Sabermetric Research: Birnbaum: Chopped liver

And let the DIPS fall where they may…

And so Dr. Bradbury sets out to correct this. How? Not by reviewing the existing research, and validating it academically. Not by finding those studies which have “insufficient statistical rigor” and analyzing them statistically. Not by summarizing what’s already out there and criticizing it.

No, Dr. Bradbury’s paper ignores it. Completely. He mentions none of it in his article, not even in the bibliography. Instead, Dr. Bradbury’s explains his own study as if it’s the first and only test of the DIPS hypothesis.

This happens all the time in academic studies involving baseball. Years of sabermetric advances, as valid as anything in the journals, are dismissed out of hand because of a kind of academic credentialism, an assumption that only formal academic treatment entitles a body of knowledge to be considered, and the presumption that only the kinds of methods that econometricians use are worthy of acknowledgement.