Sloppy Thinking Research Articles

Bad Language.

Bad language in stereochemistry-and elsewhere-can lead to sloppy thinking. In this Essay I review the history of stereochemical concepts and vocabulary in the hope that it may contribute a little to better thinking and communication.

R. W. Gibbs, Jr. (Ed.). (2016). Mixing Metaphor

“Mixing Metaphor” is a compilation of 12 chapters by prominent researchers, introduced by Raymond Gibbs, one of the main actors in the eld of metaphor studies. It is a highly timely contribution that lls a gap between the pre-theoret- ical notion of ‘mixed metaphors’, largely known to the (English-speaking) pub- lic as something to be avoided as it re ects poor style or even sloppy thinking, and scholarly research on metaphor, where the topic has received little attention. In the Introduction, Gibbs discusses the example the city’s proposal to skim the frosting, pocket the cake, and avoid paying the fair, reasonable value for the meal is hound that will not hunt, and proposes that such metaphor mixing should not be viewed negatively, but rather as a natural reflection of “people’s cognitive flexibility to think of abstract concepts in a myriad of metaphorical ways” (p. vii). But this is a rather too positive an assessment. (Less)

In Memoriam: Lloyd Bitzer (1931–2016)

In Memoriam: Lloyd Bitzer (1931–2016)

Why education and health are more different than alike

Abstract Education and health – or more precisely, schooling and health care – are often lumped together as the major components of something called “the social sector”. There are some important similarities, but they are outweighed by greater and more significant differences. Most of these differences are intrinsic to knowledge and learning or to disease and dealing with it. Other distinctions arise from how society organizes and pays for schooling and medical care. The differences matter for costs, day-to-day management, and reform efforts in each sector. Treating the two sectors as highly comparable is both sloppy thinking and conducive to bad public policy.

Constantforce: Remembering Denis Dutton (1944–2010)

Constantforce:Remembering Denis Dutton (1944–2010)1 Wilfried Van Damme “Denis, I would like you to meet someone who actually likes your work.” This is how the aesthetician David Novitz introduced me to Denis Dutton, while we were having a tea break on the first morning of the historic Pacific Rim Conference in Transcultural Aesthetics, held at the University of Sydney in June 1997.2 Shortly before, I had told David that Denis’s anticipated presence at the conference had been for me, a European postdoc eager to explore global approaches to art and aesthetics, one of the many features that had made the prospect of participating in the Sydney conference such a thrilling affair. David, a colleague, friend, and intellectual opponent of Denis at Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand, then informed me about the many enemies Denis had made in academia after he had started organizing the Bad Writing Contest in 1995. This now well-known charge against obscurantist prose in the humanities had escaped my attention, but seemed like a welcome initiative that was fully in line with its originator’s views on scholarship. I knew Denis’s work mainly through his Bookmarks in the journal Philosophy and Literature, which he edited. I had discovered these vivid and at times hilariously debunking reviews after reading Denis’s essay “Mythologies of Tribal Art,” published in the journal African Arts in 1994. As in many of his Bookmarks, in this essay he battled against the more cantankerous variants of the postmodern turn that were making themselves increasingly felt in the anthropology of art. He exposed the ideological biases, jargonized rhetoric, willful misreadings, and lack of empirical foundation of a series of philippics in which self-righteous scholars, usually from outside the field, had started accusing previous [End Page A10] writers on “tribal art” of sinning against everything that contemporary political correctness held dear. Being well acquainted with the anthropology of art, I was all too aware of the belligerent and embarrassingly uninformed character of many of these at times vicious attacks. I had also struggled through several essays from the same postmodern/poststructural mold promising new directions informed by “critical theory.” But the increasingly predictable and one-sided perspectives of these essays had failed to enthuse me, while their often pompous prose, expressing fashionable phraseology in convoluted sentences, had made me doubt my command of English. I therefore much enjoyed the sharp-minded and down-to-earth rebuttals of a courageous and lone scholar who showed that more often than not the emperor had no clothes. Although this may come as a surprise to people who, like myself at the time, knew Denis only through his fierce criticism of what he considered trendy posturing, sloppy thinking, and mystifying gobbledygook, in person he was a most kind and generous man. This became clear to me when, later that day, I inquired whether he had had the opportunity to browse through my book Beauty in Context: Towards an Anthropological Approach to Aesthetics. Based on my Ph.D. dissertation, this work had been published a few months before, and I had made sure that the editor of Philosophy and Literature received a review copy. At the time of the Sydney conference, and inspired by the work of Ellen Dissanayake, whose book Homo Aestheticus he had praised highly in his journal, Denis was already on the road to an evolutionary approach to art and aesthetics. My book’s title must have given him the impression, not unreasonably, that it was all about cultural relativism in aesthetics and hence presented a culturalist rather than a naturalist point of view. In an amicable, nonpolemic way he replied: “You know, I’ve somewhat lost interest in the idea of beauty being socially constructed. I’m more interested in aesthetic universals these days.” To which I replied: “My book is about both!” Some time later I got the impression that the long chapter on “Universalism in Aesthetics,” for example, had indeed not escaped Denis’s attention; when I asked him about the results of his research on the aesthetic standards of Sepik sculptors in New Guinea, he replied: “Nothing that you don’t already know.” In...

