Iām responding to published academic work by (at least some) professional academics, published in the top academic press. The appropriate norms for professional academic criticism are not the same as for (say) making a newcomer feel welcome on the forum. It is (IMO) absolutely appropriate to clearly state oneās opinion when academic work is of low quality, and explain why, as I did in my comment.
Youāre certainly welcome to form a different opinion of their work. But you shouldnāt accuse me of ābad faithā just because I assessed their work more negatively than you do. Itās my honest opinion, and I offered supporting reasons for it.
IMO, this would be a worse forum if people werenāt allowed to clearly express their honest opinion of shoddy academic work, including (when textually supported) reasons for thinking that their targets were engaging in motivated reasoning.
Finally, I should clarify that I was not addressing the question of whether someone could construct a valuable steelman of the authorsā positions. Many have offered critiques along the lines you suggest, and you could certainly attribute those to the authors to make them sound more reasonable. But in that case you might as well skip this text and go straight to the critiques that have been better expressed elsewhere. What I was assessing was the value of this particular text. And, as I said, what Iāve seen so far strikes me as low quality. Hopefully some of the included essays by other authors are better.
Just to be clear, you are assessing the quality of the text based on the 1 page editorās introduction and what you believe the authors will write, and without having actually read it?
Iām assessing the text thatās currently available, yes. I think my original comment was perfectly clear on that. I hope the book itself is better than the editorsā introduction would indicate, but itās not unreasonable to assess what theyāve shared so far.
The comment I replied to sounds like youāre critiquing the main academic work rather than a description of it, so I wanted to check if you had read an advance copy or something.
Iām responding to published academic work by (at least some) professional academics, published in the top academic press. The appropriate norms for professional academic criticism are not the same as for (say) making a newcomer feel welcome on the forum. It is (IMO) absolutely appropriate to clearly state oneās opinion when academic work is of low quality, and explain why, as I did in my comment.
Youāre certainly welcome to form a different opinion of their work. But you shouldnāt accuse me of ābad faithā just because I assessed their work more negatively than you do. Itās my honest opinion, and I offered supporting reasons for it.
IMO, this would be a worse forum if people werenāt allowed to clearly express their honest opinion of shoddy academic work, including (when textually supported) reasons for thinking that their targets were engaging in motivated reasoning.
Finally, I should clarify that I was not addressing the question of whether someone could construct a valuable steelman of the authorsā positions. Many have offered critiques along the lines you suggest, and you could certainly attribute those to the authors to make them sound more reasonable. But in that case you might as well skip this text and go straight to the critiques that have been better expressed elsewhere. What I was assessing was the value of this particular text. And, as I said, what Iāve seen so far strikes me as low quality. Hopefully some of the included essays by other authors are better.
Just to be clear, you are assessing the quality of the text based on the 1 page editorās introduction and what you believe the authors will write, and without having actually read it?
Iām assessing the text thatās currently available, yes. I think my original comment was perfectly clear on that. I hope the book itself is better than the editorsā introduction would indicate, but itās not unreasonable to assess what theyāve shared so far.
The comment I replied to sounds like youāre critiquing the main academic work rather than a description of it, so I wanted to check if you had read an advance copy or something.