Talk:Robert Fogel

Latest comment: 1 year ago by Nobelson1993 in topic RWF and the false attacks of racism against him

On Cliometrics edit

There was an essay in the New York Review of Books circa 1989 discussing Time on the Cross and (this is all from memory) one number I remember quoted was that since the probability of severe physical punishment (whipping) for slaves was only about 1/100 per year, physical punishment could not have been an important control of slave behaviour. I put this number into my own experience: I attended a high school of 1500 students for four years, and if the same conditions of punishment had obtained I would have witnessed 60 public whippings in four years. Does anyone think this threat -- realized on many other people -- wouldn't control your behaviour, even if the odds of you yourself being whipped during four years is only 1/25? 137.82.82.132 03:39, 19 September 2006 (UTC)Reply

Good job, you have articulated the very same criticism that Fogel and Engerman's colleagues levelled against that assertion. Also, the primary source on which that number was based was very dubious: A record from a single Louisiana plantation owner's diary was, in effect, generalized across the entire slave-holding South.
Fogel's work is valuable less for its own sake than for the valuable work he spurs his colleagues to do in order to rebut his wilder claims. Time on the Cross is a mess -- but a superbly marketed mess. The history of its reception in the mass media ca. 1974 is fascinating. -- Rob C (Alarob) 23:15, 8 November 2006 (UTC)Reply

Without Consent or Contract edit

There really ought to be mention of Fogel's other book, Without Consent or Contract which many economic historians view as his reconciliation with some of the criticisms of Time on the Cross. Saffo.princess (talk) 19:41, 12 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Fogel Paradigm edit

The neologism "The Fogel Paradigm" would seem to be the invention of Carpenter in the cited article [1]. Checking Google Books and Google Scholar, I see no indication that this term has been adopted by scholarly sources in the ensuing dozen years, and has no currency, or even that the article has been cited other than once in a scholarly publication.[2]]. To the contrary, there is a much more widely recognized term associated with Fogel: "The Gutman-Fogel Paradigm" associated with his work on the sociology of American slave families. [3] The text is also not supported by the reference. While Carpenter's article relates in several footnotes that the author had private conversations with Fogel, Carpenter is nowhere identified as a teaching assistant to Fogel in the source. The text states that Carpenter diagrammed Fogel's four awakenings, but the cited article states that the diagram was taken from Fogel's book and merely simplified in the cited article by Carpenter. There is no credible indication that Carpenter's views on the subject are notable by Wikipedia standards. Discussions at WP:COIN and WP:RSN indicate that this is a matter of an editor inserting material as a matter of self-promotion across numerous articles. Substantially the identical material has been deleted form other articles by other editors on this basis. Accordingly, I have removed it from this article as well. Fladrif (talk) 14:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

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External links modified edit

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Birthdate 1 July 1927 edit

From www.nobelprize.org see also Comparing 2 datasets using federated SPARQL - Salgo60 (talk) 08:43, 13 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

RWF and the false attacks of racism against him edit

My name is Steven D Fogel, and I want to set the record straight. Not only was he a great scientist, but he was the least racist person I ever knew. He only saw two things when he looked at another person, any person, it was always the same. Here is another human being and what an amazing opportunity for them to teach me something.

It was the same with his work. The is,no such thing as racist data. Either data is correct or it’s wrong. As a scientist it is his moral responsibility, that once the conclusion has been confirmed, to report it, and share it with all of his colleagues, exactly as it was gathered and processed. My father dedicated himself to the slavery work because he wanted his two black sons, his black family, and black people in America. To know that even though forced to live in a completely morally repugnant system, black people thrived. It almost every measured way, blacks in slavery, exceeded their northern and European counterparts.


Time on The Cross and Without Consent or Contact stand as a monument to the ingenuity, strong morality and the strength of the black family. That even in the worst of times, the black family not only thrived, but it was able to flourish. It’s not racism that slavery was productive or the blacks were flourishing. It’s just the data. We shouldn’t engage in a complete lack of morality no matter how positive we can spin it. That question goes to to who we are as culture. The data is just a historical measurement of how society answered that question.




Nobelson1993 (talk) 03:39, 29 August 2022 (UTC)Reply