A confederacy of dunces
November 6, 2009 | industry, industry critics, research | Comments (0)Larry Meyers takes on the sociology study the criticizes payday lenders:
Regular readers of my column should recognize the name of Uber-Doofus Dr. Stephen Graves. I eviscerated his clumsy attack on payday lenders months ago. Now, he is back for an encore along with two asylum escapees from GWU in a brand new working paper: “Does Fringe Banking Exacerbate Neighborhood Crime Rates? Social Disorganization and the Ecology of Payday Lending”, which I have lovingly subtitled, “3 Buffoons in the Land of Make-Believe”.
The paper’s credibility should be immediately suspect for several reasons beyond Graves’ involvement. A scan of sources quoted for data within the paper would yield a list of biased papers with poor methodology riddled with sampling bias. Out of the numerous truly independent, non-biased, methodologically sound studies available, not a single one was utilized in the paper. The reason for avoiding these sources is clear: all of the real studies done contradict the biased and predetermined ideological positioning of this paper’s authors.
And make no mistake — Graves has already proven himself to be a clueless ideologue. That none of the truly great studies were cited only proves the point further.
Yes, and studies from ideologues should be discredited.
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