Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Friday, June 24, 2005
Word of the Day
Hi Mickey - Couldn’t get any sound with the clip. Visual was fine, but no audio. I read the case for the independent commission, and I agree. Of course, somehow or other, someone will “appoint” an independent commission, which will consist of shills from some corporate something or other, or from various fascist think tanks, and we’ll be back where we started.
Don’t know much about gyrovague, but there’s a vagus / wandering nerve in the human body, longest nerve in the body. Affects the face, affects swallowing, breathing, heartrate, wanders all the way down into the lower abdomen so that, when one moves ones bowels, the vagus nerve is affected and, in turn, often slows heart rate. (vaso-vagal response) In nursing, it turns up again and again, so much so, that when you can’t figure out what’s causing such and such, someone will say: What about the vagus nerve? - - -
Is it tomorrow that you go off to Texas? Good luck, Mickey, and tell your mom she has people all over the country - all over the world, who are pulling for her. “One million goofy Leftists can’t be wrong!”
Take care.
-joePosted by joe on from Oregon 06/24 at 02:23 PMFound this on vagus: http://www.meddean.luc.edu/lumen/MedEd/GrossAnatomy/h_n/cn/cn1/cn10.htm
As for an “independent commission,” I agree: it’s like the CIA or the NYPD investigating itself. Yeah, right. I feel the same way when I hear the term “peer-reviewed.” Well, who’s reviewing the peers?
My Mom will be happy to know that she has the goofy vote locked up…
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 06/24 at 04:16 PMI’ve not met your mother but do feel we know each other in a way that counts—perhaps you can send us a photo from Texas of you and your mother. That would be nice.
Posted by Lee Hall on from 06/24 at 06:12 PMIf I can get a digital shot, I will. If not, i may have to see if someone will scan a old school photo.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 06/24 at 06:15 PMMickey Z.’s rant against peer review and his comparison of the practice to NYPD/CIA self-investigations demonstrate his complete ignorance of the process. Peer review entails an anonymous assessment from scholars outside the author’s institutioon. By contrast, members of, say, LAPD assessment commissions are generally made public, and most importantly, these investigations are conducted under the auspices of the same institution (the LAPD), thus increasing the possibility of an inquiry outcome that caters to that same organization’s interests. The analogy also fails because peer review is practiced by institutions that generally do not have the same amount of political, social, and economic power as, say, the Defense Department, CIA, Congress, and FBI. Finally, Z. ignores those self-investigations that *HAVE* uncovered tremendous dirt—Congressional Budget Office accounts of defense spending and court martials in Vietnam on war atrocities, to name two (the latter is how we are learning about the extent of war atrocities 40 years later).
Posted by Merlin (Ludwig) on from 06/24 at 06:31 PMPeer review is not foolproof. The anonymous reviews determine whether something will be published or funded.
It is an important part of the process by which things are determined to be accurate or worth pursuing, but it is not the holy grail. In some cases, semantic hooligans stretch the meaning of peer review and it’s cynically misused to perpetuate falsehoods. The “Oregon Petition” hoaxers are a good example of that. The biggest funders of science are government bodies. Corruption and cronyism remain valid concerns. Peer review is alos still subject to groupthink, spite, the limitations of reviewers even when they’re acting in good faith, lack of access to the full study of what is being reviewed and fear of loss of prestige.
Most scientists’ primary objective, however, is to get close to objective truth. They are aware of the various problems and compensate for them. Very few of them are after power. When something long held to be true is no longer sustainable, the paradigm does shift. That has seldom been the case with government investigations, where the search to make pursuit of the objective truth the rule remains elusive.
Posted by Harry on from 06/24 at 09:11 PMHi Again, Mickey -
Just checked your vagus nerve link:
Yup, that’s “just exactly what I was gonna say” - but, uh, I was in a hurry. Yes, that’s it - I was in a hurry…Be Well, MickeyZ and Mickey’s Mom…
-joePosted by joe on from Oregon 06/24 at 09:43 PMYou are correct that peer review is not foolproof. But I did not say it was. Time constraints and practicality generally do not permit a number of more thorough practices (for example, the checking of every single footnote). Still, peer review, which usually involves at least three people (more for the physical and medical sciences), can provide the author with extra eyes to catch conspicuous factual errors and sloppy logic. In all, it results in a better scholarly product, though hardly an infallible one immune from criticism. It is hardly in the interest of the anonymous peer reviewer, who typically has no insitutional connection with the original author, to hold back criticism, despite Z.’s dime-store accusatory skepticism that suggests otherwise.
In fact, much like many institutions and practices that he criticizes, Z. shows little familiarity with the process at all—and one of your statements (a correct one) highlights this. You write, “The anonymous reviews determine whether something will be published or funded.” If a consensus, in other words, among the reviews determines that the work is of too poor quality, it is either not published or sent back to the author for revision. As you correctly point out, peer review thus does not pretend to be a full-scale excavation of the work in question. By contrast, that is exactly what CIA/NYPD/etc internal commissions purport to do as those who form them vow to “get to the bottom” of this. So Z.’s analogy of these commissions to peer review fails on this count as well. He’s comparing two practice that do not share a similar purpose. The most substantive criticism of scholarship comes after publication—in scholarly reviews, public reception, and critical debate from other scholars and readers. Subsequent revision occurs as future generations of scholars challenge or revise prior works. Again, this process has little in common with commissions, which generally are a one-time, rather than continuous, deal.