Linguistic Readymades and Creative Reuse

Creativity often arises from a process of appropriation, in which something is wrenched from its normative context of use and given new meaning in a new setting. In this vein, Marcel Duchamp popularized the notion of an artistic ready-made when his Fountain – a signed urinal – was presented with some controversy at a Dada exhibition in 1917. We normally think of readymades as physical objects whose artistic merit derives wholly from their selection by an artist, but language is also rich in linguistic readymades. Just think of how many movies, songs, novels and poems allusively borrow utterances and phrases from each other. The movie The Usual Suspects, for example, takes its name from a famous quote from the movie Casablanca, while the novel All The King's Men takes it title from a famous nursery rhyme; this title, in turn, inspired the title of Woodward and Bernstein's book All The President's Men. Large lexical resources, such as corpora and databases of Web n-grams, are a rich source of readymade phrases that can be reused in many different contexts. However, one must be careful in how these resources are used, and noted writers such as George Orwell have argued that the use of canned phrases encourages sloppy thinking and results in poor communication. Nonetheless, while Orwell prized home-made phrases over the readymade variety, Duchamp created a vibrant movement in modern art which shifted the emphasis of artistic creation from the production of novel artifacts to the clever reuse of readymades or objets trouv's. We describe here a system that makes creative reuse of the linguistic readymades in the Google n-grams. Our computational systems thus owe more to Duchamp than to Orwell, and harvest readymades on a large scale to support linguistic creativity.

“The Test is Reliable”; “The Test is valid”: Language Use, Unconscious Assumptions, and Education Research Practice

In education research, discussion about reliability and validity is common and often inevitable. In such discussions, we often encounter statements such as ‘‘the test is reliable’’, and/or ‘‘the test is valid.’’ These and similar statements appear innocuous, and the meaning(s) of such statements are often assumed to be self-explanatory. However, such statements may often represent conscious or unconscious misconceptions about measurement reliability and validity, and this brief paper takes a critical look at why such use of language about reliability and validity should be avoided in education research practice. In education research, reliability and validity are important and fundamental concepts, and almost all education research involves some form of assessment or measurement. Some researchers may describe a test or instrument used in a study using statements such as ‘‘the test is reliable’’ and/or ‘‘the test is valid.’’ These and similar descriptions are common. Such descriptions and statements, unfortunately, may incorrectly assume and incorrectly convey to the audience that reliability and validity are inherent characteristics of a test; as a result, these test characteristics would be true and applicable in other research situations. It has been pointed out by many that reliability and validity are actually the characteristics of measurement–– that is, the characteristics of the scores obtained from administering a test to a specific group, rather than the characteristics of a test itself. Worthen et al. (1999) discussed that reliability did not refer to the instrument itself. ‘‘Technically, reliability refers to the consistency of the results obtained, not to the instrument itself’’ (p. 95). Crocker and Algina (1986) discussed that ‘‘a test is not ‘reliable’ or ‘unreliable’. Rather, reliability is a property of the scores on a test for a particular group of examinees.’’ (p. 144). Similarly, Gronlund and Linn (1990) stated that ‘‘reliability refers to the results obtained with an evaluation instrument and not to the instrument itself... it is more appropriate to speak of the reliability of the ‘‘test scores’’ or of the ‘‘measurement’’ than of the ‘‘test’’ or the ‘‘instrument.’’ (p. 78). For ‘‘validity’’, the situation is similar. The well-known and widely followed ‘‘Standards for educational and psychological testing’’ states ‘‘validity refers to the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretations of test scores entailed by proposed uses of tests.’’ (AERA, APA, & NCME 1999). In simpler terms, validity refers to the appropriate use of test scores in a given measurement situation but not to the test or instrument itself. Why is it an issue when we make a statement such as ‘‘the test is reliable’’ or ‘‘the test is valid’’? First, this is sloppy use of language. Although it may appear innocuous to many, such sloppy use of language in the contexts of education research and measurement is likely to lead to misconceptions, to conscious or unconscious assumptions, and to incorrect research practice. As Thompson (2003) argued, sloppy speaking may lead to sloppy thinking, to sloppy practice, and to incorrect assumptions about tests and measurement instruments. The ‘‘incorrect assumptions that tests themselves are reliable can lead to insufficient attention to the impacts of measurement integrity on the integrity of substantive research conclusions’’ (p. 94). Second, if a researcher is fully aware that reliability (validity) is about test scores or measurement data in his/her study, but not about test itself, it becomes necessary that reliability needs to be assessed for the measurement data in a study, even when a well-known and well-established instrument (e.g., Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, X. Fan (&) Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Macao, China e-mail: xtfan@umac.mo

