There were many insightful comments — to say nothing of moving and entertaining stories — about Lee during the “APSA panel”:http://www.apsanet.org/mtgs/program_2010/program.cfm?event=1490341 honoring him. I will share one that stood out.
Paul Sniderman reviewed Lee’s work on public opinion and political psychology — a monumental task given that Lee wrote maybe 130 articles on these subjects. In all of these articles, Sniderman said, he was struck by Lee’s utter “lack of an adversarial style.”
It was funny for me to hear that observation, because Lee had no problem being adversarial. See this comment thread, for example. He was happy to argue in the lunchroom too. I seem to remember a long argument where he objected to the fact that people like Barry Bonds were brought into court, questioned about a possible crime, and then charged not with the crime but with lying to the court. He didn’t see perjury and obstruction of justice as anything all that important, I suppose. I was happy to tell him he was wrong.
But back to his scholarship. Lee’s lack of an adversarial style is a lesson for all of us. The instinct to frame papers around the inconceivable oversights or mistakes of prior work is virtually ingrained. Sure, there’s a place for constructive criticism and disagreement. The point is simply that we could stand for a bit more of what Seth Roberts calls “appreciative thinking”:http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2008/12/12/whats-appreciative-thinking/ — identifying what is actually good or useful about prior research. It’s a skill that should be taught and one that, if employed more widely, would probably help scientific knowledge accumulate more quickly.
Thanks to Paul for his close reading and to Lee for yet more good advice.
