Being Rigorous
Over at SA Perspectives, Bernard Leong uses the fact that only 22% of SA articles contain proper citations as evidence that SA is not “academic”:
What [the 22% figure] means is that for every five articles a SA author writes, only one can be treated as a serious article by academic standards i.e. with proper references and footnotes. That means the impression of SA bloggers indulging in writing academic articles in this blog is exaggerated.
Here BL seems to be equating proper citations with being an academic article. Whether one agrees with that or not, let us accept it for the time being. That means, however, that he thinks there is a pervasive impression that SA indulges in writing articles with proper citations. As others have pointed out in the comments there, this is in fact not the case: any complaints I’ve read about SA have to do with the nature of its commentary, rather than whether it has citations. Whatever lies behind the accusation of SA being “academic”, it is not the number of citations. So if SA wants to defuse that reputation, it has to bring up a figure other than number of citations.
I would also like to highlight another confusion in BL’s article. He characterises analysis articles as those involving the use of numbers and figures. Anything without numbers and figures, and which is not a report or interview or something similarly journalistic, is pigeonholed as “commentary” instead of analysis. I beg to differ. Analysis can occur at two levels: one can analyse the logical structure of an argument, or one can analyse the premises of an argument. The logical structure is what legitimises the processes of inference used in the argument. The premises must be backed up by facts, or, in iffier cases, commonly accepted intuitions. Therefore analysing facts and figures is only one half of the picture of analysis. Pointing out a logical fallacy in an argument is most definitely not mere “commentary”. Logical fallacies and contradictions are walls that are just as hard as facts are, constricting our possible moves in the space of ideas.
A hard-nosed analysis of facts is completely useless unless it is complemented with a rigorous argument for why the facts imply a certain conclusion. Waving some numbers about doesn’t mean anything unless one can make a case for why they imply what one thinks they imply. Sadly, in BL’s article, there are plenty of facts, but no rigorous argument. It falls at the first hurdle when it wrongly assumes that readers are complaining that SA has too many footnotes.
Nope, I am not arguing on that context. What I am really talking about is perception. The facts and figures are merely to answer the issue whether we are truly academic. The problem is that the people who are reading are not accepting that rational and civil discourse may go either with or against the establishments.
The argument is pretty simple and it’s properly addressed in the last paragraph: it’s the way how people perceived things to be. Suppose if people comes to the blogosphere with a fixed attitude and not listening to reason (i.e. facts and figures mean that it can go for and against the establishment), then there is no way that any form of civil and rational discourse is possible.
I hope that clarifies the point.
Comment by BL — May 6, 2007 @ 5:51 pm
BL, I am not addressing your last paragraph. I am merely referring to your attempt to show that SA bloggers are not writing academic articles. I say that you are attempting to do that because you think people think SA bloggers write academic articles. After all, you write:
That means the impression of SA bloggers indulging in writing academic articles in this blog is exaggerated.
So that surely means you think there is an impression of SA bloggers “indulging in writing academic articles”. All I am arguing is that by your definition of academic articles, it is not true that such an impression exists. I have not seen anyone who thinks that SA bloggers “indulge” in writing articles with citations. In fact, this is the first time I’ve seen citations ever mentioned by any blogger or commenter in the Singapore blogosphere.
Comment by twasher — May 6, 2007 @ 9:24 pm
Twasher,
Well, we do get such feedback from the ground as I am the PR person to meet up with other bloggers from time to time. Hence, we decide to do a raw analysis on our own posts. Actually, it is a precursor to another article (written by another of my SA colleague) about perceptions and reality of the blogosphere.
In any case, I am not going to indulge in arguing this further. There is one argument which I believe that it is true: controversy drives the Singapore blogosphere.
Have a good week ahead.
Comment by BL — May 7, 2007 @ 1:05 am
Their problem is they appear to be in a state of quaintly naive denial about the possibility of forming as significant and influential an enterprise as they seem to want Singapore Angle to be without a substantive programmatic aspiration beyond being “neutral”. Also, relatedly, but also because they just are, they’re dull as.
Anyway. Just popped by. Like the blog.
Comment by Jol — August 20, 2007 @ 7:48 pm