[HN Gopher] Undisclosed tinkering in Excel behind economics paper
___________________________________________________________________
Undisclosed tinkering in Excel behind economics paper
Author : _Microft
Score : 175 points
Date : 2024-02-11 05:21 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (retractionwatch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (retractionwatch.com)
| grey-area wrote:
| The title is a bit odd. The article details a sloppy use of
| substitute data from adjacent rows or even columns to fill gaps
| in data, excel has little to do with it. The worst example is
| using United Kingdom data to fill gaps in USA data because they
| were adjacent in the list.
| smt88 wrote:
| Excel has everything to do with it. From the article:
|
| > _In email correspondence seen by Retraction Watch and a
| follow-up Zoom call, Heshmati told the student he had used
| Excel's autofill function to mend the data._
|
| The most charitable interpretation is that the professor has no
| idea what autofill is or isn't capable of doing, so he misused
| it.
| grey-area wrote:
| That's not even the worst case though, worse by far than
| interpolating (whatever method is used) is simply taking data
| from countries with a similar name to fill gaps.
| InSteady wrote:
| "What was your rational for using data from the Netherlands
| to fill in the missing values in New Zealand?"
|
| "Um, both countries start with the letter N"
| jakeinspace wrote:
| Should've used Denmark rather than Netherlands, as it's
| the Old Zealand.
| kgwgk wrote:
| Do _you_ have an idea of what autofill is and what is or
| isn't capable of doing?
|
| When he dragged down a selection he _saw_ the values being
| copied or a trend being extrapolated.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Flash Fill and Series Fill are great at recognizing simple
| patterns like 1,2,3,4,5 or 2,4,6,8,10 and can sometimes
| (unreliably!) recognize more complicated multiplications,
| repetitions or formulaic string modifications (like house
| numbers and street names). I use both frequently.
|
| But neither these tools nor an LLM has real understanding,
| they're not going out into the real world and collecting
| data. The results need to be verified. Automatically
| filling an index column with 1,2,3... is one thing,
| automatically filling a data column with guesses from
| pattern matching is different. This problem is only going
| to get worse as LLMs proliferate and can more reliably but
| still imperfectly and still opaquely fill in more
| complicated data.
| smt88 wrote:
| I don't use autofill precisely because I have no insight
| into the algorithm behind it. I suspect it's very "stupid,"
| but I don't know exactly how stupid it is.
|
| It sounds like he didn't realize or notice that autofill
| was using adjacent cells (from other countries, in this
| instance). That behavior would shock me as well. I thought
| autofill only took columns of data into account.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Right, but the mistake wasn't an issue with Excel, it was
| with the professor misusing it.
| kurthr wrote:
| Might as well blame ChatGPT for writing your term paper.
|
| If they'd been using R/Matlab/Python written by a copilot
| it would have been just as much gibberish.
| smt88 wrote:
| Yes, I understand that and agree.
|
| The headline isn't blaming Excel. "Undisclosed tinkering in
| Excel" is not far from the accurate headline: "Misuse of
| commonly-used Excel tool..."
|
| The interesting thing is that a supposedly sophisticated
| person was using an unsophisticated tool and then relying
| on the data it produced. Failing to mention "Excel" in this
| case is doing a disservice to the thrust of the problem.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Also Netherlands to New Zealand. Hilarious.
| bouncing wrote:
| And United States <~> United Kingdom.
|
| To compare OECD countries.
|
| What's the point of even doing the research?
| geysersam wrote:
| To write papers
| fransje26 wrote:
| Personally, I prefer using data from Uruguay to cover the
| holes in the United States data.
| riedel wrote:
| Such things are encouraged by the excel UI because it fails to
| make relationships and manual corrections easily visible. The
| human computer interface matters beyond UX.
| martynr wrote:
| Surely this can't be justified as a ux driven "oversight" - I
| am not an economics professor but I would be feeling totally
| sketchy if I manipulated a data source in such an apparently
| arbitrary manner.
