A student wants to use a publication by Cato Institute in his research. Should I allow this? Is it a legitimate academic source?
I remember hearing that they are a non-academic think-tank that is heavily subsidized by lobbyist organizations. Am I right or am I confusing them with somebody?
Clarissa's Blog 
Why you should not allow this? Unless what he has to say is a non-sense…
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We are supposed to allow only legitimate academic sources.
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And how Cato institute (which I’m not the biggest fan of) should be considered as less legitimate than many postmodernist publications?
And how do you define “legitimate” academic sources? Many economists find Cato a legitimate source, others don’t.
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So if this student used some publication by the Center for American Progres or the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, would that be allowed?
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I have no idea what those are, so I’d be asking about them on the blog. 🙂 🙂
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I really like the Cato Institute, but I really prefer the Mercatus Center at George Mason University best and no, I don’t believe in all those Koch Brothers conspiracy theories, just like I don’t really buy the whole hysteria over George Soros. I don’t think these types of people should have an influence in the political process and the Brothers have contributed to some pretty unlibertarian candidates in the past. Mises Institute is probably the most radical of the libertarian think tanks, while others like the Reason Foundation don’t have such radical, anarcho-capitalist views.
I think the free bank supporter George Selgin is one of the Senior Fellows at Cato and he’s someone I admire for his work. I also really like this website.
http://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/
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The thing is, we are doing academic research here. I don’t want any sources with “views”, whatever those views might be. I want academic sources.
I wouldn’t allow anybody to use my blog in their bibliography, for instance. Although I really dig the views it expresses. 🙂
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I see. I’m not really sure then. What kind of paper is your student trying to write?
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” What kind of paper is your student trying to write?”
– Yes, that’s the question of the month. 🙂 I’ve been trying to get him to define a specific topic, but no such luck.
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But it depends of the kind of work. Is this a research paper, an undergraduate project, a master’s thesis? And why he want: to motivate his work or to formulate an authority argument?
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And why he want to use it: to motivate his work or to formulate an authority argument?
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// I don’t want any sources with “views”, whatever those views might be. I want academic sources.
Many professors, f.e. in economics, have strong political views, which can’t completely not influence their research. So this distinction is partly artificial, imo. Again, in economics f.e., you can look at the study itself: what was checked? How? Is the sample sufficient? And so on.
Can I ask which “views” may be in a source about literature? Or, is it political? Can’t source’s quality be evaluated, regardless of who published it?
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If at least this were a peer-reviewed publication, I wouldn’t mind. But this is a publication on a website, and I have no idea what the vetting process is like. What if anybody can publish anything there?
“Can’t source’s quality be evaluated, regardless of who published it?”
– Usually, that’s done during peer review. The problems begin where we are talking about non-peer reviewed sources.
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“Can I ask which “views” may be in a source about literature? ”
– This is one of those students who refused to write about literature and decided to write about Cuba.
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“I’ve been trying to get him to define a specific topic, but no such luck.”
Based on this, my answer to your question is: I don’t know.
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Well the Cato Institute is very conservative. And they conduct a lot of dubious studies. However, if it were my student, I guess I would look at the type of publication the study appeared in. Is it an online thing? Did it appear in a journal? Did it go through peer review?
If it’s just something from the Cato website, I would say throw it out. Materials that appear on the website of a think tank are hardly scholarly. However, if somehow a Cato Study made it into a scholarly publication, then I would personally allow a student to cite it (though I find the Cato Institute repugnant.)
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“If it’s just something from the Cato website, I would say throw it out. Materials that appear on the website of a think tank are hardly scholarly.”
– It’s an article on the website.
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That sounds like a glorified blog entry to be honest. I don’t think I would accept it.
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P.S. And it’s not the fact that I’m liberal that I would reject it. I would reject something from the website of a left leaning think tank. I don’t think material from those sorts of sources constitute legitimate peer review.
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A number of the better think tanks – left and right of centrer – produce better scientific work than many university departments and many so-called scholarly journals. Cato, Heritage, American Enterprise Institute on the right all produce good work. Brookings is excellent from the left.
It seems to me that students should be able to cite papers from such institutes. If the arguments are poor, from a scientific viewpoint, you will penalize the student for that, but surely not because of the source itself.
It is interesting tht raise the question concerning a right-of-center-think tank. Ask yourself whether you would have raised the same question regarding a left-of-center think tank. If not, then ‘the fault dear Brutus lies not in our stars, but in ourselves’.
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“Ask yourself whether you would have raised the same question regarding a left-of-center think tank.”
– Absolutely. This isn’t about political leanings, it is about lack of peer review. On the subject of Cuba, which is what the paper will discuss, you do not get more conservative than me. 🙂 🙂
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I agree with Charlie 100% on this issue. The professional type of think tanks, including Brookings and Cato, all produce work that’s worth looking at. Since this is about Cuba, it’s most likely related to economics. Maybe it would be best if your student found an independently written academic paper and then if it just happens to be cited on Cato or whatever think tank he wants to use, then that would be even better.
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Charles Rowley is an older, esteemed scholar, so let’s not call him “Charlie.”
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I agree with the “lack of peer review issue”, but if this source brings a news scientific insight or an interesting motivation, I have no problem to use it. If this constitutues an authority arguement, i would dismiss it.
