A couple of weeks ago (a gazillion years in COVID time, I know), former intellectual Niall Ferguson published a piece in the Sunday Times, asserting that the Chinese government had allowed travel from Hubei province for international destinations after banning such trips to destinations within China, adding,
As far as I can tell from the available records, however, regular direct flights from Wuhan continued to run to London, Paris, Rome, New York and San Francisco throughout January and in some cases into February.
I’m not going to bother linking to the column itself–Murdoch clicks, and it’s behind a paywall; I’ll connect this instead to the blog post from which I got the quote and information above, written by Daniel A. Bell, dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University, and a professor at Tsinghua U. (sometimes called China’s MIT, though I suspect the nicknaming may go the other direction soon). As in, not a dummy, based in China, and with some expert ability to navigate knowledge in that setting. (H/t James Fallows for the link to the post, btw.)
Bell was, he wrote, “surprised by the allegation,” especially given the speed with which Ferguson’s assertion was picked up in the US and Canada by ready-to-otherize-China folks. So he asked Ferguson if he was sure. Ferguson replied:
“I can assure you I wouldn’t write a sentence like that if I had not researched it rather thoroughly.” To support his claim, he sent me several pieces of evidence.
The evidence was, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn, bullshit–links to articles that did not support the incendiary claim in Ferguson’s article.
Ferguson also sent Bell flight records that the former historian of 19th century British banking believed confirmed that 31 flights had in fact left Wuhan for Europe after the domestic travel ban kicked in on January 23.
Did those records actually show that? Here’s Bell:
I checked all the flights listed on the spreadsheet Professor Ferguson sent me. It turns out that none of the flights that supposedly left from Wuhan after 11:26 am on Jan. 23rd actually left from Wuhan. The flights listed as red on Ferguson’s spreadsheet were cancelled. The six listed as black left from Guangzhou and in normal times would do a stopover in Wuhan on the way to SFO but the stopover was cancelled. The app shows the actual flight paths of those flights as direct from Guangzhou, bypassing Wuhan.
Bell goes on, with all the receipts that show that Ferguson, most kindly, simply did not understand the records he was using.
Bell sent his results to Ferguson, by the way. With this result:
Ferguson continues to support his allegation even after I pointed out that the evidence he provided does not support it. That’s worrisome. Conspiracy theorizing of this sort deflects attention from what actually went wrong. And it fuels the demonization of the Chinese political system at the same time we need collaboration between China and the rest of the world to deal with an urgent global pandemic.
In this latest effusion, the consequences of those career choices are on display: what is either a lazy mistake or the willingness to trade in too-good-to-check conspiracy theories (leavened with a measure of anti-Chinese bigotry, perhaps) produced a column based on an elementary error in reading a slightly technical source, combined with a willful misreading of a couple of news stories.
This is what passes for the cream of conservative intellectual life these days.
TL:DR Niall Ferguson–and the prominence given to him by credulous editors–is one of the reasons we can’t have nice things. There are others who are more consequential, more harmful in their reckless disregard of evidence, and the obligation not to spew bullshit.
Mistakes are one thing–I’ve made plenty and will make more. It’s the contempt for the idea of even trying to get it right, to allow reality to confound your desired narrative that makes the contemporary radical right such an existential threat.
Fuck it. I’m tired. Whacking those who are wrong on the internet is an endless task–by design: the whole enterprise of illiberal authoritarianism turns on wearing out the opposition, as much as overtly crushing it. But still–this is the kind of chickenshit up with which no civilized society should have to put.
Open thread.
Francisco de Goya, The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters, 1799.
The Senate Select Committee On Intelligence Has Validated the Intelligence Communities Sources, Methods, and Findings That Russia Interfered In the 2016 Election To Help Elect Trump President
E.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but do you have evidence Ferguson was at one time a passably honest intellectual? I read the first chapter of an earlier, pretend-scholarly book of his and immediately recognized a fraud. But maybe I didn’t go back far enough.
japa21
Too long for a tag line, but it works for so many people.
TomatoQueen
OTOH as well as OT: we are permitted to make the Meatballs:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/20/us/ikea-meatball-recipe-trnd/
Baud
That’s conservativism in a nutshell. They hide behind everyone else’s imperfections to let their freak fly.