|
| In combination with the (reportedly)blatant lack of any
| reference to the methodology in his paper this feels like
| wilful gross misconduct in professor-land.
|
| IMO this sort of thing rightly undermines confidence and
| credibility of research in a much broader context and should
| be a sackable matter if shown to be true as asserted.
| csydas wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but I would disagree that the focus
| should be on Excel and its UI/UX. As annoying as Excel is
| when you're working with _specific_ data that suffers from
| Excel's attempts to be helpful, I'd wager for most use cases
| Excel is doing exactly what most users expect it to, or the
| change is benign at best for most use cases.
|
| That isn't to diminish when Excel's help has disastrous
| consequences, but rather to say it shouldn't be unexpected.
| If your data requires precision, there are better tools than
| Excel for working with your data and there should be steps
| taken by more experienced members of the team to ensure the
| team doesn't get bit by Excel's features. Excel's behaviors
| are well known and I'd have to imagine at least one member of
| any research team has been bitten by Excel's assistance
| features before during research. I would be surprised if any
| serious educational institution that teaches about ethics and
| common pitfalls in research *didn't* caution about how Excel
| might corrupt research [0].
|
| 0 - Okay, maybe not _that_ surprised, but I would be
| disappointed and think less of the institution/instructor.
| croes wrote:
| Excel makes such things convenient
| bjornsing wrote:
| A related anecdote: Jonkoping University is not allowed to call
| itself a university in Swedish ("universitet"), since that word
| is, by law, reserved for institutions that meet certain
| requirements. To get around this it uses the English name
| "Jonkoping University" in Swedish as well. But formally it's a so
| called "hogskola", more often translated as "college".
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Wouldn't that also make the professor _not_ a professor?
| kgwgk wrote:
| Are community college professors not professors?
|
| (Edit: I wrote "community college" because I though that was
| what the grand-parent had said - but it was just "college".)
| bowsamic wrote:
| It depends on the country, but here in Germany no
| kgwgk wrote:
| Is it so?
|
| https://www.academics.de/ratgeber/haw-professur
|
| https://www.academics.com/guide/haw-professorship
|
| https://haw-professur.de/en/
|
| https://www.thm.de/site/en/university/profile/job-and-
| career...
| red_trumpet wrote:
| I'm not exactly sure what a community college is, but in
| view of the discussion about "Fachhochschulen" above, I
| want to note that Fachhochschulen do indeed have
| professors.
| Zetobal wrote:
| Volkshochschulen...
| kgwgk wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_colleges_in_the_U
| nit...
|
| In the United States, community colleges are primarily
| two-year public institutions of tertiary education.
| Community colleges offer undergraduate education in the
| form of an associate degree. [In addition community
| colleges also offer remedial education, GEDs, high school
| diplomas, technical diplomas and academic certificates,
| and in rare cases, a limited number of 4-year bachelor's
| degrees.]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associate_degree
|
| An associate degree or associate's degree is an
| undergraduate degree awarded after a course of post-
| secondary study lasting two to three years. It is a level
| of academic qualification above a high school diploma and
| below a bachelor's degree.
| Nine99 wrote:
| No.
| Tomte wrote:
| Do you maybe confuse community colleges with
| ,,Volkshochschulen"?
|
| The latter offer recreational courses, like painting or
| language learning or Indian cooking, usually one hour per
| week for a quarter year or so. The courses are held by
| laypeople.
| bcraven wrote:
| It depends on the country:
|
| "In most [UK] universities, professorships are reserved for
| only the most senior academic staff, and other academics
| are generally known as 'lecturers', 'senior lecturers' and
| 'readers'."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_in_the_United_
| K...
| kgwgk wrote:
| Yes, the term professor is used more or less generously
| in different countries.
| jeltz wrote:
| I wonder if that would really stand up in court. Here in Sweden
| our judges are not very impressed by clever technicalities.
| 7734128 wrote:
| Chalmers on the other hand is technically a universitet, but
| maintains the hogskola title in Swedish.