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Corrected:
I agree with the “lack of peer review issue”, but if this source brings a new scientific insight or an interesting motivation, I would have no problem to use it. If he uses it to formulate an authority argument, Iwould dismiss it.
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I’d say it depends on what the student wants to use it for. If we wants to appeal to some facts and figures presented in it, I would say no because it lacks peer review. But if he acknowledges that the publication may have a certain point of view, and wants to use it to demonstrate (for example) something about varying opinions on US relations with Cuba, then I’d say it’s a fine source.
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i would disallow policy think tanks in general, to be honest, and limit him to articles that appear in peer-reviewed journals. But I’m not certain whether this is feasible for Humanities.
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The thing is think tanks are their own thing not readily comparable to either popular press or peer reviewed journals. They have agendas but so do prj’s.
I would lean toward allowing it _if_ the student can justify it in writing (and given a lack of traditional journal sources). If the student can’t even clearly say what they want to write about I’m guessing that justifying citing think tank materials will also be beyond them.
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” If the student can’t even clearly say what they want to write about I’m guessing that justifying citing think tank materials will also be beyond them.”
– That’s precisely the problem! If this were somebody who wanted to contrast different perspectives on the issue, this source would definitely work. But I’m having very strong suspicions this will end up being a copy-pasting job where nothing is approached critically.
Maybe I’m too negative.
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Penalize the student if ey does that!
IF
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Well, maybe they could study it as a primary text, a text to study, a piece of rhetoric. But not as a piece of research.
Corvex: “But I’m not certain whether this is feasible for Humanities.” What? Someone just descended on my blog and said research was not done in the Humanities, and now we don’t have journals? Who do y’all think you are trying to kid?
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The quality of the argument or the scientific approach should be more important than the quality of the publication.
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I simply don’t have the time to verify every single statement made in that article. This is simply not feasible.
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Okay, so maybe you’re right. (it depends on what ey would do with this reference) If you have to verify a statement, ey should not copy-paste it from a think tank journal. ey has to justify it at least partly with academic journals.
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Cato Institute is not an academic entity. It is a free-market, no-tax, pro-industry, anti-regulation, anti-labor think tank funded by prominent conservative political big money funders as well as small-donation individuals. It is definitely a political think tank meant to issue a consistent message to the media, and off-message publications do not occur. It is entirely possible that a study done by someone at the Cato Institute could be accurate, or conversely could be completely inaccurate or poorly analyzed B.S.. I think that one has to evaluate individual think tank studies in concert with other analyses and with the raw demographic, economic, historical data available on the public record. There is no independent academic peer review, nor do members publicize academic peer-reviewed publications in important law reviews and other academic journals.
from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute
The Cato Institute has a budget of about $14 million a year, derived from 15,000 contributors. More than 70 percent of its funding comes from individuals, with about 10 percent each from corporations and foundations. According to one critical source, in the 17 years spanning 1985 to 2001, the Institute received $15,633,540 in 108 separate grants from eight different foundations:
Castle Rock Foundation (Formerly Coors Foundation)
Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation
Earhart Foundation
JM Foundation
John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife, Carthage)
As Social Security reform has become a more prominent issue, the Knight Ridder newspapers reported that the Institute, a strong advocate of privatization, had received backing from “the American International Group, an insurance and financial services company whose business includes managing U.S. retirement plans.”
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has served on the board of directors of Cato.
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I might also add, if a study does not have a thorough disclosure of replicable methodology, including sample identification or derivation (sources of data, “snowball” or random recruitment of subjects, method of searching a public database, data quality issues, polling methodology,etc) and analysis (exact statistical method used) it should not be quoted without reservation in an academic paper. Also, if the study does have such information, the student should comment on appropriateness of the methodology to the question addressed in the study. The obvious problem is that the student is likely to read the “executive summary”, and skip the details.
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Hummm, this is not always what it occurs in the reality.
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This is very restrictive conception of research.
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This is a very restrictive conception of research.
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The Cato Journal is peer reviewed. They also have a lot of other kinds of publications and tracts. It all totally depends on what kind of Cato document the student has and what they want to do with it.
NB Hoover institution, Center for American progress, all these foundations and institutions have websites & you can find out how legit/relevant the whole thing is or not for your purposes.
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…I’d ask my colleagues in Econ/Poli Sci how well regarded the Cato Journal is, though. Here is a post from one of the Cato Institute’s Facebook pages —
“The Bachelor of Arts degree wreaks harm on a majority of young people. It is grotesquely inefficient as a source of information for employers. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s implicated in the emergence of a class-riven America. As such, the proposition that I hereby lay before you is that the BA is the work of the devil.”
Check out the latest Cato’s Letter, featuring Charles Murray: http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/catosletter_winter2013_2.pdf
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It surely depends on how the student makes use of the source.
How much of the Spanish literature your students study emanates from academic sources? Do all the writers have doctorates?
If a student simply parrots propaganda from a partisan think tank, then no. But if the student uses the source critically, and it is relevant to what they are writing about, why not?
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You are saying to take the Cato documents as objects of study, examples of rhetoric, not as scholarly sources. That’s a different matter.
Do y’all think infomercials are as valid scientific sources as articles in _Science_ or _Nature_, for instance? This is a distinction taught in middle school — !!!
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