March 8, 2010 9:54AM # Exum’s Perplexing Non-Response By [Justin Logan](https://www.cato.org/people/justin-logan) --- SHARE Last week I wrote [a blog post criticizing Andrew Exum’s views on the philosophy of science](https://www.cato.org/2010/03/01/andrew-exum-and-the-philosophy-of-science/). In fact, I was surprised to see that [a doctoral candidate at King’s College](http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/ws/people/phd/exum) held these views at all. \[caption align=right\] ![Media Name: exum.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/exum.jpg?itok=v8eID0cP) Andrew Exum\[/caption\] Today Exum posts [a perplexing non-response](http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2010/03/revenge-nerds.html), forswearing any interest in getting involved in the debate…that he brought up in his first post. Instead, he accuses his critics of getting their “proverbial panties in a twist” and posts a response from a reader that doesn’t defend the views Exum expressed in his first post. I’m not quite sure what to say, other than that this isn’t much of a response. Note, though, that he obliquely makes the same argument he made last week, criticizing Dan Drezner’s “willingness to hold forth on the peoples and politics of the Arabic-speaking world and Iran without any time spent in the region or training in its languages.” Richard Pipes made a similar argument when he argued that despite his lack of expertise in nuclear weapons or security studies he was qualified to lead the Team B project because of his “[deep knowledge of the Russian soul](http://books.google.com/books?id=x0l3R0BMR6YC&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=%22deep+knowledge+of+the+russian+soul%22&source=bl&ots=Or3UGTDBhO&sig=NEQqdP_eoFPaeUoT3gPamotXV-0&hl=en&ei=exqVS5fkF8_TlAfkxNT7AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22deep%20knowledge%20of%20the%20russian%20soul%22&f=false).” And we all remember how that turned out. ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).