Saturday, January 28, 2006

Industrial-Style Scholarship; and, "Richard Posner, sub silentio, on Performance Measures and Scholarly Creativity"

Judge Richard Posner writes (see Becker-Posner Blog):
Quality of research is readily measurable by grants, prizes, and above all by citations to the professor's scholarly publications, weighted by the quality of the journal in which the citations appear.
A Relatively Trivial Question:

Do citations in judicial opinions count?

A Less Trivial Question (Set of Questions):

What determines the "quality of the journal"? Common scholarly consensus?

This benchmark for the quality or standing of a journal presents problems of circularity that famously dog Frye, which attempts to measure scientific validity for forensic purposes by scientific consensus.
One unavoidable question about the Frye and Posner measures of quality: Which scientists' or legal scholars' consensus counts? For example, is the validity of astrology to be determined by referring to the opinions of astrologers? Astronomers? Amateur astronomers? Reputable astronomers? Astronomers employed by universities or observatories? Astronomers employed by reputable universities or reputable observatories? Astronomers employed by wealthy universities or large observatories? Isaac Newton? Similarly (and more seriously), for example, whose opinions about fingerprint identification count for purposes of determining the scholarly or scientific standing of a scholarly or scientific journal in which a paper about fingerprint identification is published?
Or are we to say that the scholarly standing of a journal is to be determined by the wealth and influence of the academic institution (if any) with which it is affiliated?
Or is the scholarly standing of a journal determined only by circulation figures? If so, do Slate, Legal Affairs, and, indeed, the New York Daily News have (much) greater scholarly standing than the Harvard Law Review?
There are deep problems here.
  • Is Posner's use of "quality of the journal" benchmark closely analogous to "short-term-winners' history"?
  • Question: Do you predict that the Journal of Legal Studies will be widely read -- by reputable scholars :-) -- in, say, 50 years -- viz., do you predict that it will be more widely read than some other possible benchmarks of scholarly quality from our era?

  • Another question: In some future generation will we measure the quality and originality of a scientist's or scholar's work by examining journals from the (alleged) scholar's era or from our own?
  • But: If future generations will look to the opinions of their era to measure our originality, how shall we, in our own time, assess the quality and the originality of our contemporaries' (allegedly) scientific or scholarly work; i.e., what are we to do in the meantime, while we await the verdict of history on our work and the work of our colleagues?
    Living a long life is a partial solution to this problem. But it is only a partial solution -- because what happens in the meantime matters.
  • Wednesday, January 25, 2006

    Old-Fashioned Scholarly Virtues

    Professor Dr. Lorenzo Perilli, "What Researchers Really Want," 86 Humboldt Kosmos 46 (Dec. 2005):
    Peace, time and trust. These three words sum up what research really needs. The demands of day-to-day research are just the opposite: haste, immediate results and accepting mistrustful controls. What counts is the quantity. You have to see to it that you publish as much as you can and get cited as often as possible. At the end of the day, publications and citations are simply lumped together and counted. Whether the work is of low quality or even insignificant is of no interest. ...

    Scientific progress, whether it be in the humanities or the natural sciences, often evolves from originality, from turbulences in the calm flow of routine. But originality is not recognised and accepted. It takes time for new and unusual ideas to establish themselves. If a citation index or an impact factor (i.e., the principle of "let's see how often I'm cited"), both of which are being applied more and more nowadays, had been used to assess the value of young Albert Einstein's or Kurt Goedel's work, a research proposed by either of them would never have attained a position in the academic world.

    Tuesday, January 24, 2006

    Conference: Visual and Graphic Representations of Evidence and Inference in Legal Settings

    Mark your calendar: Cardozo School of Law will host a conference on

    Graphic and Visual Representations of Evidence and Inference in Legal Settings

    Dates: January 28-29, 2007.

    Venue: Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University, 55 Fifth Avenue (5th Ave. & 12th St.), New York (Manhattan), New York

    Henry Prakken (Utrecht University) is the chair of the program committee; Thomas Cobb (University of Washington) is the deputy chair of the program committee. Peter Tillers is the conference chairman.