Dudley Williams

Dudley Williams

The Undergarments of Style and My Secret Life of (Self)Censorship

NOW DON'T BE GETTING YOUR KNICKERS IN A TWIST, unless they are academic knickers of an engulfing propriety far beyond the habits of Bridget Jones or the demands of a Victorian school trustee. It is perfectly all for a colloquial expression of private discomfort to appear in a Readers' Forum in an academic journal, especially when Forum explores how we express ourselves as scholars. spoke up only belatedly at the ACCUTE panel on this Forum theme, trying to identify knicker-twisting anxieties now want to name as such in print as a rebuff to pseudo-propriety. also wish to reaffirm our right to a disciplinary or more broadly humanist argot, as well as our need to develop an interventionist vernacular adequate to our obligations and aspirations as critical citizens or even public intellectuals. To be readily and widely understood is not a crime against excellence:' However, such broad intelligibility comes with risks of misconstrual or rebuttal analogous to those attend the employment in professional contexts of terms like phallogocentric or hegemonic or, indeed, fetching or felicitous. Intelligibility of the more popular or populist sort comes also with the risk of guild disparagement and the charge of dumbing down or politicizing scholarship in order to seek the limelight beyond the cloisters or to comply with SSHIZc's demand we become simultaneously sexier and more plainly utilitarian, both flashers and state functionaries. But, to return to the venerable notion of the garment of style, do we really need to wear both a thong and drawers, and at the same time? In the following intervention, want to accentuate the positive force of having to write like that as a form of discursive apprenticeship leading to usable legitimacy and also as a form of obligatory forthrightness unwelcome in many quarters, especially during the so-called War on Terror. My positive emphasis is not designed to resolve our discursive tensions and quandaries but to connect them to the constitutive contradictions of academic capitalism in neo-liberal madrasahs across Canada and the rest of the First World, today. Acquiring and Asserting Our Discursive Rights As we know, notions of the plain style have complex histories and ideological connections. Clarity can come as readily from authoritarian presumption as from magisterial synthesis, and such clarity can threaten as well as reassure, depending on where readers are situated in the social hierarchies of the time. Clarity can also seem simplistic or treacherous, audacity masquerading as validity. And like clarity, obscurity or difficulty plays differently with different audiences, exasperating or incensing some while persuading or impressing others. This underscores what ought to be obvious to all: academic discourse can and should be challenging, and the licence to challenge granted willingly to the theoretical physicist or legal scholar should be granted with equal readiness to the literary scholar. Unless the academic assignment of discursive rights is as skewed as the disciplinary distribution of resources and prestige, then we are as entitled to explore arcane matters in unfamiliar terms, logics, and specialized genres as any other group engaged in intellectual work. To claim this is not to excuse bad writing (and therefore sloppy thinking) but is to point to the fact there is no single intelligibility index or stylistic standard against which to measure what we do as literary scholars, and plural standards are too often made to furnish double standards expressing the wealth-creating ideologies so clearly dominate current understanding and support of academic values. Can it be right to say, I won't trust a scientist whose prose can readily comprehend, but do demand literary types write for 'the man in the street or on the Hackney omnibus'? But if nobody reads us but us, there are several questions flow from such a restricted sense of audience. …

To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico (review)

