As part of my day job at Henley-Putnam University I spend a lot of time on accreditation issues. I was deeply involved in working to secure both state approval from the California Bureau of Private, Postsecondary and Vocational Education (BPPVE) and national accreditation from the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). So I understand something of the process of the regulation of educational institutions and the reasoning behind it.
Both state approval and national or regional accreditation is a way of certifying certain aspects of a school. The BPPVE worked under the auspices of the Department of Consumer Affairs, which seems odd until you realize that they are confirming that the student gets what they paid for when they enroll. Other colors and flavors of accreditation test the integrity of a school as a business, and both apply criteria of rigor and quality of instructional delivery to the curriculum. Everything gets looked at, examined, picked up and shaken, and after an exhaustive process, a school that meets the state criteria can call itself a “university”. Accreditation gives an extra layer of assurance that translates into the ability to access certain kinds of state and federal funding for students.
Academia itself, though far from perfect, aspires to a comparable degree of documentation and transparency in the production of good, scholarly work. Sources must be footnoted, opposing views given proper attention, reasoning and facts checked and re-checked before casting them into the arena of academic debate. And as a matter of practice, that debate follows certain rules that are usually adhered to.
But in recent decades a potent rival has sprung up to challenge the fiefdoms of academia in the intellectual landscape. That rival is the so-called “Think Tank”. These organizations exist ostensibly to do research, usually for a specific client, and usually for a fee. The people who work at think tanks range from world-class experts to ideological hacks, and therein lies the problem. This past week in an article by former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter (“The Nuclear Expert Who Never Was”) tells the sordid tale of one David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and go-to guy for many on the Right who are looking (yearning is more like it) for evidence that Iran will soon be able to turn us all into smoking pools of radioactive tar.
I won’t go into the details here; the article does a much better job of laying it all out. But the bottom line is that “nuclear expert” Albright is anything but. His work is shoddy and filled with inaccuracies, and a closer examination of his background reveals that he has nowhere near the expertise he claims in his extravagant resume.
The point I’m trying to make is that think tanks like ISIS and many others exist to spread what amounts to propaganda cloaked in an academic vestment of respectability. The bad ones brook no serious accountability; the funding behind a given study is hidden or not disclosed, which by itself should preclude serious consideration of that study. People working on research may or may not be political activists with no real expertise, or who can not or will not abide by accepted norms of proper scholarship and tenets of academic debate.
When your paycheck depends on you proving a certain position, it’s amazing how much sophistry and willful ignorance the mind can generate.
This is why I propose that no think tank can or should be considered a true research institution without some kind of accreditation designed specially for such institutions. The halcyon days of spaghetti scholarship (i.e., throw something at the wall and see if it sticks) need to give way to something more trustworthy.
What would such an accreditation process entail? I’m glad you asked.
1. Funding transparency. Who funds the think tank? Who are the major donors? Are there funds collected from blind trusts and front organizations? Does the institution fund research or sub-organizations or front groups? Were any special studies done for individual clients, and were those studies published with full disclosures and disclaimers about who paid for them? Until you know whose bread is being buttered by a particular think tank project, you have a huge unanswered question that centers directly on the question of the institutional objectivity of the think thank and its researchers and writers.
2. Qualifications of the Staff. Are the people who do the research and write the studies really experts? Do they have requisite academic degrees? If not, can they demonstrate by a sound publishing record that they do in fact know what they are talking about?
3. Publications Review. This one is a bit tricker to do in practice, but may be as vital as any of the rest. How often do the think tank’s publications cite their own publications? Do they use peer-reviewed journals or primary sources in their research? Are their papers or articles by their researchers found in leading publications in the field? Are their publications cited by other experts in the field (favorably, that is)?
That would be a good start. The question, of course, is who would do this, and the obvious answer is that it could be done by private organizations, like those that oversee national or regional accreditation for universities. Maybe then the less scrupulous of these propaganda mills would either clean up their acts, or go into marketing where they belong.
A Nuclear Expert Who Is
Scott Ritter’s attack on David Albright, “The Nuclear Expert Who Never Was,” suggests that only those who have spent years on the “inside” or have some other official credential are true experts. He is wrong.
Ritter is correct that Albright’s expertise does not stem from either his participation in IAEA inspections or a PhD in nuclear physics. You can’t get the kind of expertise that Albright has developed that easily. Albright started to work on nuclear-proliferation issues as a researcher in Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. He ultimately established his own NGO, the Institute on Science and International Security (ISIS).
One measure of Albright’s expertise is the invaluable and authoritative book, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories Capabilities and Policies (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Oxford University Press, 1997). Albright was the lead author both alphabetically and in terms of his contributions. As an academic, I would be proud to be a co-author. Indeed, Albright’s two co-authors are senior professors at distinguished universities in the U.K. and Netherlands.
Albright was not interested in an academic career, however. He decided that it was more important to inform the public debate over nonproliferation – initially through his excellent articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and then, as journalists began to beat their way to his door, directly through releases to the media.
Albright pioneered the use of commercial satellite images to provide independent information on nuclear-related construction in countries of proliferation concern. The ISIS book, Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle that he co-edited with Kevin O’Neill in 2000, is still the most authoritative published work on the subject.
As Albright became more visible and trusted as an independent expert, insiders with important information began to come to him for help to get their story out. Some governmental experts who disagreed with the CIA claim that the aluminum tubes that Iraq was importing were for manufacturing centrifuges came to Albright, for example, at a critical time in the U.S. debate over Iraq’s supposedly resurgent nuclear-weapons program.
Albright is also obviously well respected in the IAEA. He is always the first outsider I know to get a copy of the latest IAEA report on the results of its inspections in Iran. This gives him a chance to make a quick analysis to inform the media on the significance of the new findings. I am glad that the media has this alternative to whatever spin the Administration decides to apply.
Albright’s role has its risks. In a confusing situation, he does not have the luxury of being able to sit on a result for months as is possible in academia. As a result, he has made some mistakes — as we all have. But there is no doubt that the communities of academics, NGOs and journalists who have come to depend upon his analyses are much better off with his guidance than we would be without it. Indeed, in 2006, the American Physical Society, the professional society of American physicists, gave Albright its Joseph A. Burton Forum Award. The citation was “For his tireless and productive efforts to slow the transfer of nuclear weapons technology. He brings a unique combination of deep understanding, objectivity, and effectiveness to this vexed area.”
I don’t know what set Scott Ritter off but his attack on Albright, while incendiary, is almost completely without substance. There is virtually no discussion of specific issues where he believes Albright was mistaken. Ritter is way off base.
Frank von Hippel, Professor of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
Co-chair International Panel on Fissile Materials
Former Assistant Director for National Security, White House Office on Science and Technology Policy, 1993-94