{"id":348,"date":"2017-09-30T21:13:10","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T01:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/?p=348"},"modified":"2017-09-30T21:13:10","modified_gmt":"2017-10-01T01:13:10","slug":"hope-is-arbitrary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/third-blog-the-science-of-political-science\/hope-is-arbitrary\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope is Arbitrary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Masha Gessen\u2019s explanation for the \u201cdying Russian\u201d puzzle is not scientific in the traditional sense of the word. She presents no quantitative data to back up her conclusion that Russians are dying from lack of hope. She presents no data on hope because the data don\u2019t exist. Eberstadt&#8217;s and Parson&#8217;s studies approach science when they analyze the statistical relationship between mortality rates and various factors (drinking, infectious disease, economic prosperity, etc.). Gessen&#8217;s essay turns more theoretical and qualitative when she concludes that hope is the culprit for Russia&#8217;s low life expectancy. The idea of hope is arbitrary and likely impossible to quantify. Gessen\u2019s explanation hinges on the subjective classification of periods as hopeful or hopeless. Who says that the Khrushchev and Gorbachev led Russians through periods of greater hope? In science, even in political science, we can\u2019t know why lies within the metaphorical black box with any certainty. Yet, just because a study isn\u2019t strictly scientific doesn\u2019t mean that we should disregard it. Gessen\u2019s conclusion is still useful for what it is: a qualitative answer to a complex and possibly unsolvable puzzle.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Masha Gessen\u2019s explanation for the \u201cdying Russian\u201d puzzle is not scientific in the traditional sense of the word. She presents no quantitative data to back up her conclusion that Russians are dying from lack of hope. She presents no data &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/third-blog-the-science-of-political-science\/hope-is-arbitrary\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1752,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-third-blog-the-science-of-political-science"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1752"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":349,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions\/349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}