They take “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” to mean they are accountable to no one beneath them in the social hierarchy (which all liberals are).
cokane
sleep is a better translation than dream of sueño in this context. minor quibble obviously
Tom Levenson
@E.: His first book, on the Rothschilds, is said by people I trust to be competent. That’s all I got.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I’ll just say this: there’s nothing inherently wrong w/ alternate/counterfactual history as long as you can back it up with good reasoning/evidence. It can be interesting academic exercise as well as make for some good novels.
I’m sure going based on Niall Ferguson’s body of work, he doesn’t tend to do tha
ETA: Conservatives/RWNJ’s have been claiming that liberals and the media called Trump racist and xenophobic for the travel ban (which was too little too late anyway) on China when it was enacted. I wasn’t paying attention at the time to that specifically. Is any of that true?
Tom Levenson
@cokane: You’re right, and I’ve changed it accordingly. Thanks!
Brachiator
This reminds me of Naomi Wolf, who similarly did not understand the records she was using, leading her to make serious errors regarding the application of capital punishment in the UK for supposed sexual offenses.
But the political pundits and the publishers and others behind them, don’t fear rejection or retribution, and so remain committed to their noxious lies.
Another Scott
Keep fighting the good fight, Tom. It’s a never-ending battle.
In the nobody-could-have-predicted file – Reuters:
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Tom Levenson
re Goku at no. 7: I believe an issue was that he banned Chinese citizens and not those with other documents from coming this way.
As if the virus checks passports before replicating…
kindness
It’s the whole party really. My whole extended family were New England/NY Republicans. Fiscal conservatives and social liberals. Those people don’t exist in the Republican Party any longer. Those people either left the party (like much of my family did), were pushed out or they ate the insane pill and now are right wing nut jobs. It’s the MSM which refuses to admit it.
khead
Yeah, this. But I’m still not quite sure how to deal with it without the bare minimum of 218-60-1-5.
divF
I love Goya’s etchings. In my student days, I used to have a print of The Sleep of Reason hanging in my workspace as I moved from place to place, along with prints of his other works.
Ohio Mom
TomatoQueen: But what about the lingonberry jelly?
I’m not a meatball person but I do drive up to my local IKEA sometimes for the gravlax and the apple cake.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Tom Levenson:
Oh okay. Yeah, that’s bullshit then. He should’ve banned all flights out of China sooner, then SK, then Italy/Europe
JPL
@TomatoQueen: Thank you! After reading Tom’s post, I was thinking about ways that we could combat fake news effectively. I got pretty discouraged, and then I saw your link.. I’ll probably never make them, but it brightened my mood.
schrodingers_cat
Let me join in the Niall Ferguson hate. He is full of shit. He is an apologist for the British Empire. His “work” on deficits after Obama took office for the Peterson foundation was intellectually dishonest.
But we colonials (Americans and Indians too) are in thrall of the British accent and willing to swallow anything when said in the clipped tones of received pronunciation.
Just Chuck
Truth is just whatever is on your Facebook feed.
Cheryl Rofer
There’s a lot of this around.
I cite the Stanford “studies” of immunity in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, for which they have not made their methods clear and are not responding to their critics, who are many.
One of the co-authors is a venture capitalist, with no experience in statistics or epidemiology. The LA study is available only in the form of a press release.
I saw a very patient thread on Twitter from a real statistician, who was hoping to get a reply from the authors. Seems to me we should just ignore what they’ve done and anything they may do in the future.
Ohio Mom
Another Scott: Seven cases so far. If we did contact tracing, the number would no doubt be higher.
I hope one day there is a historical marker: On this site on Tuesday, April 7, 2020, Wisconsin voters risked their lives, etc.
Snarki, child of Loki
Yeah, well just wait until the Chinese find out that the COVID-19 virus is a US bioweapon that Trump approved for use on China, not realizing how widely it spread.
Trump, and his inner circle aren’t taking precautions, seem to have zero worries about catching it. They’ve got the vaccine.
And accidentally tweeting out “cofefe” during a classified briefing? It was a “covid” typo + send to twit feed.
All part of “Trump: he’s not only worse than you think, he’s worse than you CAN think”.
WaterGirl
@japa21: Yeah, I don’t think I could sneak that one past John. He is adamant that they can’t be too long. It’s a good one, though.
Spanky
Huh! Here I thought you were going to use despicable Marc Thiessen’s latest screed in the WaPo as more puke funnel evidence.
