kicking puppies is bad

I should preface this entire rant by saying that it is based on a “Social Science” article. And I hate most social science research. The measurements are fuzzy, and the “scientists” use advanced statistics to analyze “fuzzy” measurements. Then they pretend that because they used “real” math, their conclusions must be valid. Their work undermines societal respect for statistics. And statistics are cool. I admit (being an Analyst) that I am somewhat biased on that point.

It all started with an MSNBC article on the use of commas. Apparently the declining use of commas in our society reflects our fast paced workaholic nature. And I thought to myself, “Americans?!?, Workaholics?!?, This guy is on crack”. He based his statement on statistics showing that most rich nations have reduced the average workweek considerably over the last twenty five years (Japanese: 16%, Germans: 20%, French 16%). The US has gone from 1834 to 1804 (less than 2%). Again, I thought, “That can’t be right. Maybe this has something to do with unemployment rates?” As it turns out, in 2005 Germany had the highest “jobless” rate since the 1930′s (12.6%). So perhaps a large number of people with 0 work hours has skewed the numbers for other countries. Of course the UK is at 2.9% and Japan is similar to the US at 4.1% – so the unemployment rate theory was killed.

So, I was still confused about what could possibly lead someone to call Americans workaholics. Perhaps the reason that Americans have to work so many hours is because they are *so* lazy that their productivity is extremely low? I mean, I thought it was pretty well accepted that Americans are known for their laziness. Regardless, I was still not convinced that Americans could be considered workaholics. So I looked up another citation from this article, a paper published by NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) in 2005, titled The Economics of Workaholism: We Should Not Have Worked on This Paper.

Of course, being a “social science” paper, this article provided no answers. However, it did make me annoyed enough to write a journal rant (during work hours – thus proving that I am not one of these so-called “workaholics”).

A large literature examines the addictive properties of such behaviors as smoking, drinking alcohol and eating. We argue that for some people addictive behavior may apply to a much more central aspect of economic life: working. Workaholism is subject to the same concerns about the individual as other addictions, is more likely to be a problem of higher-income individuals, and can, under conditions of jointness in the workplace or the household, generate negative spillovers onto individuals around the workaholic…

Workaholism is an addiction. It’s the illusion, and associated destructive behaviors caused from that illusion, that a person can effectively address challenges in life and work exclusively by working harder at work

WTF are they talking about? Do they know what an “addiction” is? Addiction implies a physical dependence on something. You can’t just throw a bunch of statistics together that show that working long hours has a negative impact on peoples lives. Then show that despite this negative impact people work anyways. Then label it an addiction. How are these people in graduate school (or actual professors)? How is this considered research? This kind of article ranks right up there with the “Women’s Studies” article addressing the ever important issue: Why Hello Kitty Has no Mouth. I can’t believe they give people PhDs for this crap. This is why the psycho-christians can bash scientific research — and people don’t argue with them.

Crap. I lost my train of thought somewhere in this rant. You should probably disregard the whole thing as angst. I’m really just bitter that I dropped out of my (fuzzy social science) PhD program.

Newsweek Article about Decline of Comma Use

NBER Article, “The Economics of Workaholism: We Should Not Have Worked on This Paper”