| peterpost2 wrote:
| Same for Kungliga Tekniska hogskolan (KTH)
| em500 wrote:
| Similar as the Netherlands: there 37 "hogescholen" marketing
| themselves as "University of Applied Sciences" in English that
| are not allowed to claim to be "universiteiten" in Dutch (a
| name is reserved for 14 more academically advanced
| institutions).
| ulfw wrote:
| Same in Germany where Fachhoschulen (hogescholen) marketing
| themselves successfully to internationals as "University of
| Applied Sciences"
| distances wrote:
| Same in Finland. "University of applies sciences" is not a
| real university but rather a lower level institution
| (ammattikorkeakoulu/yrkeshogskola/Fachhochschule). The
| difference is clear for locals but I bet many international
| students have been tricked by the English branding.
| tgv wrote:
| Yep. Pretty misleading. They can use it because the law
| doesn't mention that word, and their management likes to
| pretend they are running a university, and because they were
| so focused on attracting foreign students.
| jorams wrote:
| > They can use it because the law doesn't mention that word
|
| This is not true. The law defines which schools are allowed
| to call themselves "hogeschool", and also that the English
| translation of that word is "university of applied
| sciences" or, if limited to a specific job profile,
| "university of <said profile>".
|
| See
| https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/stb-2017-97.html
|
| > Het voeren van de naam hogeschool is voorbehouden aan de
| instellingen voor hoger onderwijs die zijn opgenomen in de
| bijlage van deze wet onder g, en aan rechtspersonen voor
| hoger onderwijs. Onder het voeren van de naam hogeschool
| wordt tevens het voeren van deze naam in samenstellingen
| verstaan, alsmede het voeren van de naam hogeschool in
| vertalingen. In afwijking van artikel 1.22, eerste lid,
| wordt de naam hogeschool in het Engels aangeduid met
| <<university of applied sciences>> dan wel, bij hogescholen
| die opleiden tot een bepaald beroepsprofiel, <<university>>
| met daarachter het vakgebied.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Germany's and Austrias Universities of Applied Science use
| the same trick, Fachhochschulen is their German name.
| Tomte wrote:
| Not anymore. They have all(?) rebranded to ,,Universitat"
| in German.
|
| But that's intentional. Former FHs are practically
| identical in law to universities. They all have the right
| to promotion, their masters and bachelors are legally
| identical to universities' masters and bachelors.
| almostnormal wrote:
| The former "Diplom" and "Diplom (FH)" were not identical.
| When those still existed the distinction of "Universitat"
| and "Fachhochschule" was meaningful. The rebranding is a
| consequence of the old kind of degrees having been
| replaced by new ones, not just a marketing trick.
| Tomte wrote:
| Yes, you're right, the causal link is this.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Not in Austria.
|
| There's a very clear distinction between FHs and
| Universities. Not necessarily in reputation or level of
| education, but they are separated entities. And you
| cannot get a PhD from an FH.
| mixed_bag wrote:
| I initially wanted to say that this is entirely wrong,
| but when I went to do a quick check, I found this:
| https://www.che.de/2023/haelfte-der-bundeslaender-hat-
| promot... So my knowledge was not entirely up to date.
|
| In short, bachelors and masters are indeed legally
| identical to the ones acquired at universities, but most
| do not have the right to promotion. This mostly depends
| on the state they're in. And they are not allowed to call
| themselves "Universitat" (though some have rebranded to
| "Hochschule").
|
| All FHs that I know do have an option for getting a Phd
| through them, but they themselves can't grant them.
| Instead, an FH can cooperate with an Universitat through
| a sort of loophole. The Phd students spend their time at
| the FH, but they have two supervisors and get their Phd
| from the "Universitat".
|
| But it seems like it is only a matter of time until
| difference, too, is no more.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Not true that FH degrees are identical in all respects:
| for the civil service there is still a difference in pay.
|
| The RWTH in Germany still uses Hochschule, but does add
| University now to their name.
