The high drama of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) thesis controversy has been staged for quite some time and is still ongoing. In a bid to investigate Tsai’s possible fraud on her thesis, some scholars traveled to the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) library to spend a few field days there and take a close look at Tsai’s thesis.
This is quite an anecdote or sideshow, because for those who were earnest enough to travel across the world and do research at the LSE library, they were playing their ball games on a foreign, if not alien, turf that lies well outside their academic expertise, with high risks of running into conclusions that were not substantiated by well-thought arguments or solid evidence.
There are at least three major hurdles that need to be identified and taken care of when stepping into a potential minefield as such.
First, it is very difficult to comment on, and criticize someone’s work, if you are trained throughout your life in a different field.
Second, there are 35 years in between 1984 — which happens to be the year of George Orwell’s dismal prediction, as well as the year when Tsai submitted her thesis — and now. The procedures and protocols of obtaining a doctorate in any given institution could have significantly evolved.
On top of that, there are different protocols among different schools, and it is improper to conclude anything from just the set of protocols with which one is familiar.
Furthermore, while researching Tsai’s thesis at the LSE library, scholars might need to pick up techniques such as evidence collection and interviewing, as deemed necessary by circumstances, since they were taking up the role of an accidental detective, if not a true detective.
In his 1997 article, titled “The Accidental Theorist,” that appeared on Slate, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman described a scene when a Rolling Stone reporter, William Greider, assumed the role of theorist and went on to write his 473-page book, sending out a warning message that technological innovation could have taken, and will be taking, jobs away.
As pointed out by Krugman, Greider and “his unwary readers imagine that his conclusions simply emerge from the facts, unaware that they are driven by implicit assumptions that could not survive the light of day.”
Somehow, I felt compelled to comment on the first hurdle: problems created by differences in academic training. This has been motivated by a report that appeared in Upmedia on Oct. 5, when Hsu Yung-tai (徐永泰), one of the earnest investigators who visited the LSE library, doubted how a doctorate in law actually dealt more with topics of trade policies.
My argument is purely based on my training in interdisciplinary studies, as opposed to Hsu’s collection of evidence from the LSE library.
Tsai’s research is on international trade law, which, to say the least, is not a hot field in law school because it is intertwined with international trade policy. Normally, law students just do not feel that comfortable dealing with issues that cut across law and economics, which is outside their comfort zone and will potentially call for a different strategy or mindset.
Back then, could Tsai be equipped with the expertise to research her topic in international trade law? After all, she wrapped up her doctorate in just two years. The whole thing is not unlikely because Tsai majored in competition law, another marginal field in law school, during her study at Cornell University.
US competition law is different from the EU version in that it draws, quite heavily, upon business logic. Textbooks on competition law, such as Federal Antitrust Policy: The Law of Competition and Its Practice, written by University of Pennsylvania law and business school professor Herbert Hovenkamp, contain many cases that are closely aligned with logic derived from a sub-field of economics: industrial organization.
As a matter of fact, it is hard to think of any other sub-field in law with such a high dose of business knowledge. When Tsai subsequently went on to study international trade law at LSE, it would appear to be quite a smooth transition, if not a seamless continuation, since these two fields are underpinned by similar sets of economic reasoning.
In economics, industrial organization and international trade are related, and they were becoming even more closely intertwined in the 1980s due to the rise of the industrial organization approach in international trade. Even today, law students, or even law professors, would not be aware of such a development if they are not very well-versed in economics.
How could a law student, back in the 1980s, pick up competition law and international trade law, and suit these up as her powerful combo, in an era in which a rules-based international trade regime is gaining in importance, without much background in economics? Is it due to luck or some uncanny touch?
For someone who is amused by such a storyline, he or she could probably assume the role of accidental novelist and write a story on it without incurring much of the high risks undertaken by an accidental theorist or an accidental detective.
Maybe things are as Krugman put it — one thing we could learn from Tsai’s thesis probe is “how easily it is for an intelligent, earnest man to trip over his own intellectual shoelace.”
Maybe it is safer to assume the role of a planned tourist, instead of an “accidental tourist.” Travelers could follow the lead provided by a tour guide writer to avoid unpleasantness and difficulties that might arise during their trip, a message conveyed in a 1988 movie of the same name.
Ping-yen Lai is a professor teaching the master’s degree program in translation and interpretation at the National Changhua University of Education.
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