Maybe this happens to you all the time, but for me it was a first: The other day I discovered that I’m the star of a 55-page academic paper by two French economists whose work scientifically proved that I’m a habitual and systematic liar.
In “Structural Estimation of Expert Strategic Bias: The Case of Movie Reviewers,”Toulouse School of Economics Ph.D. candidates Fanny Camara and Nicolas Dupuis devise a series of algorithms.
They assess the professional reputations of 35 veteran film critics (including me), whether we thought the movie was going to be good before we saw it, whether our opinions were “correct” (i.e., in accord with the majority) and whether we were telling the truth about what we actually thought.
The model meant to predict our responses didn’t work on me (I’m unpredictable), so they concluded I’m a liar. Among 35 critics surveyed, I came out as the leader in “misreporting” my actual views.
It follows that I must routinely publish reviews that are the opposite of what I really think, according to the paper, because “experts may disregard noisy signals and conform to the prevalent opinion in order to pass for good predictors of the state of the world.”
I’ve been accused of many things in 9 ¹/₂ years as a film critic, but this may be the first time anyone’s ever said — much less empirically proven! — that I just tailor my views to go along with the majority. I don’t recall anyone saying that when I panned “Iron Man 3,” “American Hustle” or “Skyfall.”
Lazily relying on a simple yardstick — the Google Trends index, which counts how many times Google users searched for a given person in a given month — the Ph.D. students also scientifically prove that I have a really high reputation. They have me at third only to the late Roger Ebert and his “At the Movies” colleague Michael Phillips.
Trust me when I say: This is the first time anyone’s ever said that, either.
According to a formula that covers the years 2004-13, my Google-search-based reputation is 40, Ebert’s is 1,100 — and New York Times critic A.O. Scott’s is 6. Really? My reputation is six times higher than his? I look forward to the Académie Francaise paper that scientifically proves the genius of Jerry Lewis. Charles Manson has a lot more Google searches than I do. Does he have a higher reputation?
Read the rest here.
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