A Peek Inside the Conservative Research Factory

I have been doing think tank work long enough (12 years) to see many of the same scenes play out over and over again. A common one runs roughly as follows:

1.  Ostensibly conservative think tank releases study with findings that support ostensibly conservative position on Issue X.

2.  Critics say, “What did you think they were going to say? They’re conservatives.”

3.  Study author says, “Rather than throwing labels around, why don’t we debate the merits of the study?”

4.  No such debate takes place, as media outlets have moved on to a story about a confused but plucky family of ducks that has taken up residence in a local public pool.

5.  Study author finds a quiet corner in a poorly-lit bar, sips vodka tonics, shakes his fist and shouts frustrated imprecations at no one in particular.

As one who has played the role of the frustrated, vodka-drinking study author many times, let me tell you a few reasons why this predictable sequence of events frustrates me so.

First of all, there’s the whole concept of the “conservative think tank.” AT WPRI, we don’t describe ourselves as a conservative think tank. We describe ourselves as a free market think tank. “Free market” is a much more restrictive qualifier than “conservative.” That’s because “conservative” has many meanings. There are fiscal conservatives who are social liberals. There are domestic policy conservatives who are foreign policy liberals (the latter of whom used to be the foreign policy conservatives). There are single-issue conservatives. There are cultural conservatives. There are Burkean conservatives. There are small-government conservatives. There are Christian conservatives. There are, oxymoronically, Progressive Conservatives. (They are found almost exclusively in Canada, however, similar to back bacon and hockey fans.) In short, saying that WPRI is a “conservative think tank,” in addition to being inaccurate, doesn’t tell you much. It’s one of the reasons we eschew the label.

As noted, however, we do call ourselves a free market think tank. Adopting that label is probably more trouble than it’s worth—much of what we write has no real “free market” bent—but as long as we’ve invited the trouble ourselves, let me note a couple of important points.

First, by calling ourselves a “free market think tank,” we have announced our predispositions up front (unlike some local newspapers I could mention). We are telling you this: “We have a basic intellectual and philosophical orientation. The shorthand for it is ‘free market.’ If you’re looking for some other perspective—‘green,’ let’s say, or progressive, or vegan, or Sikh, or pacifist, or post-modern, or Belgian, or feminist—your time would be better spent elsewhere.” We respect you enough to tell you what our philosophical starting point is.

For that honesty, though, we are beaten over the head. (See #2 in the list up above.) And the reason we are beaten over the head, I think, is that we are assumed to make sure that our studies “come out right.” In other words, no matter what the data might show, we are thought to massage the numbers, ignore inconvenient facts, and interpret all empirical evidence in light of our free-market predispositions, even if those predispositions do not make the best sense of the data. And we are assumed to do all of this, of course, because that is what we must do to keep our ideological paymasters happy.

This is wrong on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. But let me tell you a bit about my own background and experience. I spent six highly unpleasant years in Ann Arbor, Michigan earning a doctorate in political science. If I had simply wanted to be a prostitute, there were much quicker, easier, and more enjoyable ways of going about it. Furthermore, having lost most of my 20s (and much of the feeling in my fingers and toes) to the quest for a serious credential from a serious school, I’m not about to surrender my intellectual credibility through slavish fealty to some abstract concept (“the free market”). Finally, intellectual dishonesty is—what’s the word I’m looking for here?—oh yeah: dishonest. That makes it inconsistent with the way I try to live my life.

In short, I’ve got far too much at stake, personally and professionally, to say to WPRI or to anyone else, “Just tell me what you need me to find, and I’ll find it for you, the truth be damned.”

Well, bully for you, you might say; but there’s no escaping the fact that WPRI studies often do “come out right”—that is, they often do support a free-market point of view, and they never (at least no examples spring to mind) support big government solutions. So, what gives?

In answer to that question, imagine that you have no ideological predispositions at all. In that case, you might think to yourself, “Okay, maybe conservatives are right one-third of the time, liberals are right one-third of the time, and people like me—people without predispositions, who support some liberal ideas and some conservative ideas—are right one-third of the time.” (Reminder: I’m using the term “conservative” advisedly here, despite its shortcomings.) By this math, if WPRI chose study topics at random, one would expect our studies to “come out right” one-third of the time, and to come out at least partially right another one-third of the time. So, that our studies “come out right” most of the time shouldn’t be terribly surprising.

But forget the made-up math. The fallacy here is that we choose our study topics at random. (I’m speaking only for myself here, but I would be surprised to learn that other WPRI researchers were much different.) My own process is fairly simple. First, I look for issues that interest me personally. Beyond that, I look for fat targets and low-hanging fruit. I’m not talking about studies that are easy to conduct; I’m talking about study topics on which I know that existing, extensive data and research support a “free market” perspective.

Take, for example, a study I wrote for WPRI on concealed weapons. By the time the legislature and governor were considering concealed-carry legislation in Wisconsin, we had seen the same debate play out in roughly 40 other states that had passed concealed weapons laws. We had already seen the results in those 40 states as well: no increase in violence or crime, and begrudging admissions by law enforcement agencies that they had been wrong in their predictions of disaster. (If you are interested, you can find the study here.)

And yet, the debate in Wisconsin was playing out (on the anti-gun side, anyway) as if we had no real-world experience on which to draw. I knew that we did, and I knew what that experience was. That is why this particular study “came out right”—not because I slanted the piece, but because I chose a topic on which no slanting was required. (Translation: I picked a big, fat target.)

Many of my studies follow the same basic template: I go looking for issues about which I am passionate, and on which I know that existing data and respected research support a free market viewpoint. I then write about those issues in a Wisconsin-specific context. To the outsider, it might appear as if the studies must have been “massaged” to fit a pre-determined conclusion. The truth, however—like it or not—is that much of the time we free-market types are simply right.