| Tomte wrote:
| The RWTH has never been a FH, though. It's ,,Technische
| Hochschule" for the same reason why the University of
| Stuttgart was a ,,Technische Hochschule" for a long time:
| traditionalists insist that a university must have
| medicine, law and religion.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Yes, never FH, but also not university.
| mixed_bag wrote:
| No, the RWTH is indeed a university. Many (old) THs were
| granted the status of "Universitat" in the 70s and 80s,
| see
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technische_Universit%C3%A4t
|
| And if you don't trust Wikipedia, the RWTH refers to
| itself as an "Universitat", see here for example:
| https://www.rwth-aachen.de/cms/root/Die-
| RWTH/Aktuell/Hochsch... Doing so would be illegal if they
| weren't one, so I don't see where the claim that they're
| not comes from.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Yes, it is (and was for a while now) a university but it
| didn't refer to itself as university until quite
| recently.
| mixed_bag wrote:
| Do you have a source for that claim? This is the first
| time I'm hearing of a difference in pay for FH and
| Universitat degrees there (regarding bachelor and master,
| old diploma system doesn't count).
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Have a look here with the references to
| "wissenschaftliche Hochschule" and some differences
| between between degrees/needs: https://www.bva.bund.de/Sh
| aredDocs/Downloads/DE/Behoerden/Be...
|
| (Slide 9, for example).
|
| Edit: you are right that the difference might not always
| apply, but they are not always identical by default as
| far as I understand it.
| germanier wrote:
| I can't think of a single example of a former FH having
| rebranded to "Universitat". The closest I can think of is
| the incorporation of FH Lausitz into BTU Cottbus. In any
| case, there are still >200 FHs in Germany which are not
| using the "Universitat" label and without right to award
| doctorates. I'm really not sure what you are talking
| about.
| rcbdev wrote:
| You seem to be really misinformed about the legal
| definitions of these tertiary education institutes in
| Austria.
|
| Universities of applied sciences are governed under the
| "Fachhochschulgesetz"[1] (Universities of Applied
| Sciences Law) while universities are governed under the
| "Universitatsgesetz"[2] (Universities Law). This carries
| loads of differences with it, i.e. when it comes to
| academic freedom and right to promotion. Professors at
| universities of applied sciences are much more limited in
| their academic freedom and these institutions do not
| possess the right to promotion at all.
|
| Not sure where you got your information as it's wildly
| untrue in some respects.
|
| [1] https://ris.bka.gv.at/GeltendeFassung.wxe?Abfrage=Bun
| desnorm...
|
| [2] https://ris.bka.gv.at/GeltendeFassung.wxe?Abfrage=Bun
| desnorm...
| Tomte wrote:
| I haven't said a word about Austria.
| rcbdev wrote:
| You responded to a comment talking about "Germany's and
| Austria's Universities of Applied Science" - which
| countries did you mean if not Germany and Austria?
| Tomte wrote:
| Germany, obviously.
|
| Enough harassment for tonight?
| jooi29 wrote:
| Many have rebranded themselves as "Hochschule" Not
| "Universitat"
| fl7305 wrote:
| > reserved for 14 more academically advanced institutions
|
| So "Technische Universiteit Delft" is not an advanced
| institution?
|
| In either case, in Sweden "hogskola" covers everything from
| small rinky-dink schools up to KTH (Kungliga Tekniska
| Hogskola) in Stockholm and CTH (Chalmers Tekniska Hogskola)
| which are among the top engineering schools in Sweden.
|
| Both award doctoral degrees. I have not heard many people in
| Sweden argue that KTH/CTH are not as advanced as the top
| universities. The difference is just that the technical
| schools do not have departments for the humanities.
| em500 wrote:
| > So "Technische Universiteit Delft" is not an advanced
| institution?
|
| It is, and it is also one of the 14 Dutch institutions that
| are allowed to use the Dutch "universiteit" name. But the
| English term "university" seems to be unprotected in the
| Netherlands.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Dutch speakers often fall into the trap of equating the
| terms 'university' and 'universiteit'. Since the English
| language does not differentiate between the terms
| 'hogeschool' and 'universiteit', it is appropriate for
| both to translate into 'university'.