Reviewed by: To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico Rachel L. Burk Hordes, Stanley M. To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico. New York: Columbia UP, 2005. 348 pages. Historian Stanley Hordes's first book, To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico, argues for their sustained presence in New Mexico from the state's founding as part of the Spanish colonies to the present, elaborating the significant contribution to regional history of Iberian converts (conversos) who, although nominally Catholic, practiced Judaism in secret. By virtue of being colonized by the Spanish, the northern frontier of New Spain was most likely home to descendants of Sephardim. The historical question concerning conversos in New Mexico is if, among them, there was an established community that continued practicing Judaism and whether they constituted an influential presence in society. To this end, Hordes documents the Sephardic ancestry of early colonizers and uncovers signs of crypto-Judaic practices during the past five centuries. In a case like this one, a historian's work is to determine the plausible existence of such a [End Page 350] community because archival documentation is inconsistent, requiring him to unearth "the history of a group who for centuries tried desperately to cover their tracks, to leave behind as little evidence as possible" (3). Of necessity, the study must include calculated speculation, and it is this aspect of the text that is most vulnerable to criticism. While Hordes has come under scrutiny for his claims about present-day Sephardim in New Mexico, To the End of the Earth, in its majority, treats the converso diaspora from the Iberian Peninsula to the New World in the colonial epoch. The study, a culmination of more than twenty years of research, deserves to be evaluated on its merits as well as for its part in the ongoing debate on Hispanos who have claimed Jewish ancestry in recent years.1 On the whole, Hordes's extensive archival research opens up the possibility of on-going crypto-Judaic influences in New Mexico and affirms a converso presence in the northern periphery of the Spanish Empire. The opening chapter chronicles the first Jews who arrived in the Iberian Peninsula after the destruction of the Second Temple (200 B.C.E.) and traces their history under Roman, Visigoth, Islamic, and medieval Christian rule when they served as unequal partners to the majority regime. In the fifteenth century, the anti-Semitic policies of the Catholic Monarchs led to pogroms and mass forced conversions that culminated in the 1492 order of expulsion. The strongest chapter of Hordes's work discusses the well-documented community of hidden Jews in Mexico City. Detailing their participation in the life of the city as well as their community, the author both draws on and complements David Gitlitz's Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews (1996). In the following three chapters, Hordes argues that conversos played a significant role in the settlement of the shifting northern frontier. He contends that waves of Inquisitorial prosecutions of judaizantes (judaizers) on both sides of the Atlantic led conversos to head first to Nuevo León, then to New Mexico, in search of an atmosphere of greater tolerance. The following chapter describes the participation of crypto-Jews in the politics of the New Mexican colony as advocates for civil governance throughout the protracted struggles between the Franciscans and local authorities. Without punitive records, archival traces of possible crypto-Jews also decline throughout the period of the transfer of New Mexico to the United States in 1846 and after. In his penultimate chapter on nineteenth-century "Anglo" society, [End Page 351] Hordes conjectures that conversos could have been among the early converts to Protestantism and that, ultimately, remaining believers were assimilated into mainstream American culture. In general, sloppy thinking about religious identity undermines the argument of the text. Hordes fails to accommodate the sizeable middle ground between crypto-Jews and Old Christians in early modern Spain, privileging any trace of Jewish blood as determinant of one's fundamental "Jewishness." Thus, the author makes...

Democracy, Philosophy and the Formation of Public Policy for Schools

This review essay provides a critical assessment of Christopher Winch and John Gingell's Philosophy & Educational Policy: A Critical Introduction. This book presents a powerful and stimulating challenge to conventional and sloppy thinking about a wide range of issues confronting anyone who is seriously concerned with schooling in the 21st century. While each chapter merits an essay in response, this article can merely highlight the virtues of the book as well as the respects in which a number of claims remain unpersuasive. There is found to be a noticeable difference between the odd and even numbered chapters, betraying perhaps the difference in authorship and suggesting insufficient discussion between the authors as to their overall content. Chapters 3, 5 and 9 are, for the most part, outstandingly good and should inject a note of caution into policy makers' all too frequent desire for change. The extent to which the authors favour democratic decision-making on educational matters is shown, however, to be far from clear.

