Comments for The Smoke-Filled Room

Comment on On Kenneth Waltz by Kenneth N. Waltz a încetat din viață « Civitas Politics

Kenneth N. Waltz a încetat din viață « Civitas Politics — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:31:54 +0000

[…] Ken Waltz, arguably the most influential scholar in International Relations of the past half-century, passed away last night. He was 88. It is tough to find anything to say that does not sound contrived. Instead, I wanted to share a lasting memory of mine from John Mearsheimer’s seminar on realism at the University of Chicago. We were reading Waltz’s Theory of International Politics and after a couple of hours of discussing the basics most are familiar with (balancing, the benefits of bipolarity, etc.), we had gotten into some of the more obscure parts of Theory (there is a fascinating discussion of the meaning of power towards the end that is always worth a re-read). At the end of the latter discussion, John admitted that even though he had read the book countless times (and written insightful analysesof the work), the day’s seminar had brought out something new from the book for him. Years later, reading Theory for the nth for my comprehensive exam in IR, I finally understood what John meant. It’s amazing how much insight Waltz packed into one work. Every new reading truly produces something new for the reader. And this is true not only of Theory but also of much of his other work, including Man, the State, and War. (William G. Nomikos, thesmokefilledroom) […]

Comment on Terrorism Data Remains a Mess by Andreas Moser

Andreas Moser — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:36:27 +0000

But there is rather good date on WHO becomes a terrorist: http://andreasmoser.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/geeks-are-killing-us/ Failing students of STEM subjects are the high-risk group.

Comment on On Kenneth Waltz by DH

DH — Tue, 14 May 2013 23:28:06 +0000

I haven’t looked at this blog in quite some time, so imagine my surprise when I clicked through and came across this touching, short piece on Ken Waltz. I was lucky enough to have taken a couple of Waltz’s seminars when I was a PhD student at Berkeley in the late 1990s. The discussions were priceless, not only for the insights Professor Waltz brought to the table on IR theory, but for the personal anecdotes he sprinkled throughout, in order to tie theory back to practice. Him pausing a heated discussion amongst self-important grad students to recount his time as an infantryman in WWII – I’ll never forget those moments.

Comment on Missing Women, Missing Mechanisms by Skewed sex ratios: An analysis of missing women

Skewed sex ratios: An analysis of missing women — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:50:22 +0000

[…] Cross posted from The Smoke-Filled Room […]

Comment on Survivorship Bias, Sample Sizes, and the Oregon Medicaid Study by Chris Clary

Chris Clary — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:52:41 +0000

Thanks for flagging this point. I read your discussion of the 2011 survey but hadn’t went back to look at those articles in detail, and that certainly was my mistake, though I don’t think it changes my conclusion. The NEJM variant of the study is very brief and not so helpful, but the QJE variant and NBER working paper are more detailed. Here is the link to the NBER paper since I’m not sure the QJE is accessible to everyone (http://www.nber.org/papers/w17190.pdf). It states, “Mortality – although important and objectively measured – is very low in our population; only about 0.8 percent of the controls die over the 16 month study period. Not surprisingly, Panel A shows that we do not detect any statistically significant improvement in survival probability.” Unless I’m reading the coefficients incorrectly, the size of the substantive effect of winning the lottery (0.00032 for the reduced form OLS and 0.001 for the 2 stage least squared) is right about what you would expect for the 20,000 additional deaths per year nationally for the uninsured. So, why the 2011 study certainly invalidates my jest that there could be widespread disparities in deaths, it does not invalidate Emily’s more subtle point about survivorship bias above, and obviously the point about study power remains valid. It is simply not fair to draw from either study the conclusion that Medicaid/health care expansion would not save 20,000 people a year. The only way this data would have a statistically significant coefficient for mortality is if the uninsured “excess” deaths are much larger than 20,000 annually. If you had to create an estimate of how many lives would be saved nationally, it probably would be about 20,000, though the confidence intervals would be quite wide.

Comment on Survivorship Bias, Sample Sizes, and the Oregon Medicaid Study by Megan J. McArdle

Megan J. McArdle — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:55:50 +0000

Hi: Oregon is actually a two year study, which both Ross and I have followed over the years, as it’s obviously a big deal for health reform. Had you been following it, you would have known that in the first phase (released in 2011), they did look at mortality, not from interviews, but by matching hospital discharge and mortality data. The mortality data showed no significant differences. So while the survivor bias argument is indeed simple, it is not correct.

Comment on Terrorism Data Remains a Mess by Chris Clary

Chris Clary — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:53:56 +0000

Thanks, Tim. It’s not easy to add graphs in the comments, or I would do so. In the GTD data, it’s fairly easy to decompose targets. There, the military as a target by itself has peaks in 2007 and a smaller one in 2011 (trough in between). The police have a small peak in 2007 and a bigger one in 2011 (trough in between). And the target category of “government (general)” is more or less a straight line increase since 2007. Since the NCTC WITS website is now deceased and it’s data is in .xml format, it’s relatively difficult for me to do something similar with that data, but I thought I’d at least give you the GTD results.

Comment on Terrorism Data Remains a Mess by Tim Hoyt

Tim Hoyt — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:06:39 +0000

Chris, consider cross-checking with fatalities – both civilian and security force – in Pakistan for the years in question. The problem is that there is both terrorism and insurgency in Pakistan (although the military tends to refuse to acknowledge the latter). What might be happening – and I don’t actually know if this is the case, again because the data is a bit funky – is that “terrorism” is down (because of how those types of attacks are defined) but deaths to insurgent violence are up. It may be that sectarian violence (terrorism) is still being captured, but that violence against the state itself is now being categorized (or operationalized) in ways that don’t fit the “terrorism” definition.

Comment on Nuclear Weapons and War by MentalGaming

MentalGaming — Thu, 09 May 2013 17:59:51 +0000

This is…surprisingly interesting. I was told in my Intro to IR class that the Stability-Instability paradox was effectively irrefutable, so these criticisms are intriguing to hear about.

I’m not sure that Kargil would spoil the democratic peace theory, though. Both India and Pakistan are illiberal states. Perhaps there should be more of an emphasis on *liberal* democratic peace.

Comment on Would a U.S.-Led Intervention Drag Out the War in Syria? by Weekly Links | Political Violence @ a Glance

Weekly Links | Political Violence @ a Glance — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:00:43 +0000

[...] Lionel Beehner on arming the Syrian opposition: “The notion that somehow arming Syria’s opposition means a long and protracted war is misguided and driven by a realist-inspired desire to stay on the sidelines and never intervene anywhere.” [...]