Z.’s snide mischaracterization of peer review reflects a much broader anti-intellectual undercurrent in his public pronouncements and work. Swipes against academia and higher education recur. Take, for example, a recent interview, in which he proudly stated: “I also don’t visit their doctors or take their medicines or use their deodorants, colognes, toothpastes, etc. I don’t have their accepted academic credentials… This simple reality makes me far more menacing and radical than I first appear.” Note the paranoid rhetorical style: “their” accepted academic credentials. He dismisses the academy (with its credentials and all) as but another figment in some monolithic establishment. He fails, of course, to even acknowledge any benefits of a higher education or universities’ providing protection for dissident academics (Of course, American universities can hardly claim a spotless record here historically—but a dissident will still fare better in the academy than within, say, the halls of a private corporation). He does not acknowledge that universities today are the social institutions most responsible for churning out historical interpretations at odds with the triumphalism of prior decades (interpretations that he himself has occassionally—and I suppose hypocritically—cited in his articles and books).
And like his ignorant remarks on peer review, Z.’s assessments of the state of scholarship remain either overly generalized or completely ill-informed. In another recent interview, he writes: “As for scholarly histories and theories, I’ve tried but theory often comes off as masturbation. Millions are suffering across the globe and no theory has changed that yet. I prefer practice over theory.” He erects a false zero-sum , either-or dichotomy between “theory” and “practice” that rings false on numerous counts. For one, the most abstract of theorists have been and are often also the most politically engaged. Take, for example, Edward Said, Giyatri Spivak, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, Judith Butler, Fanon, Du Bois, and the big guy himself, Marx. Second, most ideas that come from professional scholarship in the humanities or social scientists are rarely complete “theory.” More often, theory serves as an analytical tool to interrogate the very establishment institutions that Z. frequently rails against (and I would say he ought do more of if only he were competent at it). It was with Foucault, for example, that scholars first began interrogating the underlying dominant ideological paradigms and assumptions in supposedly “objective” and “value-free” western medical science. Feminist scholars like Judith Butler have analyzed how very subtle linguistic structures and patterns in diction re-perpetuate structural sexism and gender norms. Far from being “masturbation,” theory has in fact provided activists with a better understanding of the social system that they confront.
Posted by Merlin (Ludwig) on from 06/25 at 01:58 AMLudwig,
Mickey’s critiques of institutions rests on the tendency of the hierarchies they adopt to become self-perpetuating, well past the point where the original purpose is served, their tendency to progressively narrow their definition of permissible dissidence, their tendency to create an insular elite and the top dogs’ use language as the primary tool of enforcement. It’s clear that he’s gotten the best of what theory has to offer. That he’s contemptuous of a lot of it is not suprising. A lot of it is straining at gnats.
His style of writing is blunt, skeptical and wise cracking. That doesn’t mean he lacks subtlety or the capacity to appreciate it. He doesn’t use any acadamese—though I’ll wager he could—because most of his readers wouldn’t understand it. He’s cajoling, harsh, sympathetic and keeps a careful grip on his temper. There’s no affectation or side to him. The person you have described bears no relation to the Mickey Z his friends know.
The comparison he makes between peer review and self-investigation by criminal or criminally negligent bodies is defensible. Peer review is several cuts above that, but has many of the same flaws. I don’t think it’s fair to take quick a comment he makes in blog interaction and extrapolate it to cover the whole of his thinking. It is indicative of skepticism as his default response. That has strengths and weaknesses, clearly, but he can be proven wrong and admit it.
It is hackneyed to point of being stomach churning to say this, but he is allowing you the full use of his webspace for the most unsympathetic personal criticism. The very worst one could say of that is that’s he’s committed to an extreme interpretation of free expression. I urge you to reevaluate what you think of him. From what you’ve written, it’s clear to me that you share many of his concerns.
Posted by Harry on from 06/25 at 07:51 AMso, who reviews temple of setian alex when he edits disinformation.org...fellow satanists?
is the mickster a temple of setian...if so, what rank does he hold?
was he drinking buddies with anton la vey (nee levy)?
disinformicating minds want to know
Posted by evilluminatus on from 06/25 at 09:37 AMThere are many ambiguous, unspoken rules that all universities in this culture live by, yet the less salubrious ones are rarely acknowledged. An old professor I knew, nearing retirement and of sufficient stature in his field, had this to say about the role of universities:
...it is not only a refuge for the restless minds, it is also a reservation for them. It does not only protect the restless minds, it also protects the rest of the world, where they would create havoc if they were let loose. To put in another way, the fence around campus is essential because it separates two worlds that otherwise would harm each other. The fence ensures that we have relatively little direct influence on the world “out there”, but we would be foolish to complain, for our freedom to be as radical as we like is based on the fact that for at least the first 25 years, industry and the world-at-large ignore our work anyhow…
Posted by sk on from 06/25 at 01:05 PM
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