prior probability

Below is some beautiful sacred music I heard during my visit of Glasgow Cathedral last month (also available here via SoundCloud):

I forgot to mention that I was finally able to visit Horace Walpole’s summer villa in Twickenham while I was in London last month; below are some snapshots of my visit:

What is the “optimal level” of social science research fraud? Zero, right? Alas, Dr Francesca Gino, a professor at the prestigious Harvard Business School and an “award-winning researcher” whose work focuses on dishonesty and unethical behavior (she is, get this, the author of Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules in Work and Life), has herself been accused of publishing at least four research papers with fake or doctored data. (See here, here, here, and here.) Because she is a professor at Harvard, these data-fabrication allegations have received national and even international media attention.

Shame on Dr Gino, but what about Harvard and her co-authors? Are they victims of Gino’s alleged fraud, or just as guilty as Gino for enabling her deceit, or somewhere in-between? And what about the journals that published her papers? Among these are the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see here), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (here), and Psychological Science (here). For my part, I have proposed extending the law of fraud to academic journals. Until courts begin imposing legal liability, both civil and criminal, on authors and journals for publishing fake studies, we can expect many more cases of data fraud in the future.

Alternate title: My favorite Adam Smith quote

My previous post featured many of the “favorite Adam Smith quotes” that were just published in the “Smith at 300” symposium issue of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought: Vol. 45, No. 2, June 2023, pp. 179-228. (Alas, this special issue is gated.) Amazingly, however, none of the contributors to the symposium chose Adam Smith’s most famous quote of all, the one that refers to an “invisible hand”. This omission is all the more surprising given how original and important Smith’s invisible hand metaphor is to the world of ideas. (See here and here, for example.)

In fact, this metaphor appears thrice in the works of Adam Smith. The first reference pops up in his early essay on The History of Astronomy, where Smith uses the invisible hand metaphor to compare and contrast the ad hoc explanations of cosmic events of early times: “Fire burns, and water refreshes; heavy bodies descend, and lighter substances fly upwards, by the necessity of their own nature; nor was the invisible hand of Jupiter ever apprehended to be employed in those matters.” (See Adam Smith’s Essays on Philosophical Subjects, Glasgow Edition, p. 49.) Moving on, the next reference appears in Paragraph 10 of Chapter 1 of Part 4 of Smith’s 1759 treatise on ethics The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), where Smith uses this metaphor to describe what today is often disparagingly referred to as “trickle-down economics”:

They [wealthy people] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own convenience, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Glasgow edition, p. 184

But Adam Smith’s most famous reference to “an invisible hand” (and my favorite Smith quote) appears in Paragraph 9 of Chapter 2 of Part 4 of The Wealth of Nations, which is titled “Of restraints upon the importation from foreign countries of such goods as can be produced at home”, and reads as follows:

As every individual … endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

The Wealth of Nations, Glasgow edition, pp. 455-456

Some background: Upon my return from Scotland I found the June 2023 issue of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought in my mailbox. Among other things, this issue contains a special “Smith at 300” symposium featuring a number of classic quotations from the works or correspondence of the great Adam Smith. (The editors of JHET had invited scholars “to write short pieces telling us what their favorite Adam Smith [is] and why.” Alas, I somehow missed this call for papers.) In all, no less than 17 Smith scholars ended up contributing to this special symposium. Not surprisingly, most of the quotes singled-out for this symposium issue are from the Scottish philosopher-economist’s magnum opus The Wealth of Nations; below is a complete tally:

A. The first quote — my favorite of all — is from Smith’s private correspondence, a letter to his mother dated 29 November 1743, while Smith was still a student at Oxford: “I am just recovered of a violent fit of laziness, which has confined me to my elbow-chair these three months.” (Shout out to Sarah Skwire for featuring this quote in her contribution to the “Smith at 300” symposium.)

B. Another quote is from Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence: “The laws of most countries being made by men generally are very severe on the women …“

C. Two more quotes are from Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres: (1) “Prose is the Stile in which all the common affairs of Life, all Business and Agreements are made. No one ever made a Bargain in verse.” And (2) “We need not be surprised … that the Cartesian philosophy …, though it does not perhaps contain a word of truth, … should nevertheless have been so universally received by all the Learned in Europe at that time …“

D. Three of the quotes are from Smith’s treatise on ethics The Theory of Moral Sentiments, including the opening sentence in Book 1 of this great work: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.” (The other two quotes are from Books 2 and 7 of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.)

E. Four-fifths of the featured quotes — ten out of 17, including the immortal words pictured below — are from The Wealth of Nations: seven from Book 1, one from Book 2, and one from Book 5, as well as one quote from the “Early Draft of The Wealth of Nations“.

Postscript: I will share my personal favorite Adam Smith quote in my next post.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Forget the fireworks, hot dogs, and cold beer until you have committed these immortal words to memory and have read the whole thing, for on this day (4 July) in 1776, the delegates of the Second Continental Congress, who are assembled at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, “mutually pledge to each other [their] Lives, [their] Fortunes and [their] sacred Honor” by publicly and unanimously ratifying the Declaration of Independence, thus committing an act of high treason, punishable by death.

There is no doubt the Supreme Court of the United States has become a “political court”, to borrow my mentor Richard Posner’s apt phrase (no, we still haven’t forgotten the illegitimate and disastrous Bush v. Gore decision!), but how politicized has this unelected, unaccountable, and quasi-legislative committee become, and in what direction: conservative right or progressive left? For some tentative but novel insights into these questions, check out the short and excellent blog post titled “Purple June” by my colleague and friend Josh Blackman, a law professor in Houston, Texas — the first installment of many on the last batch of cases decided by the high court in June of 2020, 2022, and 2023. (Suffice it to say, I am looking forward to reading and commenting on Professor Blackman’s upcoming posts!)

Beware of blog posts on sports, politics, foreign policy, or race! To commemorate the upcoming ten-year anniversary of this blog (5 July 2023), I am featuring ten of my lamest blog posts:

1. A modest proposal (geopolitical edition) (6 February 2022)
2. PSA: Here is the police hotline to report Trump & sons for incitement (7 January 2021)
3. A modest proposal (two-week-holiday-in-honor-of-freedom edition) (5 July 2020)
4. White Man’s Justice? (1 November 2019)
5. Polling blip or historic trend? (Trumpista politics edition) (21 Jan. 2019)
6. Impeach Trump? (14 April 2018)
7. #TrumpYourHand (4 August 2016)
8. “Johnny Bust”? (14 December 2014)
9. Is Keith Olbermann’s the “worst sports person in the world”? (27 August 2013)
10. Is the “Justice for Trayvon” movement finished? (17 August 2013)