On the Reliability of the Old Testament (review)

Hebrew Studies 46 (2005) 395 Reviews ON THE RELIABILITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By K. A. Kitchen. Pp xxii + 662. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003. Cloth, $45.00. Kenneth Kitchen appears to fancy himself in this work as a heroic scholarly warrior. He “attacks” the minimalists whom he sees as having done much to undermine the interpretation of the Old Testament as having historical value. He does this by his ad hominem advances, which are legion in this work. For Kitchen, historical reliability is defined as that which is authentic and has significant historical content and value. He is a well-known scholar who has been a prolific writer in both Egyptology and in biblical studies. The book apparently originated as an Old Testament counterpart to F. F. Bruce’s The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable? (London: Inter-varsity Fellowship of Evangelical Unions, 1943), published over sixty years ago. However, Kitchen’s work is much larger in scope and purpose than the New Testament counterpart. As stated, one will be immediately aware of the polemic nature of Kitchen’s work, as he uses a barrage of adjectives to describe the minimalists and their positions (lunacy, immense ignorance, agenda-driven drivel, factually disadvantaged, dumb-cluck socio-anthropologists, ignoranti, and fantasizing sociologists). He is utterly unsympathetic to what he calls “sloppy thinking” and to those whom he believes base their theories on unproved assumptions. A few quotes may suffice: “The basic reason for endless shilly-shallying and lack of real result [concerning the historicity of Moses] is the massive failure to seek and use external, independent controls such as have been applied here and throughout” (p. 299). “This kind of speculative theorizing is all very well as a mode of experimentation in the abstract, or as a ‘flavor of the month’ fashion, or even just as simple indulgence in academic ego massage (‘Look how clever I can be!’)” (p. 390). “To expose in full the sloppy scholarship, immense ignorance, special pleading, irrelevant postmodernist-agenda-driven drivel would need another (and very boring) book as long as Thompson’s pair combined. It is sad to see real ability wasted in this way” (pp. 457–458). Perhaps Kitchen’s book would have contributed more to the scholarly debate over the historicity and historical reliability of the Old Testament if he had written in a more dispassionate manner. This is unfortunate because Kitchen is very thorough in his argumentation and documentation, and thus his work would have been an excellent resource for biblical scholars. Curiously, Kitchen uniquely organizes his book by surveying Old Testament material in a roughly chronologically backwards mode, presumably to begin with what is better known, and to proceed to the lesserknown material. He begins with the period of the divided monarchy, and continues with the exile and return, united monarchy, settlement in Canaan, Egypt and the Exodus, the Patriarchs, and lastly, primeval history. Kitchen Hebrew Studies 46 (2005) 396 Reviews provides an enormous amount of comparative evidence from the ancient Near East that relates to the biblical narrative in question, although he arguably places an inordinate value on these comparisons. Kitchen’s goal in the second chapter is to scan Kings and Chronicles for Israelite and foreign rulers mentioned there in comparison to external sources. He concludes that of the twenty foreign rulers mentioned in Kings-Chronicles, only a few have not been found in external sources, primarily because of poor source material during the period in question. From 853 B.C.E. on, the rate of mention of Israelite and Judahite kings in outside sources is proportionally higher than early periods. He concludes, from what he calls his “factual” examination, that this argues for the historicity of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the early first millennium. Kitchen argues in the third chapter that the reason that there is sparse (or no) textual information about the United Monarchy in outside sources is that the Assyrians had no interest or direct contact with Palestine until 853 B.C.E. Moreover, there are no Egyptian historical inscriptions concerning the area in this period either. He does claim that the Tel Dan inscription, as well as the Moabite Stone, mention the...

Acerca de la escritura de artículos científicos

Una investigación sólo está completa cuando se comunique y publique en un journal indexado. La publicación en un journal que aplica el proceso de revisión por pares es el proceso fundamental de la comunicación científica. La decisión de escribir, pero haciendo el esfuerzo de hacerlo bien, es la piedra angular de los individuos letrados en ciencia. Una escritura pobre indica un pensamiento pobre y los dos son desastrosos tanto para la investigación como para la publicación de resultados provenientes de una investigación. Para escribir y publicar un artículo científico convincente, deben abordarse muchas preguntas, incluyendo: qué escribir, dónde publicar, qué estilo aplicar, cómo responder a un referee, y cualesquiera otras preguntas adicionales que puedan surgir durante el proceso. Este artículo provee guías que el autor espera sean útiles para la escritura y publicación efectiva y eficiente de artículos científicos.

