In praise of induction – The Washington Post

Another way at looking at the difference between evidence and anecdote, and the merits and utility of each, by Daniel W. Dresser of  the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University:

One of the tensions that explains the fraught relationship between politics and the academy is that academics are big fans of deductive thinking and politicians are not.

At the risk of exaggerating the gap, academics like to think deductively — i.e., start from theory and then test whether that theory explains parts of the real world. When I was in graduate school, my professors talked a lot about the perils of thinking inductively — i.e., building a general theory from looking at a particular case. The obvious danger was to build a theory from a particular case, and then use that case as evidence of the theory’s power — the very definition of a tautology.

Politicians preternaturally think in an inductive manner. They build from experience, narrative and analogy to articulate what they think matters in the world of policy. For politicians, this makes a great deal of sense, because they trust their own experiences far more than abstract data, and because they know that narratives resonate far more with voters and citizens than abstract theories. Consider, for example, Chris Christie’s moving discussion of how to treat drug addicts. It’s a brilliant demonstration of a politician using a particular narrative to make a deeper point on policy.

In splitting the world like this, I’m simplifying things a lot. One could argue that Barack Obama’s problem as a politician is that he is too abstract and not inductive enough. Similarly, most scholarship emerges from the interplay of deductive and inductive thinking. But still, I think there is some truth in this dichotomy.

My reason for bringing this up is to point out that my own tribe of academics still looks down on the inductive method of theorizing as a flawed approach that is prone to error. And those flaws are real. But I fear that this has blinded many academics to the virtues of induction, because they exist. Indeed, twice in the past week, it’s come up in policy debates.

Source: In praise of induction – The Washington Post