(Actual headline to the opinion piece.)
Delk
Doubling down is the worst rebuttal.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Snarki, child of Loki:
This is satire, right?
danielx
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
So hard to tell these days…
jimmirayybob
I looked into Ferguson a while back in preparation for buying a book. I thought that he smelled of a polemicist and not the historian that I would trust. Looks like the extra research effort is panning out.
Achrachno
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): “Is any of that true?”
Well, I call him a racist xenophobe whenever I have to talk about him. Why should I shade the blatantly obvious? He’s been that way his whole life. But I’m not part of the media or anything so no one listens to me.
opiejeanne
@TomatoQueen: I like their meatballs and it’s great that we are allowed to make them, but I use a recipe that blows my socks off.
Fabio’s Meatballs: https://youtu.be/gzQXD6sMoNM
dmsilev
Huh, and here I was guessing from the title that this was going to be about Richard Epstein, eminent law professor and now practitioner of history-rewriting due to his early and inconvenient prediction that the US would suffer a total of five hundred deaths from Coronavirus.
jimmirayybob
But…..but….Trump said the virus is “tough and smart.” So maybe……../
ThresherK
@kindness:
“Mistah we could use a man like Sherry Boehlert again!”
jimmirayybob
@Snarki, child of Loki:
Cofefe is what they’d scrawled in crayon for his morning security briefing picture book. So really, he was spot on.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Anyone was a Thatcherite and hasn’t done an apology tour can fuck right off. Then and now.
WaterGirl
@jimmirayybob:
Your first comment on Balloon Juice, or your first comment after changing your name/nym or email address, has to be manually approved.
Until that first comment is approved, everything goes into moderation and doesn’t show up until that first one is released.
You should be good to go now. Welcome!
schrodingers_cat
MAGA Twitter: Immigrants are slave labor. How long before Rose Twitter joins in?
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Look, if Trump does something, racism is a pretty good guess as to why. The others are weird and unpleasant perviness or personal profit. Also on the board – any combination of the above.
Redshift
Krugman was recently driven to repeat his observation about “academic” conservatism – “can’t they find any better hacks?”
jimmiraybob
@WaterGirl:
Thanks for the welcome but I’m afraid it’s due to fat fingers and a failing keyboard. I’ve been offering snark here since the great Fountain, AZ Garbage Contract Wars of aught something. Maybe earlier.
I’ve corrected
mrmoshpotato
@opiejeanne: Hahaha
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: It’s now up to 19.
Amir Khalid
I have a similar opinion of Peter Hitchens’ stand on Covid-19. If your time is too valuable to waste on 10 minutes of his nonsense, just look for my comment.
schrodingers_cat
@Amir Khalid: Is he related to Christopher Hitchens?
Fair Economist
The now chronically optimistic IHME model released today for Georgia:
Methinks Governor Kemp is creating quite the problem.
Adam L Silverman
@opiejeanne:
It’s the long blonde hair that makes them special.
Redshift
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
No, it’s been thoroughly debunked. I mean, I’m sure plenty of random liberals called it racist, but their claims that he bravely fought off everyone who tried to stop it are BS. Some Dems thought it would be ineffective, and there was a hearing where Dems (appropriately) asked pointed questions about how it would be implemented, but there was no real pushback.
.
Amir Khalid
@TomatoQueen:
I understand the meatballs at Malaysian IKEAs are made to a halal, pork-free recipe.
Amir Khalid
@schrodingers_cat:
Brother.
Tom Levenson
@Adam L Silverman: very well done, mon sembable, mon frere.
schrodingers_cat
@Amir Khalid: They do look similar, that’s why I asked.
japa21
@Adam L Silverman: Of course the standard RWNJ response to that is, “Only 19? I thought this was some horrible virus that would kill everybody.”
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Peter is Christopher’s younger brother.
Adam L Silverman
@japa21: 19 so far.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: @Adam L Silverman: We are a very competitive state.
opiejeanne
@mrmoshpotato: Did I say something funny?
Oh, you think I’m talking about the mode, don’t you. :-P
TomatoQueen
@Ohio Mom: IKEA are control freaks, so the lingonberry jam won’t come out till next year.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: I was reading not quite in order and decided I didn’t need to know how you knew what Fabio’s meatballs look like.