Society of Allergics

Society of Allergics Tim Kahl (bio) It was ragweed season and we were busy with our sloppy thinking. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw the shadow of a huge building stirring. Truth was, the sun was behind a drifting bank of clouds. I saw a dab of oatmeal in the beard of the man we called the leader. After breakfast all of us tried to make the exact same empty motions. We sold dolls made out of fiberglass and lipstick. Our pamphlets explained how to fly to the moon. [End Page 70] I had a room of my own where I kept my books on the floor. I pulled up the carpet near the wall and planted cinnamon. Each man was assigned to keep track of a bird for a whole day. It was a rite of passage. My day came during ragweed season. I saw the bird I was following escape to the top of a huge building. I saw a shadow. The sun burned bright. Through the tears in my eyes, choking back snot, I finally had a miraculous vision . . . Oh - we were such beautiful children. Tim Kahl Tim Kahl teaches at Sacramento City College. He has published or has works forthcoming in SunDog: The Southeast Review, Madison Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Nimrod, and others. Copyright © 2004 the University of Nebraska Press

Human Nature in Utopia: Zamyatin's 'We' by Brett Cooke (review)

558 Reviews Human Nature in Utopia: Zamyatin's 'We'. By Brett Cooke. Evanston, IL: North? western University Press. 2002. ix + 221 pp. ?59.50. ISBN 0-810-11873-4. In his new study of Zamiatin's We, Brett Cooke addresses through the prism of what he terms 'biopoetics' the novel's central concern, the human spirit's indomitable resis? tance to totalitarian ideology, and the manifestation of that spirit in the creation of art. Rationalizing utopian systems deny mankind's essential spirit, which can be defined according to sociobiology or evolutionary psychology as a dystopian impulse towards spontaneous gestures, manifested in the ways we treat food, sex, art, and so on. Cooke explores in successive chapters the ways in which these issues are raised in We. In Chapter 2 he considers how utopian schemes forthe consumption of food provoke dystopian resistance: the communal eating of the One State is contrasted with the spontaneous sharing of forbidden drinks and food outside the Green Wall. Chap? ter 3 comments on Zamyatin's prescience in foreseeing the rise of cults of personality within totalitarian ideologies. Chapter 4 develops an article on the mathematics of We which Cooke firstpublished in 1988 (in Zamyatin's 'We': A Collection of Critical Es? says, ed. by Gary Kern (Ardis: Ann Arbor)). Here he highlights some inaccuracies in the mathematical calculations made by D-503, in order to counter the prevalent crit? ical opinion that the Single State is based on perfect, rational mathematical precepts. Chapter 5 considers how our need forhumour and play confounds utopian schemes, and suggests that We is a deliberately playful text, designed to free the ludic spirit within the reader. Chapter 6 looks at the ways in which masochistic, self-destructive tendencies hinder attempts at rational social engineering, clearly following on from Dostoevskii's Underground Man. Cooke also argues here that the ending of We is deliberately ambiguous, and should not necessarily be read in an entirely pessimistic sense. Chapter 7 examines the familiar topic of the ways in which the Single State's attempts to regulate sexuality and reproduction are subverted by the erotic impulse. Chapter 8 returns to the subject of diet to consider the common human desire for variety in food, even where this can lead to nausea or revulsion. In the final chapter, Cooke considers how artistic creativity characterizes resistance to totalitarian regimes, as well as, in the case of We, providingthe fictional author with a form of psychotherapy which enables him to discover his true identity. The book suffers from a writing style which often distracts from the points that Cooke is raising about the novel. As we dart from topic to topic in what Cooke de? scribes as an 'island-hopping campaign through the cognitive structure of Zamyatin's We*(p. 22), the author constantly indulges in trivial asides: 'Someone probably paid forthe book you are now reading. Thank you, whoever you are' (p. 29); 'Stolichnaya, anyone?' (p. 33); 'We is software for the mind. [. . .] And truly,it is a game scholars love to play. Who needs Nintendo, now that we have We}' (p. 104). We are given trite reflections on child-rearing, Agassi on how to be successful at tennis, the Bobbit castration case, Colin Powell's possible candidacy for the American Presidency, and history's inflation of Columbus's status ('Zamyatin should have known better' (p. 50)). The Soviet system's defining characteristic is repeatedly described as 'sloppy thinking' (pp. 63, 78, 96, 165); better editing might have saved this potentially inter? esting book from the same fate, even in the land of the free. Wolfson College, Oxford Julie Curtis Keats and the Russian Poets. By Sonia I. Ketchian. (Birmingham Slavonic Monographs , 33) Birmingham: Birmingham University. 2001. vii+ 308 pp. ?25. ISBN 0-7044-2293-x; ISSN 0141-3805 (pbk). John Keats is among those major English poets who have gone relatively unappreciated in Russia. In Sonia Ketchian's view Keats has, however, been more readily ...

