National Jurist's Law School Rankings Info Antics: On Verifying the "Accuracy" of Data When Data Sources Cannot Be Verified

We are now reviewing the RateMyProfessor data for all law schools with significant variances from the Princeton Review data, being careful to exclude non-law professors and former law professors. We expect to have this review done by Feb. 19. -- Jack Crittenden, Editor In Chief, National Jurist, Editor's comment on Best Law School ranking.

Although National Jurist is now actually reviewing the "accuracy" of the Rate My Professors data, the question is why didn't they do that before publishing the ranking?  NJ says "we believe that the voice of students is essential."  But that's not in dispute.  The point is that Rate My Professors is not "the voice of students," and a magazine with any integrity, as opposed to an interest in generating hype, never would have utilized such an absurd source.  (I'm not even sure what it means to check the accuracy of Rate My Professors data:  anyone with Internet access on the planet earth can fill out a Rate My Professors survey, how could that be meaningful?) -- Chicago Law prof Brian Leiter, Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, National Jurist Now Back-Pedalling on its Thomas Cooleyesque Law School Rankings.

Stay tuned... . Today is Feb. 19th, isn't it? 

The pot calling the kettle black. One purveyor of absurd rankings reports about the National Jurist kerfuffle. But you would be hard pressed to find him reporting on, let alone responding to, law prof criticisms of his own fatally flawed info antics spit out by the methodologically-challenged intellectual bankruptcy of being an info science amateur. See Info Antics, Not Metrics; When Counting Mickey Mouse Clicks Trump Content Analysis. [JH]