Sometimes when a disputed issue is discussed here a principal for one side or another of the conflict shows up in the comments following the post. That happened recently for the post UFOs that quoted some disparaging commentary by other scientists about the the System of Rice Intensification advocated by Norman Uphoff of Cornell. Norman put up a partial defense but mostly objected to the fact that his ideas were being attacked.

one of the co-authors of the McDonald et al. article which he cites as 'authoritative' has conceded to me personally that half of the data they used for their analysis should never have been included in the study because it did not meet their own stated criteria. Why he did not withdraw the article, or withdraw himself from co-authorship, having made this concession, is hard to fathom. But then the antagonism and derision directed toward SRI is also hard to fathom.

I responded that it wasn't hard for me to fathom since this often happens. But there are some new twists to such "noogie wars" of late. What is different is the speed of response to assertions and the size of the audience as well the number of participants in the scrum. We have a revealing example of this with the current financial disputes.

A sprawling network of experts in economics and finance began picking apart the Paulson plan - live, in public, on blogs. . .

Their numbers included some of the nation's top academic economists, such as Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, and Tyler Cowen, along with a host of financial-industry insiders who actually knew a great deal about credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, and all the other esoteric instruments at the heart of the crisis.

As the bailout plan unfolded, the bloggers offered historical context along with cutting critiques of the proposal. More important still, they offered counterproposals: direct capital injections into banks, for example, or direct purchases of mortgages. Many of their readers began badgering their senators and representatives to oppose the plan. A few weeks later, Congress rebuffed Paulson, sending shockwaves through global financial markets.

Though it's still unclear how much credit the blogs can take for shaping Washington's response to the crisis, it's already evident that policy makers charged with monitoring and fixing the markets are no longer operating alone. A fast-moving, highly informed economics blogosphere now tracks and critiques their every move. The result is that this may be the first national crisis to be hashed out by experts in full public view.

Late last month, Barry Ritholtz, who runs the financial blog The Big Picture, tried to convey to his readers the cost of the ongoing bailout of the financial system. Using inflation-adjusted numbers put together by a research group, he showed that the money spent (or pledged) thus far was larger than the combined cost of the Louisiana Purchase, the Marshall Plan, the New Deal, the Vietnam War, and the nation's entire space program. Within a week, readers of his blog had converted the data into pie charts and graphs. By then, his analysis had become part of the national conversation on the bailout, cited by everyone from conservative columnist David Brooks to liberal talk-show host Rachel Maddow.

This type of influence was hard to foresee when Ritholtz, then a strategist at an investment bank, launched his blog in 2002 to share his musings on the financial markets. Readership grew slowly, and interest from the so-called mainstream media was not immediately forthcoming.

The same could be said of the academic economists who were starting to put their ideas online: Berkeley's Brad DeLong, for example, George Mason University's Tyler Cowen, and New York University's Nouriel Roubini, all of whom began blogging in 2003 or shortly thereafter. In a sense, economics was a field made for blogging: Its ideas advance by disputatious back-and-forth, and not surprisingly these professors took to gently (or not so gently) mocking one another's writings, even engaging in lengthy arguments that stretched out over days, if not weeks.

It's easy to mock economists in large part because there are so many points of view and each of them has high profile and authoritative champions peppering the network with broadband commentary. As Cowen notes: "Any major blogger who makes a mistake is corrected in five minutes". The corrections come not just from other professional economists but also from the hordes of practitioners and semi-informed kibitzers who are following the subjects.

The rest of the article is worth reading but I'm after a larger point. This post began with Uphoff's chagrin at being opposed, something that isn't new in the world. But in the past such disputes were less public and proceeded at a more leisurely pace. The public often learns about them from biographers and historians, or as asides in books written decades after the disputes took place.

I expect that this will become ever more common and include nearly every discipline. Agricullture and the environment - my beat - shares some attributes with economics: "Its ideas advance by disputatious back-and-forth, and not surprisingly these professors took to gently (or not so gently) mocking one another's writings, even engaging in lengthy arguments that stretched out over days, if not weeks." Or years.

This may not necessarily result in sound science or good policies, but it should make it more difficult for bad science and bad policies to proceed unmolested. It's still hard to know what is right no matter how many brains are focused on the subject or how high the quality of those attentive brains. But exposing muddled notions and fraud is much easier. It will also reward clear thinking and effective communication. Old timers may be uncomfortable with the increased exposure, but those who are now coming of age will be more comfortable with the requirement for sharp arguments with solid support.