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Friday, September 22, 2023

Toxic Poli Sci; Toxic Sociology

Blog readers may recall our earlier post about a "toxic" website known as Economics Job Market Rumors (EJMR).* The ostensible point of EJMR is (was) what the title suggests: provide an informal source of information about the academic labor market for economists. But, as we noted, postings are anonymous and may contain racist or misogynistic statements. Authors of an NBER working paper were able to "crack" the sources of about two-thirds of the postings and attribute them to various universities. They did not disclose particular identities.

The disclosure sparked news media attention and demands that the American Economic Association (AEA) - which has no connection to the website and no authority to take it down - do something. 

Meanwhile, similar websites were set up for political science and sociology - see the image above - by the same source. Presumably, there will also be complaints that someone in those fields should do something although, again, it's not clear what that might be in practice.  

When you look at these websites, there are lengthy rules that forbid bad behavior which presumably reassure advertisers. If you look at the images above, you will see ads by World of Work (an organization of human resource professionals) and Office Depot. It is likely that such advertisers would not want to be associated with toxic websites. Below is an image we showed for EJMR in our earlier post, featuring an ad from the Wallis theater which is probably totally unaware of where its ad is going.


The question about the websites has arisen again because more sleuthing appears to have found the identity of someone involved in the founding of EJMR. However, that person indicates his role was early in the creation of EJMR and involved the IT aspects. He claims to have no continuing relationship. There is a lengthy piece about all of this in Inside Higher Ed at:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/2023/09/21/pressure-controversial-online-economics-forum-continues.

It would seem as though the route to "doing something" would go through the advertisers rather than professional associations such as the AEA.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/07/toxic-econ.html.

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