Patricia Kayden
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: Oh God, you guys do know that there are other guys named Fabio?
Feathers
I would like to point out that Harvard Business School voted him off the island fairly quickly and quietly, after the Obama shit started up. No announcement, he just dropped the appointment off his list of affiliations.
I audited his Harvard world history since 1630 class (online). Thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot. He had a recommended novel for each lecture. Read quite a few good books I wouldn’t have otherwise, for example, Joseph Roth’s Radetsky March. Star professors do often show a very different face in the classroom and on the TV news shows. His contrarian takes work better as the last 5-10 minutes of an hour lecture. He struck me as a man addicted to being clever and who never got over his crush on Margaret Thatcher.
West of the Rockies
Is Martin still doing his Covid19 data dumps? Anyone know when they tend to show up?
Omnes Omnibus
I must necessarily find one of these forgivable.
WaterGirl
@jimmiraybob: Well, dammit! When I don’t say “welcome” people say we should be more welcoming. When I do say “welcome” then invariably the person has been here for a million years and either changed a nym or an email address or just has a new device.
So maybe I should just say “fuck you”? In the nicest possible way. :-)
WaterGirl
@Patricia Kayden: I thought maybe I had finally run out of tears this week, but nope, apparently not. That’s heartbreaking.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: Just say it in the standard way.
Omnes Omnibus
It would be irresponsible not to.
E.
@Feathers: Interesting. I may check it out. But I hate him so much already I probably won’t make a fair judgment.
catclub
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): he also only banned them after the US major airlines had already cancelled their flights. so chicken shit timing.
catclub
@jimmirayybob: and about two years early
Adam L Silverman
@opiejeanne: I know of no such thing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl:
Just ask yourself, WWJGCD.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Trip over at least two different pets, drop the mustard, have his overalls slide off while falling, land funny and hurt something, and then the mop falls on him.
That’s what John G Cole would do.
jimmiraybob
@WaterGirl:
While I was happy to be embraced by “welcome” I would also get a laurel and hardy “fuck you.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: That sounds like too much work.*
*I would make a poor acolyte.
Jay
Clicks for Shelter Meals for Pets,
and you don’t have to see much of an ad,
but the ad money ( per clic) goes towards feeding shelter animals.
https://theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/clicktogive/ars/home
jimmiraybob
@catclub: You’re ruling out time travel? The deep state has its ways. Que up sinister music.
Jay
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Perhaps he would say:
Fuck you, you fucking fuck!
Juju
@opiejeanne: I don’t think I’d really want to eat Fabio’s meatballs…
bjacques
All these comments and no mention of his Somalian (really Kenyan) missus Ayaan Hirsi Ali who immigrated to the Netherlands, and became a Labor Party politician, then, sensing shifts in the political winds, joined in on the disgraceful Muslim- and immigrant-bashing here post-9/11 and proceeding to leave a trail of political destruction in her wake before decamping to America.
she really was a piece of work. Ferguson dumped his wife for her. They deserve each other.
I haven’t heard from him since Sadly, No! used to give regular kickings to him and Victor David Tiberius Drusus Nero Hansen.
Procopius
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m sorry, but there is no such thing as “alternate/counterfactual history.” There is such a thing as alternate/counterfactual historical fiction. Newt Gingrich did some, fantasizing about what might have happened if the Confederacy had “won” the Civil War. I believe the thesis was that the traitors prevailed at Gettysburg and marched on to seize Washington, D.C. I recall Len Deighton wrote one called SS-GB, based on the idea that Nazi Germany successfully invaded and conquered Great Britain. The trouble is once you change one outcome, you can’t really tell what other outcomes depended on that and were changed in ways you don’t know. In the case of Niall Ferguson, I remember reading a quote from him concerning a computer game based on World War II. He said something to the effect that by trying different values for the parameters we could see how the world would have been shaped. Well, no. He did not seem to understand that he was dealing with a game, not a serious attempt to simulate the real world. He did not seem to understand that the default parameters were not based on rigorous analysis of the real world, they were assumptions chosen to make an interesting game. He’s gone downhill from there.
Wesley Sandel
Damn I wish I could get a sinecure at one of those right-wing stink tanks. I could churn out complete bullshit all day long, one article after another. No research wanted or allowed.
Michael
@TomatoQueen: Wait, soy sauce is Swedish?