This week, I felt a real chill in my bones.
Some might suspect that it had to do with the cold and flu that knocked me out for a good few days but, alas, no. My chilly bones were triggered by the Andrew Potter/Maclean's magazine/McGill University debacle. If you missed it, I will provide a quick review.
The director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, Andrew Potter, wrote an article that appeared in Maclean's on March 20 titled "How a snowstorm exposed Quebec's real problem: social malaise." The article posits the notion that a breakdown in social capital demonstrates a lack of social cohesion in Quebec. The article, it seems, sent shock waves through Quebec.
In a follow up piece written by the editors of Maclean's, the magazine reported that the "column was decried by the premier of the province and the federal heritage minister, as well as Quebec's finance minister, who called for Mr. Potter's dismissal." The Maclean's editors wrote a strongly worded defence of Potter and said that: "Mr. Potter has a standing invitation to write for us again."
After the article was published, two errors were corrected and Potter wrote an apology in which he said that: "I regret the errors and exaggerations in what I wrote, and I'm very sorry for having caused significant offence."
Maclean's also reported that they had sources that said that Potter was asked to resign or he would be fired from his directorship.
There are, of course, nuances to this story. There have been a number of articles that support Potter and some that say that he wrote an under-researched column that drew on some evidence that could be debated for its ability to prove his point.
But just to recap: A professor wrote a column in a popular journal that was deemed too controversial and he lost his directorship, a position based upon the rigour of his academic contributions. On many levels, this outcome is very worrisome.
There are questions of academic freedom, the right to make mistakes and the right to be forgiven. Each of these issues requires a column of their own but I want to focus on the lost opportunity to discuss the differences between writing a column and doing academic research.
When an academic sits down to write a column, they are subject to very different criteria than when they are writing and submitting an academic article. Without doubt, both require intellectual honesty and a promise to do one's best to inform. We certainly rely on our editor to make sure we don't say anything that is libelous or patently untrue. Maclean's apologized in their article "for an editing process that fell short." But in a short piece, one is restricted from presenting detailed evidence in the same way as one would in an academic piece. There will always be nuances and layers to the statistics and theories that we may draw upon to make our point.
Writing an academic article is different. Academics contribute to ongoing discussions in their area of expertise. They are required to use acceptable methodology that allows for a study to be repeated.
In social science research, they must ask for ethics approval when interviewing human subjects.
Once they have written an article (usually in the range of 6,000- 8,000 words) they are subject to peer review.
The work is sent out to peers who research in the same area and they are responsible for rigorous review of the manuscript. They send comments and suggestions and they tell the journal/press editor if they think that the work merits publication. Articles are subject to revision and careful re-review.
It can take months, even years, to get an article published.
Even with all of the rigour, there may still be different interpretations of findings and questions about methodology. Good scholarship raises critical questions and often you will see scholars challenging their colleagues in a subsequent article. This process makes good science.
My point is that the two processes - writing a well-written column that informs and provokes and writing a substantial academic piece based on scholarship - are different. Not better, not worse, just different. And, as the Maclean's follow up article points out, sometimes people are going to write pieces that are "provocative" and "unpopular."
One might argue that a provocative opinion piece might stir some academics to look more carefully into an issue to see if there is better evidence, methodology or theory to substantiate or to disprove such a claim.
Surely a provocative piece, even with a few errors, should not be grounds for resignation from an academic position that was won on the basis of scholarship.
