think tanks

[Gaze]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_tank

I've always been interested or at least curious about think tanks. I guess I've always liked the concept - focus on research and consulting with specialists or experts in a field to provide solutions to local, national, or global economic, social, or political problems. But they are very political of course.

Does anyone else have an interest in think tanks or know much about them?

 

[anarkandi]

Yeah. I'd consider working with one, since it means I can have a political approach I'm working for, and the ability do to research on my subject and have the tank help me spread my research and meet and discuss things with others who are interested in the issue and my views on it.

What kind of thinktank would you work with?

 

[Don Leo]

I've only had frustrating dealings with them.
Think tank is often synonymous with corrupt groups of stupid people who try to look intelligent by hiding behind a cool name.

Expect corruption, hope for the opposite.


For example. Out of nowhere, bossguy shows up and says that the think tank came up with some cool ideas and that a new taskforce was set in place to implement and watch over them.
-.-

I was never told there was a think tank, all the people in the think tank were of the same opinion about everything, the solutions or ideas all served to fill their own pockets.
http://ragefac.es/314


I dislike them. Especially the political ones. I once rambled on and on about how this one think tank against science managed to "prove" that there is no global warming. They took statistics, put them into graphs from 1996 to 2006 and showed that there was no correlation between CO2 and temperature. The exact same graph is on wikipedia, except it goes from like the 1900's to now and is therefore ... euh... bigger and shows that they only took a 1 decade snapshot while in the bigger picture the correlation was obvious.

Think tank = evil lobby group in my dictionary

 

[whytiger]

I worked for an apolitical think tank for a summer. It was a lot of fun and an incredible place to be. Organizations (mostly government) would give them money to solve problems for them and they would do research, collect data, and analyze it. The focus was very much on improving policy, so they had the chance to do fairly academic style research but still have an impact on real people. PM me for further details.

 

[Gaze]

Yeah. I'd consider working with one, since it means I can have a political approach I'm working for, and the ability do to research on my subject and have the tank help me spread my research and meet and discuss things with others who are interested in the issue and my views on it.

What kind of thinktank would you work with?

Probably one focused along the lines of social issues, specifically immigration or women's rights. I'm still fairly new to the whole concept. I want to research as much as I can because I know the idea of one is often quite different than working for one.

I worked for an apolitical think tank for a summer. It was a lot of fun and an incredible place to be. Organizations (mostly government) would give them money to solve problems for them and they would do research, collect data, and analyze it. The focus was very much on improving policy, so they had the chance to do fairly academic style research but still have an impact on real people. PM me for further details.

This^^^ is my ideal think tank situation. I am very much academic research inclined so I would probably want to get involved in something like this, something less political and more focus on real solutions. I love academic research and analysis, so it's right up my alley.

Don't know if I'll ever get the chance but it would great to try.

 

[muir]

Research is heavily dependant on funding, so research might or might not get done depending on the bias of the funder

Publication is also dependant on publishers so the bias of a publisher might decide whether or not a piece of research gets published

The bias of a think tank is going to depend on who set it up and who funds it

That bias will then decide what research is carried out and what research is then made public

So i guess each think tank should be assessed on its own individual merits. Who set it up? Who is funding it? What is their agenda?

The extent of the think tanks neutrality is basically going to decide the fairness of its results

Many think tanks are fronts for corporate interests and exist to further the interests of those bodies

 

[whytiger]

Research is heavily dependant on funding, so research might or might not get done depending on the bias of the funder

It can be hard to get some things funded but usually things are funded because the funder has a need for this information. There's something wrong with their policies, and they want to fix it.

Publication is also dependant on publishers so the bias of a publisher might decide whether or not a piece of research gets published

With the Internet, this is less important. Things are often put into databases and titled as Technical Reports. Either way, they get out there.

The bias of a think tank is going to depend on who set it up and who funds it

That bias will then decide what research is carried out and what research is then made public

So i guess each think tank should be assessed on its own individual merits. Who set it up? Who is funding it? What is their agenda?

The extent of the think tanks neutrality is basically going to decide the fairness of its results

Many think tanks are fronts for corporate interests and exist to further the interests of those bodies

I have to agree with this. Many "think tanks" are really disinterested in doing unbiased research. There are something like 2000 think tanks. The one I worked leaned toward the management consulting side of policy research. The emphasis was on offering both analysis and practical solutions.

 

[technics]

There's this argument in the field that think tanks have largely benefited the right. Think about it, there's truth to it. And if you follow that line of thought long enough you'll find an explanation, I think.

 

[manatee]

since the fact that approaching social sciences like you would the natural ones and drawing conclusions based on empiricism even though you (in the vast majority of cases) can't conduct experiments in laboratory environments where only the variable you're interested in is manipulated and all data therefore is inherently flawed means that in this area statistics really do tell us nothing but can say everything, most think tanks seem to me to be epistemologically confused propagandists. granted, non-partisan ones might be more random as regards who benefits from their misrepresentations.