|
| (And then, of course, there's also the term
| 'volksuniversiteit'...)
| alexanderchr wrote:
| But KTH and Chalmers are officially universities despite
| their names. Jonkoping was not until recently.
| jannw wrote:
| The distinction becoming vague is due to the changes
| regarding the Bologna Process/European Qualification
| Framework - whereby both Universities and Technical Colleges
| both award bachelor degrees (EQF6) ... and if it looks like a
| duck, and quacks like a duck, and awards the same EQF paper
| at the end, then it's the same! I've taught in a programme
| that is offered in both Universities and Technical Colleges
| (Law) ... and the distinction becomes that universities are
| more theory based, whereas technical colleges are more
| practical ... and that matriculating into a university
| offered masters programme in NL from a technical college
| awarded bachelors is made harder (even with the same EQF6
| paper) ... not that any other university in the EU would care
| about the distinction!
| lancebeet wrote:
| This is a really unfortunate but also quite common pattern in
| Sweden, where there's a veneer of internationality which tricks
| foreigners instead of helping them. Swedes will generally
| understand that Jonkoping university isn't formally a
| university and wouldn't compare it to the more prestigious
| schools, but for international students it's not at all
| obvious. They might pay a lot of money and discover too late
| that the education and/or credentials they get in return don't
| match at all what they paid for. As usual, the Swedish
| authorities seem unwilling or impotent to take action on this
| type of issue.
| geon wrote:
| It doesn't help that the terms don't translate 1:1.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Sweden was a real pioneer with progressive social change and
| looking out for the little guy, but as with most of these
| things, the institutions set up to drive this change
| ossified, and are today more like a ceremonial roleplay of a
| process that concluded half a century ago.
|
| These are the checks and balances that are in place, and
| unfortunately looking up from the faded old daguerreotypes of
| Adalen 1931 and addressing issues from this century does not
| seem to be at all a priority.
|
| You can get some action if you manage to dress the problem up
| as as a J.P. Morgan type industrialist opressing the workers
| (as happened with the Tesla blockade), but if it doesn't fit
| that narrative you're generally SOL.
| nsajko wrote:
| For comparison, would Harvard or Stanford be allowed to call
| themselves an _universitet_?
| pineaux wrote:
| No, they would be considered institutions with too low of a
| standing.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| This may be helpful: https://www.studera.nu/startpage/higher-
| education/universiti...
|
| > To put it very simply, the difference between universities
| (universitet) and university colleges (hogskolor) is that
| universities can award degrees at the doctoral (third cycle)
| level because they have general permission to do so.
| fl7305 wrote:
| > the difference between universities (universitet) and
| university colleges (hogskolor) is that universities can
| award degrees at the doctoral (third cycle) level because
| they have general permission to do so.
|
| The text wrongly implies that "hogskolor" cannot award
| doctoral degrees. This is not true. It's just that they
| don't have a built-in general permission to do so.
|
| In practice, KTH/CTH etc have a large number of doctoral
| students and award many doctoral degrees every year.
| occz wrote:
| Not to discredit any of what you said, but I believe both
| KTH and CTH are classified as universities, despite what
| their names imply.
| boxed wrote:
| This is correct. KTH hasn't changed its name because the
| name has an extremely long history.
| smarx007 wrote:
| A simple test of the rules StackRanker3000 linkes to is
| whether you'd hold a PhD degree from those establishments in
| high regard independent of the field. If so, that's a
| _universitet_. If you 'd only highly respect PhD degrees
| awarded in a few areas, like STEM fields when it comes to
| CalTech or MIT, that's a _hogskola_ , similar to an institute
| (possibly polytechnic if it is strong in more than one
| field).
|
| And as was written above, some establishments, as they grew
| from institutes to universities, decided to keep the old
| name, MIT and CalTech included.
