Bias and the disclosure of interest

New Kid on the Hall has this posting on bias. (I found it via this comment from Info-fetishist, one of my favorite blogs.) Kid points out that all authors are biased, and that the student must not simply note that a specific author is biased, but seek to describe that bias, describe how it is expressed, and then go further to consider its import. Of course, this is good guidance for any kind of critical thinking. It would seem to me that expertise is developed considering sources with different, ideally complementary biases and weighing their approaches and judgments.

Of course, sometimes we don't want to be bothered by thinking critically, and simply want to enjoy a good rant. (Check out Keith Olbermann's Anti-Bush Rant.)

In order to understand an author's bias, or at least the likely bias in an authors work, it is often useful to understand the author's interests. (Where you stand is often determined by where you sit.) Thus it is important to understand that John McCain's top foreign policy adviser works for a firm that has a contract to advise the government of Georgia (and to realize that often a candidates statements are scripted by staff in the heat of a campaign), in order to properly understand the direction of the bias in his statements relevant to the Georgia-Russia conflict.

Sometimes people rise above their financial interests in expressing opinions, and sometimes politicians rise above their interests in maximizing the votes they receive, but often it is interest that determines content of their public pronouncements.

Years ago I was on the editorial advisory panel for a journal when we faced the question of whether or not to publish a piece by an author with a clear financial interest affected by the position he was advocating. We decided that indeed all our authors had interests affected by the subjects that they addressed in their papers. Why else would they go to the trouble to research and write a series article? We decided that the editor's job was not to keep a journal interest-free, but rather to present articles reflecting the legitimate span of interests, and to disclose to the extent possible the specific interests of the specific authors. That is why one should read the author's blurb on an article of concern. Would that more publications would use those blurbs to inform the reader of author interests.

Left-to-right: anti-market bias, anti-foreign bias, make-work bias, and pessimistic bias. Source: EconLog