Translating Studies Into English | Eastern North Carolina Now

   Publisher's note: The article below appeared in John Hood's daily column in his publication, the Carolina Journal, which, because of Author / Publisher Hood, is inextricably linked to the John Locke Foundation.

    RALEIGH     My new book Our Best Foot Forward, which comes out on Monday, analyzes the biggest problems facing North Carolina's economy and offers a 10-point plan for addressing them. During the months I spent researching and writing the book, I found myself reading more than 100 academic studies on state economic growth.

    I considered this to be a feature of the process, not a flaw. That's just how nerdy I am. Plus, having kicked myself upstairs at the John Locke Foundation some years ago, I no longer spend most of my time doing policy research. It was a valuable exercise to reacquaint myself with the relevant literature.

    The core of Our Best Foot Forward is a chapter that lays out in significant detail what studies of state economic growth can teach government policymakers. In that chapter alone, I refer to nearly 70 different studies, most of which were published within the past two decades in peer-reviewed journals. Subsequent chapters on tax reform, regulation, infrastructure, and education reform refer to dozens of other papers and studies.

    As I read the research, several thoughts occurred to me:

    • Scholars and politicians speak different languages and ask different questions. In the think tank business, we often see one of our tasks as translating the findings of academic scholarship into a form that politicians can use. That's valuable. But it occurs to me that think tanks should also help politicians understand why scholars tend to avoid sweeping generalizations and present their empirical findings carefully. They frequently have good reasons for doing so.

    If you are in politics, activism, or journalism, you want a clear, usable answer to every question. Social scientists, in particular, are right to push back against that demand. Human action is a complex phenomenon. Knowledge about it is widely distributed, hard to collect, and even harder to analyze. It does no one any favors to oversimplify when the best answer to the question is some version of "It depends."

    • Differences in definitions, variables, and study design help to explain why academic studies conducted by honest, ethical scholars often reach different conclusions. While those in the political debate have a tendency to praise research findings with which they already agree and discount research findings they don't like, it would be wiser to read it all carefully and try to learn from it.

    Furthermore, it is rarely productive to engage in personal insults, invent mercenary motives, or concoct conspiracy theories to disparage scholars whose work doesn't square with what you think about an issue. That doesn't mean that, on occasion, a sharp jab isn't warranted. I've certainly run across a few scholars or analysts whose work is tendentious or transparently silly. It's okay to say that, too.

    • Two of the best classes I took during my journalism studies at UNC-Chapel Hill were statistics and precision reporting. Both have come in handy over the years. I still do refresher readings in statistics every now and then. Even so, several of the papers I reviewed for Our Best Foot Forward led me to return to my old textbooks for some reminders. More generally, political debate would be greatly enhanced by a broader public understanding of statistical concepts and logical reasoning.

    • The Internet is a marvelous time-saver. Book research that would have taken me several days in a university library back in the 1990s could be accomplished from my home or office in a few hours. The fact that the introduction of the Internet does not appear to have resulted in massive increases in the productivity of academic institutions - both in research and teaching - is a devastating indictment of how those institutions are structured, led, and financed.

    These are just some of the observations that sprang from the process of writing Our Best Foot Forward. If you'd like to know what I actually wrote in the book, I guess you'll just have to wait until Monday.