight macro with my work on the liquidity trap, that was another foxlike move. And turning to income inequality as an issue was yet more of that.
As someone whose understanding of the conservative movement appears to be based on what he reads in the online comments section, Krugman's expertise hard to dispute. After all, he won a Nobel Prize.
Noted climate scientist Michael Mann, who falsely claims to have won a Nobel Prize, has also peddled alarming accusations about Silver’s commitment to data. The campaign to discredit Silver certainly raises alarming questions about the Democratic Party’s faith in science. We already know that acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is on the payroll of anti-science billionaire David Koch. Who else are the Koch brothers paying to discredit Nate Silver?