Rushing from Syria to Sudan

I've opened several recent posts with something like "Here's a nice article but it comes up short in a particular way that I'd like to discuss."  Please take such formulations at face value and don't imagine that I'm stretching to find something polite to say.  I'll tell you directly when I think I see a terrible article. This article is terrible. All …

Citation Distortion: Part I

Apologies for the radio silence.  I went on holiday (for just one week) and then, somehow, have been desperately playing catch up ever since. This 2009 paper by Steven Greenberg entitled "How citation distortions create unfounded authority...." strikes me as remarkably useful and important. Suppose I write a peer-reviewed journal article  that includes a claim that …

Hi There

Why am I doing this?????? I thought for a long time that blogging wasn't for me.  But I see false and misleading claims all around me.  Some are published in obscure places and strike me as dead on arrival.  Yet some of these get pulled into the world of the undead and get serious play. …