Wonks vs. Nerds

Back in January, Drew Conway, Thomas Zeitzoff, and I co-wrote a response to a high-profile study on ecologies of conflict. Our primary complaint wasn’t that quantitative study per se was wrong—after all, Thomas and Drew are primarily quantitative in their work—but that it requires a lot of context and understanding to give the numbers meaning beyond themselves.

Naturally, Andrew Exum joined the fray, calling the three of us a gang of assassins and generally going on about his opinions of the entire field of quantitative study. He eventually distilled his thoughts on the matter into a “manifesto,” which, being outright skeptical of quant studies’ value, generated severe angst in the academic blogosphere (our friend Drew wrote an engaging response).

Exum shot back by saying he was only kidding, and the post was meant to be flippant. Which is fine—he certainly has the right to write satire (though I hope he leaves a few more indicators he’s being silly next time). But what I found most interesting in all the fallout from this was a bloggingheads thingy between Dan Drezner—whose blog I don’t read (boring!) but whose professional work I enjoy—and Heather Hurlburt, the executive director of the National Security Network. They have a lengthy section where they discuss, essentially, the wonks vs. nerds debate:

I’m only a little shocked to see Drezner so willingly admitting the faults of academia—after all, he has tenure up at Tufts and doesn’t have to face reprisals from badmouthing any potential selection committee. But what was so tellingly absent from this discussion were the failures of the policy community. Both have serious issues: despite Hurlburt’s insistence policy work is grounded in the real world, any cursory glance at the kinds of work we discuss on here is ample evidence that just in our teeny, tiny world of Central Asia (and sometimes the Caucasus!) the actual real world very seldom factors into the analysis.

Indeed, I’d feel comfortable placing academia and policy in contrast merely for how each community chooses to ignore or simplify reality: academia retreats into theories and numbers, while policy retreats into ideologies and wish-fulfillment (and both struggle with serious bias issues and stereotypes).

So while it’s nice to see Drez (can I call him that?) admitting his field has it’s issues—it does!—I was surprised to see Hurlburt so unwilling to admit her own field’s issues as well. The reality is, reality is more complex than either field really gets comfortable admitting in papers and journals and books. And the reality is, fluently discussing anything in the real world is going to require understanding both worlds, since at the end of the day they focus on different things. And they kind of sorts of said that. I just wish they’d made that point clearer.