Urban Institute analysis of Sanders Single Payer Plan: May 2016

[QC]

47. As shocking as this might seem,

not everyone views every issue through the lens of message board squabbles.

Crazy, I know, but please bear with me.

I'm in higher ed, so I follow the new research pretty closely, since it effects--for good or ill and lately mostly for ill--the work I do.

Much new "research" is the work not of university scholars but of policy shops. The most influential are funded by Gates, the Lumina Foundation (a front for Sallie Mae, the student loan kingpin), and Google. Not surprisingly, research funded by those outfits tends to support the agendas of their benefactors, by, for example, pushing to let people use federal financial aid for non-degree credentials (more student loans are good for Sallie Mae) or advocating greater use of technology, such as putting the children of The Teeming Unwashed Masses in MOOCs. (Gates and Schmidt, of course, will continue to send their precious little ones to real schools.)

When I read new "research," I always check out the funding sources. The fact that a given donor funded a given study doesn't mean that it's bogus, but it's always good to be aware of hidden agendas and conflicts of interest, of which there are so many as to give rise to the term "policy-based evidence making."

I also encourage my students to check their sources when writing their research papers. Knowing that the Center for Consumer Choice, which sounds all noble and freedomy and everything, is actually a lobbying outfit funded by the booze, tobacco, junk food, and puppy mill interests is important.

If you're interested in how the various "centers" and "institutes" and "foundations" and other "philanthropies" have distorted public policy research in this country, you might want to take a look at David Callahan's 'The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age' and Lindsey McGoey's 'No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy."

Last, it's nice that you are so pleased to have learned about confirmation bias. You might also want to look up the Dunning-Kruger Effect.