As Twitchy told you yesterday, Megan McArdle took the Washington Post’s fact check of Bernie Sanders’ claim that “500,000 people go bankrupt every year because they cannot pay their outrageous medical bills” and ran with it, further taking Sanders’ claim apart.
Evidently that didn’t sit well with The Week national correspondent Ryan Cooper, who basically accused McArdle of manipulating data to support her rebuttal of Sanders:
I see we've got McMegan's signature move, dismissing a whole study because it doesn't cohere with her extremely vague priors https://t.co/7VfP3Ym8e3
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) September 4, 2019
Is Cooper’s move dismissing McArdle’s thorough debunking because it doesn’t cohere with his priors? Because he seems to be pretty good at that. Meanwhile, McArdle’s actual signature move appears to be verbally bodyslamming punks like Ryan Cooper who question her knowledge and integrity:
I wasn’t aware that you had any history of reporting on bankruptcy, Ryan. If you’d care to point me to your methodological critiques of Dobson et al, your defenses of the methodological choices of Warren et al, or your broader work on the topic of bankruptcy, I’d love to see it. https://t.co/9AZWsfAgJm
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) September 4, 2019
I mean, when I search your name and the word "bankruptcy", I don't really get any writing on the topic. Did you have some relevant expertise that you chose not to write about?
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) September 4, 2019
Or were you, I dunno, "dismissing an informed argument because it doesn't cohere with your extremely vague priors"?
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) September 4, 2019
Recommended
For the record, I've been writing about bankruptcy since 2005, when I persuaded the Economist to oppose BAPCPA, have a chapter on it in my book, and write about it in a bunch of not-particularly-political contexts, not just medical bankruptcies.
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) September 4, 2019
As you can see from googling my name, plus "bankruptcy". So my "extremely vague priors" include a fair amount of time talking to bankruptcy judges and attorneys, and getting a sense of why their clients BK.
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) September 4, 2019
My priors *also* include a passing familiarity with statistical analysis, which tells us that if we want to understand whether medical bills cause bankruptcy, we want to know the P(BK|Bills), which is what Dobkin et al studied, not P(Bills|BK), which is what Warren et al studied.
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) September 4, 2019
There, now hopefully my priors are a little clearer to you. Would you care to enlighten me about your priors, and what relevant experience or education formed them?
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) September 4, 2019
Oh, snap!
fire thread https://t.co/8L0TLMvNPu
— Just Karl (@justkarl) September 4, 2019
Brutal takedown. https://t.co/40i9kJDg6G
— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) September 4, 2019
— Lynne Pence (@lynnepence) September 4, 2019
So, has anyone updated the Wikipedia page of @ryanlcooper to show that he is now owned by Megan McArdle?
— blackford0akes (@blackford0akes) September 4, 2019
BURN! Love it.
— Marc Cenedella (@cenedella) September 4, 2019
Hello, 911, I'd like to report a murder. https://t.co/vPOvRkCyem
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) September 4, 2019
— Brian Beck (@tigerhawk310) September 4, 2019
We hope Ryan’s learned a valuable lesson. We certainly have.
Going forward I will be making it one of my life goals not to make @asymmetricinfo angry with me. https://t.co/dojNf3nmMW
— Jake Hunt (@jake_hunt) September 4, 2019
That’s probably a good idea.
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