"Schrödinger's causal inference" (n):

The practice of making causal claims or interpretations within a scientific article - typically in the title, abstract, implications, or conclusion - while simultaneously warning that the study design is unsuitable for causal inference.

'Instead, what you get is a piece making the various more or less bovine noises of studious grey-lady impartiality, with the labor of anything resembling “appraisal” surgically excised.'

'The great Gawker headline summed it all up best: “Conservative Scholar’s Investigation Says Bowdoin College is Awesome,” it read, which I can say was much appreciated in the hallways of the college back then.'

'(Full disclosure: I was, in my full-throttle commitment to destroying those heralded civilizational virtues, also chair of the Program in Gay and Lesbian Studies for a while there.)'

'The author refers to the group as “conservative-leaning,” which, ok. I guess you could say Latvia was a little antisemitic-leaning during the war.'

'And so, after consulting with friends a little more media-seasoned than I, and exchanging some emails with the reporter laying out what I was and wasn’t interested in speaking about, I agreed to an interview. I did this because, in ways you might think I’d have outgrown by now, I’m a fucking idiot'

'Not by, like, trying to pay rent or having an insurance claim denied—no, no, it was probably the Foucault you read in 2003.'

'“People read Foucault,” the redoubtable David Brooks once wrote, in an actual column that I’ve all but committed to memory, “and develop an alienated view of the world.” God, did I love this. An “alienated view of the world”!'

'It gives me no joy to admit that there are certain kinds of professors who love little more than seeing their names in the paper. It’s not great, but there it is... But I like to think even they would’ve been able to spot the coiled wires and rusty springs of this particular trap.'

Into the Mystic