I don’t usually cross-post, but this “comment from Larry Summers”:http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/02/16/summers_should_go_ex_harvard_dean_says/ perhaps deserves discussion among political scientists too.
Over lunch not long after Summers took over the presidency in 2001, Ellison said, Summers suggested that some funds should be moved from a sociology program to the Kennedy School, home to many economists and political scientists. ‘’President Summers asked me, didn’t I agree that, in general, economists are smarter than political scientists, and political scientists are smarter than sociologists?” Ellison said. ‘’To which I laughed nervously and didn’t reply.”
(My own take is the obvious one that Summer’s claim rests on a very specific and self-confirming bias about what ‘smartness’ involves, but I throw the broader question open to debate). Via “Josep Colomer”:http://jcolomer.blogspot.com/2008/11/normal-0-21-false-false-false.html