Keats and the Russian Poets by Sonia I. Ketchian (review)

558 Reviews Human Nature in Utopia: Zamyatin's 'We'. By Brett Cooke. Evanston, IL: North? western University Press. 2002. ix + 221 pp. ?59.50. ISBN 0-810-11873-4. In his new study of Zamiatin's We, Brett Cooke addresses through the prism of what he terms 'biopoetics' the novel's central concern, the human spirit's indomitable resis? tance to totalitarian ideology, and the manifestation of that spirit in the creation of art. Rationalizing utopian systems deny mankind's essential spirit, which can be defined according to sociobiology or evolutionary psychology as a dystopian impulse towards spontaneous gestures, manifested in the ways we treat food, sex, art, and so on. Cooke explores in successive chapters the ways in which these issues are raised in We. In Chapter 2 he considers how utopian schemes forthe consumption of food provoke dystopian resistance: the communal eating of the One State is contrasted with the spontaneous sharing of forbidden drinks and food outside the Green Wall. Chap? ter 3 comments on Zamyatin's prescience in foreseeing the rise of cults of personality within totalitarian ideologies. Chapter 4 develops an article on the mathematics of We which Cooke firstpublished in 1988 (in Zamyatin's 'We': A Collection of Critical Es? says, ed. by Gary Kern (Ardis: Ann Arbor)). Here he highlights some inaccuracies in the mathematical calculations made by D-503, in order to counter the prevalent crit? ical opinion that the Single State is based on perfect, rational mathematical precepts. Chapter 5 considers how our need forhumour and play confounds utopian schemes, and suggests that We is a deliberately playful text, designed to free the ludic spirit within the reader. Chapter 6 looks at the ways in which masochistic, self-destructive tendencies hinder attempts at rational social engineering, clearly following on from Dostoevskii's Underground Man. Cooke also argues here that the ending of We is deliberately ambiguous, and should not necessarily be read in an entirely pessimistic sense. Chapter 7 examines the familiar topic of the ways in which the Single State's attempts to regulate sexuality and reproduction are subverted by the erotic impulse. Chapter 8 returns to the subject of diet to consider the common human desire for variety in food, even where this can lead to nausea or revulsion. In the final chapter, Cooke considers how artistic creativity characterizes resistance to totalitarian regimes, as well as, in the case of We, providingthe fictional author with a form of psychotherapy which enables him to discover his true identity. The book suffers from a writing style which often distracts from the points that Cooke is raising about the novel. As we dart from topic to topic in what Cooke de? scribes as an 'island-hopping campaign through the cognitive structure of Zamyatin's We*(p. 22), the author constantly indulges in trivial asides: 'Someone probably paid forthe book you are now reading. Thank you, whoever you are' (p. 29); 'Stolichnaya, anyone?' (p. 33); 'We is software for the mind. [. . .] And truly,it is a game scholars love to play. Who needs Nintendo, now that we have We}' (p. 104). We are given trite reflections on child-rearing, Agassi on how to be successful at tennis, the Bobbit castration case, Colin Powell's possible candidacy for the American Presidency, and history's inflation of Columbus's status ('Zamyatin should have known better' (p. 50)). The Soviet system's defining characteristic is repeatedly described as 'sloppy thinking' (pp. 63, 78, 96, 165); better editing might have saved this potentially inter? esting book from the same fate, even in the land of the free. Wolfson College, Oxford Julie Curtis Keats and the Russian Poets. By Sonia I. Ketchian. (Birmingham Slavonic Monographs , 33) Birmingham: Birmingham University. 2001. vii+ 308 pp. ?25. ISBN 0-7044-2293-x; ISSN 0141-3805 (pbk). John Keats is among those major English poets who have gone relatively unappreciated in Russia. In Sonia Ketchian's view Keats has, however, been more readily MLRy 99.2, 2004 559 assimilated directly into the writings of Russian poets than into the consciousness of the general reader. The subject is fascinating. Sadly, though, this lengthy account is often unpersuasive. Two brief chapters on early reception...

Sloppy thinking exposed!

Sloppy thinking exposed!