    Panelists:

  • Thomas D. Cobb (University of Washington School of Law)

  • Philip Dawid (U. College London)

  • Neal Feigenson (Quinnipiac University School of Law)

  • Branden Fitelson (U. of California at Berkeley)

  • Tim van Gelder (U. of Melbourne)

  • Thomas F. Gordon (FOKUS [Frauenhofer Institut fuer Offene Kommunikationssysteme]); web log

  • John Josephson (Ohio State University)

  • Marc Lauritsen (CEO, Capstone Practice Systems)

  • Richard Lempert (U. of Michigan Law School & National Science Foundation)

  • Ronald P. Loui (Washington University, St. Louis; Computer Science)

  • Jennifer Mnookin (UCLA School of Law)

  • Dale Nance (Case School of Law)

  • Andrew Palmer (U. of Melbourne, Law)(unconfirmed)

  • Priit Parmakson (Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia)

  • John L. Pollock (U. of Arizona)

  • Henry Prakken (Utrecht University & U. Groningen)

  • Chris Reed (U. of Dundee)

  • Burkhard Schafer (U. of Edinburgh, Law School)

  • David Schum (George Mason U.)

  • Richard Sherwin (New York Law School)

  • Samuel Solomon (CEO of DOAR, Inc.)

  • Peter Tillers (Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University)

  • William Twining (U. College London, Law Faculty & U. of Miami, School of Law)

  • Bart Verheij (U. Groningen, Dept. of Artificial Intelligence; ALICE Institute)

  • Vern Walker (Hofstra U. School of Law)

  • Douglas Walton (U. of Winnipeg)
  • The public is invited. There is no registration fee. (However, there will be a modest charge for any lunches or dinners that attendees elect to take at the site of the conference, at Cardozo Law School.)

    Program details will be provided later.

    Conference: Visual and Graphic Representations of Evidence and Inference in Legal Settings

    Mark your calendar: Cardozo School of Law will host a conference on

    Graphic and Visual Representations of Evidence and Inference in Legal Settings

    Dates: January 28-29, 2007.

    Venue: Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University, 55 Fifth Avenue (5th Ave. & 12th St.), New York (Manhattan), New York

    Henry Prakken (Utrecht University) is the chair of the program committee; Thomas Cobb (University of Washington) is the deputy chair of the program committee. Peter Tillers is the conference chairman.

    Panelists:

  • Thomas D. Cobb (University of Washington School of Law)

  • Philip Dawid (U. College London)

  • Neal Feigenson (Quinnipiac University School of Law)

  • Branden Fitelson (U. of California Â? Berkeley)

  • Tim van Gelder (U. of Melbourne)

  • Thomas F. Gordon (FOKUS [Frauenhofer Institut fuer Offene Kommunikationssysteme]); web log

  • John Josephson (Ohio State University)

  • Marc Lauritsen (CEO, Capstone Practice Systems)

  • Richard Lempert (U. of Michigan Law School & National Science Foundation)

  • Ronald P. Loui (Washington University, St. Louis; Computer Science)

  • Jennifer Mnookin (UCLA School of Law)

  • Dale Nance (Case School of Law)

  • Andrew Palmer (U. of Melbourne, Law)(unconfirmed)

  • Priit Parmakson (Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia)

  • John L. Pollock (U. of Arizona)

  • Henry Prakken (Utrecht University & U. Groningen)

  • Chris Reed (U. of Dundee)

  • Burkhard Schafer (U. of Edinburgh, Law School)

  • David Schum (George Mason U.)

  • Richard Sherwin (New York Law School)

  • Samuel Solomon (CEO of DOAR, Inc.)

  • Peter Tillers (Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University)

  • William Twining (U. College London, Law Faculty & U. of Miami, School of Law)

    Bart Verheij (U. Groningen, Dept. of Artificial Intelligence; ALICE Institute)

  • Vern Walker (Hofstra U. School of Law)

  • Douglas Walton (U. of Winnipeg)
  • The public is invited. There is no registration fee. (However, there will be a modest charge for any lunches or dinners that attendees elect to take at the site of the conference, at Cardozo Law School.)

    Program details will be provided later.