The pinhead filling in for Colin Cowherd (himself a pinhead of epic proportions) yesterday on ESPN radio was unduly proud of himself for coming up with the following hypothetical (paraphrased from memory):
Suppose that you had a choice between having your favorite candidate win the presidential election, or having your favorite sports team win a championship. Which would you pick?
Even by the standards of hypotheticals on sports call-in shows, this is pretty stupid. After all, it's not really a fair comparison-- whatever psychological boost it may provide, your favorite sports team winning a title is not likely to affect you personally. A presidential election, on the other hand-- particularly this presidential election-- will have a significant effect on the status of the nation, and that will affect your daily life in a way that sports won't.
(This did not stop large numbers of Cubs fans from calling in to vote for sports titles over politics, of course...)
Of course, this got me wondering whether there's a better comparison, involving something with more concrete importance (though not too concrete-- "a billion dollars tax-free" is unfair in the other direction). For scientists, maybe something like:
Suppose that you had a choice between having your favorite candidate win the presidential election, or having a first-author paper in Science. Which would you pick?
For this particular election, I'm not even sure that would do it... What would need to be offered before you had to think seriously about this choice? A tenure-track job? Tenure? A secure source of funding?
Politics
Education & Careers
Comments
# 1 | Uncle Al | May 22, 2008 10:40 AM
Gvn Prsdntl chcs vs. pblctn chcs, pblsh. Lt's ll lct Cltlr t th vl ffc nd hp fr qck, pnlss ntnl xtnctn.
# 2 | Ewan | May 22, 2008 11:01 AM
Hang on. Are the conditions that if I take choice b - let's say, tenure - then I *guarantee* McCain's election? And vice versa? If so: well, (i) yikes and (ii) I guess my first choice would be to decline the choice and hope for both good outcomes!
Assuming the hypothetical gun-to-the-head, though: I'd require a tenured position out of the US (and somewhere vaguely congenial: Europe, Canada, Oz, possibly Japan), I think. And even then I suspect I should decline.
In exchange for that first-author Science paper, I would perhaps offer *not* to raise the tax on tobacco several hundred percent...
# 3 | Chad Orzel | May 22, 2008 11:11 AM
Hang on. Are the conditions that if I take choice b - let's say, tenure - then I *guarantee* McCain's election? And vice versa? If so: well, (i) yikes and (ii) I guess my first choice would be to decline the choice and hope for both good outcomes!
The way it was phrased on the radio was that you could choose to have your favorite candidate elected, in which case you were guaranteed that your teams would not win while that person was in office, or you could have your teams do well while the other candidate was in office.
So, yes, the way I interpret it, you would be choosing automatic tenure under a McCain administration, or no tenure under an Obama/ Clinton/ Barr/ Kodos administration.
# 4 | John Novak | May 22, 2008 11:58 AM
After all, it's not really a fair comparison-- whatever psychological boost it may provide, your favorite sports team winning a title is not likely to affect you personally.
Oh, I dunno.... On the other hand, I'd be willing to lie about my favorite sports team in order to get a nice long shot bet placed on the books, whereas I'd be extremely unwilling to do the same by betting on, say, Ron Paul for the White House.
# 5 | Colin M | May 22, 2008 12:06 PM
A tenure-track job in Canada, so that I'm not directly affected in case $EVIL_CANDIDATE wins the election.
# 6 | Joshua Zelinsky | May 22, 2008 12:27 PM
Does this assume that it means I've actually discovered something that deserves to be in Science? As it is written it isn't clear if I actually earn it in the hypothetical or possibly the editors just make a bad editorial decision about whats worth including.
# 7 | CCPhysicist | May 22, 2008 1:05 PM
Cubs fans realize that the world will end soon after they win the series, so it won't matter who is President.
First author on a paper in Science? That is pretty small potatoes to exchange for selecting who is going to decide whether to nuke Iran and make $4 gas look cheap. Ditto for betting on a sports team. You can make a lot more money betting the right way on commodities.
PS - I kept hoping to see a Cubs-Yankees series so we could find out if Hillary Clinton really is a traitor to her home town of Park Ridge, Illinois ... which is thick with Cubs fans.
# 8 | Barn Owl | May 22, 2008 1:50 PM
Suppose that you had a choice between having your favorite candidate win the presidential election, or having a first-author paper in Science. Which would you pick?
Already have the latter, and I'm not really sure what it's done for me, in the grand scheme of things.
So I pick the former. ;-)
# 9 | Uncle Al | May 22, 2008 8:34 PM
ie eieia oie uiaio ioe, ui. e a ee ie o e Oa Oie a oe o a ui aie aioa eiio. (Requested by the fellow in Michigan)