Fuzzy Concepts and Sloppy Thinking: Reflections on Recent Developments in Critical Regional Studies

H UDSON R. (2003) Fuzzy concepts and sloppy thinking: reflections on recent developments in critical regional studies, Reg. Studies 37 , 741-746. There have been considerable changes in approaches to the study of regions and regional uneven development in recent years. Much of this has been associated with cultural and institutional "turns' in the social sciences, involving a greater reliance upon case studies, qualitative forms of evidence and analysis, and different concepts of theory. For Ann Markusen these developments are problematic, both in themselves and in their resultant increasing detachment from public policy. I have some sympathy with her critique but in some respects see it as misconceived. Not least this is because of its conflation of quantitative methods with a traditional conception of theory that sits oddly with her call for greater policy and political involvement. Such concerns are better served by the theoretical traditions and practices of critical theory and political economy. H UDSON R. (2003) Des concepts confus et des pensées laxistes: des réflexions sur des développements récents dans le domaine des études régionales critiques, Reg. Studies 37 , 741-746. Dans les dernières années, il y a eu d'importants changements des façons d'étudier les régions et les déséquilibres régionaux. Pour la plupart, cela s'explique par des "tournures' culturelles et institutionnelles prises dans les sciences sociales, nécessitant une dépendance accrue vis-à-vis des études de cas, des formes qualitatives de preuves et d'analyse, et des concepts de théorie différents. Pour Ann Markusen, ces dé veloppements-là s'avèrent problématiques en soi et en termes de leur séparation accrue de la politique publique. Dans une certaine mesure, on est d'accord avec sa critique, mais à certains é gards on la considère mal conçue. A commencer parce qu'elle regroupe les méthodes quantitatives autour d'une notion traditionnelle de la théorie qui va lourdement de pair avec sa demande d'un engagement politique et de politique accru. Les traditions théoriques et les pratiques de la théorie critique et de l'économie politique sont plus utiles à de tels soucis. H UDSON R. (2003) Unklare Konzeptionen und schludriges Denken: Betrachtungen über seit kurzem auftretende Entwicklungen bei kritischen Regionalstudien, Reg. Studies 37 , 741-746. Ansä tze zum Studium von Regionen und regional ungleichmßiger Entwicklung sind in den letzten Jahren beträchtlichem Wandel unterworfen gewesen. Viel davon ist kulturellen und institutionellen "Wenden' in den Sozialwissenschaften zu zuschreiben, die sich vermehrt auf Fallstudien, qualitative Beweisformen und Analysen, sowie verschiedene theoretische Konzepte stützen. Für Ann Markusen sind diese Entwicklungen als problematisch, sowohl an sich, als auch in ihrer sich daraus ergebenden zunehmenden Loslösung von der öffentlich verfolgten Politik. Der Autor hat in gewisser Weise Verständnis für ihre Kritik, sieht sie jedoch in mancher Beziehung als von falschen Voraussetzungen ausgehend an. Dies ist hauptsächlich so wegen ihrer Zusammenfassung von quantitativen Methoden mit einer traditionellen Konzeption von Theorie, die schlecht zu ihrem Aufruf zu stärkerem Engagement in Bestrebungen und Politik paßt. Solchen Anliegen ist besser mit den theoretischen Traditionen und dem Praktizieren von kritischer Theorie und Volkswirtschaft gedient.

Harold Varmus: Still behaving like a scientist

Harold Varmus: Still behaving like a scientist

The Powerful Placebo Effect: Fact or Fiction?

In 1955, Henry K. Beecher published the classic work entitled “The Powerful Placebo.” Since that time, 40 years ago, the placebo effect has been considered a scientific fact. Beecher was the first scientist to quantify the placebo effect. He claimed that in 15 trials with different diseases, 35% of 1082 patients were satisfactorily relieved by a placebo alone. This publication is still the most frequently cited placebo reference. Recently Beecher's article was reanalyzed with surprising results: In contrast to his claim, no evidence was found of any placebo effect in any of the studies cited by him. There were many other factors that could account for the reported improvements in patients in these trials, but most likely there was no placebo effect whatsoever. False impressions of placebo effects can be produced in various ways. Spontaneous improvement, fluctuation of symptoms, regression to the mean, additional treatment, conditional switching of placebo treatment, scaling bias, irrelevant response variables, answers of politeness, experimental subordination, conditioned answers, neurotic or psychotic misjudgment, psychosomatic phenomena, misquotation, etc. These factors are still prevalent in modern placebo literature. The placebo topic seems to invite sloppy methodological thinking. Therefore awareness of Beecher's mistakes and misinterpretations is essential for an appropriate interpretation of current placebo literature.