[uniqueuid]

Nitpick: The Kiel Institute is not a think tank in the sense that people would understand the word.

It is a federally funded research organization (part of the family of Leibniz institutes) similar to a university but without teaching. Here's a list of the others [1].

These are independent, high-quality research institutions without political money or a designated political agenda.

[1] https://www.leibniz-gemeinschaft.de/en/institutes/leibniz-in...

[lingrush4]

The fact that they don't have an agenda written into their charter doesn't mean they don't have an agenda. Basically every American news organization is an example of this.

[uniqueuid]

While your assessment may be true in many contexts, this is not one of them.

American hyper polarization does not permeate other countries in the same degree and German academia is actually full of sober, level-headed, nuanced people.

[Dirak]

This has never been the case across the history of humanity -- there has never existed a non-biased institution, and it's incredibly naive to think that a German think tank funded by the German government would be any exception.

"Level headed" and "sober" people are not immune to the effects of incentives and conflicts of interest. Researchers are dependent on grants, on invitations to conferences, etc., and so are liable to follow trends (tariffs bad), and p-hack to support the mainstream narrative (as they do in this analysis with P values > 0.01).

> German academia is actually full of sober, level-headed, nuanced people

Thanks for the laugh. I hope you realize how pretentious this sounds. In actuality, Germany's GDP is about 1/6th of that of the US, so these German academics don't sound very bright for how "level headed" and "sober" they are.

[nosianu]

If/since bias is everywhere and implicit because a person is that person and their own experiences, why point it out here so explicitly????

You do not point that out every. Single. Time. somebody argues even though it is true, or do you? Because that is just too shallow, that is the basis, nothing can be below that, so there is no point in pointing to the ground every time. So when you do point it out, it is YOU who has an agenda.

You are trying to shift the framing.

[Dirak]

No, just when Europeans (like yourself) need a reminder that they're not exceptional in their "level headedness" and "soberness", and in fact are anti-exceptional when it comes to real world outcomes like GDP.