Brendan Nyhan

From my Upshot column:

In 2013, the federal government spent over $30 billion to support basic scientific research. These funds help create knowledge and stimulate greater productivity and commercial activity, but could we get an even better return on our investment?

The problem is that the research conducted using federal funds is driven — and distorted — by the academic publishing model. The intense competition for space in top journals creates strong pressures for novel, statistically significant effects. As a result, studies that do not turn out as planned or find no evidence of effects claimed in previous research often go unpublished, even though their findings can be important and informative.

From my new Upshot column:

Dealing with health care needs at the end of life is a difficult but unavoidable issue in an aging society with rising health care costs like ours. After a failed attempt to deal with the issue as part of the Affordable Care Act, it may again be returning to the policy agenda. Can we avoid another catastrophic bout of misinformation?

The debate over end-of-life planning has largely been dormant since 2009, when the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s false claim that President Obama’s health care plan included a “death panel” spelled the end of a proposal for Medicare to reimburse doctors for voluntary end-of-life consultations with patients. The Obama administration briefly issued and then withdrew a regulation that would have added end-of-life consultation coverage to Medicare in early 2011, but is likely to revisit the issue after receiving a recommendation from an influential American Medical Association panel.

Unfortunately, the lesson from the “death panel” controversy is that this issue is vulnerable to demagoguery if it becomes linked to people’s partisanship or feelings about controversial political figures and issues.

From my new Upshot column:

Labor Day signals the beginning of the fall campaign for both political candidates and the consultants whom they pay hundreds of millions of dollars to help them win in November. Will these hired guns be held accountable for their performance on Election Day?

The experience of John McLaughlin, the pollster for the former House majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, suggests that the consequences of consultant failure are often minimal. As the Washington Post’s Ben Terris noted, Mr. McLaughlin was “historically wrong” about Mr. Cantor’s defeat in a June primary, missing the final margin by approximately 45 percentage points, but hasn’t lost any clients as a result.

A closer look at the research on political consultants suggests that Mr. McLaughlin’s experience is typical. Firm reputations and client relationships are highly consistent over time and show little responsiveness to results, particularly in terms of the share of the vote that a client receives, a much more informative metric than wins and losses.

From my new Upshot column:

Misinformation about politics may often seem silly — the immigration bill will give out free cars! — but the consequences of false beliefs in public health can be deadly.

In the developed world, myths about the risks of vaccines have enabled the resurgence of communicable diseases like measles and pertussis. And in developing countries, false beliefs have hindered efforts to fight H.I.V./AIDS and eradicate polio in countries like Nigeria and Pakistan.

The latest example of the dangers of health misinformation comes from Western Africa, where the response to an Ebola outbreak in four countries has been hampered by conspiracy theories about its causes and phony rumors about how to treat it. False beliefs may not be the biggest obstacle to containing the Ebola outbreak, but they make an awful situation worse.

From my new Upshot column:

Before Thursday, President Barack Obama had issued only a brief written statement about the events in Ferguson, Mo., a St. Louis suburb that erupted in protests after Saturday’s killing of an unarmed black youth, Michael Brown, by a police officer.

But he soon came under pressure to address events there more forcefully, prompting him to interrupt his vacation in order to make a public statement today.

In the modern era, we expect presidents to weigh in on almost every major news story – an impulse that reflects our desire for them to appear to be in control of events…

But will the president’s involvement actually have a positive effect?

From my new Upshot column:

With hopes fading of passing an immigration reform bill, President Obama is reportedly contemplating bypassing Congress and making sweeping changes to immigration policy before the midterm elections.

Many analysts think the executive action under consideration and its political fallout could, as Ronald Brownstein put it in The National Journal, “define both the Democratic and Republican parties for the burgeoning Hispanic population.”

But what isn’t clear is why Mr. Obama would engage in such a move before the election. Of course, Mr. Obama faces short-term pressures to address the surge in migrant children being detained at the border, but news media reports suggest that the policy changes under consideration would be far broader, potentially providing legal status to many of the nation’s undocumented immigrants.

Such a broad executive action could provoke a backlash in the midterm elections that might be avoided with a move just a few months later.

From my new Upshot column:

A useful definition of a wedge issue is one that unifies a party while splitting the opposition.

By that definition, Republican calls to impeach President Obama look like a wedge issue — in favor of Democrats. As a recent CNN poll shows, 65 percent of Americans oppose impeaching Obama, including 86 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of independents and even 42 percent of Republicans.

Given those numbers, no one should be surprised that Democrats are playing up the possibility of impeachment.

From my new Upshot column:

How much do members of the opposite party dislike whoever happens to be president? A lot, and the feeling seems to be getting stronger.

A Quinnipiac University poll found that Barack Obama was the most frequent choice of Americans who were asked to name the worst president since World War II (33 percent compared with 28 percent who named George W. Bush). As a measure of people’s considered beliefs about presidential quality, the question is likely to overrepresent more recent presidents. But this sort of poll is instructive about the extent of the polarization among the public – in particular, about the visceral hostility to the president that has become routine among opposition partisans.

From my new Upshot column:

One of the most common criticisms of presidents – especially struggling ones during their second term – is that they have lost control of events.

This charge, which has been leveled at chief executives such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, has become a mantra lately in coverage of President Obama, who faces a stalled legislative agenda and crises in Ukraine, Gaza and at the border with Mexico.

What happened? One frequent explanation from pundits and journalists is that Mr. Obama has “little control” and is instead being “driven” or “buffeted” by events.

This notion pervades commentary and debate on the presidency.

From my new Upshot column:

When an unpopular president faces a difficult midterm election, candidates from his party tend to avoid him and try to focus on local issues, but the nationalization of politics has made this strategy increasingly difficult. Instead, some red-state Democrats are going out of their way to talk about President Obama more than other Senate candidates from their party — and not always in a good way.