| pelorat wrote:
| To be honest the difference is minimal. I studied CS at
| Mitthogskolan in Ostersund, but didn't complete all points
| before graduation (still had a paper to write and hand in for
| one of the courses). A year after graduation, Mitthogskolan
| became a real university (Mittuniversitetet). I emailed the
| professor in charge of the course I had not yet completed,
| wrote my paper and handed it in, then received a university
| diploma in computer science, even though i technically never
| studied at a "real" university.
| occz wrote:
| Is there even a difference at that level of study, which I
| infer from your post is undergraduate/master?
| close04 wrote:
| Usually such a promotion between levels for an institution
| implies they observed for several years the higher standards
| needed for the higher level. So you studied according to the
| higher standard but the classification isn't changed
| retroactively.
| boxed wrote:
| The difference for an institution that was just at the edge
| was minimal yes. But that's a special case.
| raid2000 wrote:
| Sometimes, procrastination pays off!
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Until recently in Ireland, third level education places were
| largely divided into "universities" and "institutes of
| technology" (previously "regional technical colleges").
|
| The institutes of technology have been reorganised lately and
| are now called "technical universities".
|
| The degree you get is generally much the same from any of them
| - but for some insane reason graduates of the institutes of
| technology/technical universities don't get to vote in the
| national elections for the upper house (senate). Only graduates
| of the more prestigious ones get that right.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| The Seanad thing is just absurd, given that the Constitution
| was changed by referendum in 1979! It's also worth noting
| that four universities get three seats, while another has
| three to itself.
|
| The whole bloody upper house is insane in Ireland, but it's
| convenient for the legislators so it doesn't get reformed.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Still not as bad as the English upper house!
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| I remember while studying at an IT they had a debate there
| about the potential dissolution or reform of the Seanad,
| with some senators taking part.
|
| It was deeply funny listening to the sitting senators tell
| us how important the Seanad is, because for all of us - the
| Seanad was some useless shit we couldn't vote for or
| influence in any real way.
| penteract wrote:
| I hadn't heard about any of this and chased some details on
| Wikipedia; here's some more context for others:
|
| In 1979, there was a referendum in which 92% of the voters
| were in favor of extending Seanad representation to
| graduates of other higher education institutions. This
| changed the constitution in a way that allowed laws to be
| passed to implement that, but no such laws have yet been
| passed. There was a ruling by the Supreme Court of Ireland
| in 2023 requiring a law to actually be passed, but the
| ruling is currently suspended until 26 May 2025.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Amendment_of_the_Cons
| t...
| idiotsecant wrote:
| So if you don't graduate university you have reduced voting
| rights?!
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| For one particular pool of candidates fighting over
| university allocated senate seats - you still have regular
| voting rights.
| apt-get wrote:
| Similar thing in France, however related to degrees: a Master's
| Degree fits within the common framework of European tertiary
| studies, AKA your 2-year graduate cycle that ends up totalling
| 5 years if you include a standard undergrad cycle (Licence).
| However, a "mastere specialise" (which is an actual trademark)
| is not an officially recognized diploma at all, but a label
| used by schools to denote (usually paid and expensive)
| "specialization paths". They provide no academic credits, and
| you can't move forward to a PhD with one. Many prestigious
| schools (grandes ecoles) provide those kind of certifications
| to clueless foreign students who end up paying huge sums of
| money for something that holds no formal weight in any academic
| framework.
| rcbdev wrote:
| Something very similar in Austria - you can get a free
| Master's degree (1-2 years) by doing a study programme
| ("Studiengang") at a university, that will also qualify you
| for a PhD. Or you can pay for a Master's course programme
| ("Lehrgang") that costs ~15kEUR, is usually a lot easier and
| does not qualify you for a PhD.
|
| The difference here is that you are allowed to wear the title
| of MSc either way and both programmes do confer ECTS points -
| only the latter does not qualify you for a PhD.
| oohffyvfg wrote:
| in most countries the term university is reserved for
| institutions which provide graduate (undergrad optional)
| degrees in four (three in some places) major fields (sciences,
| humanities, medicine, etc)
|
| nothing else.
|
| usually just adding a business major to a place with medicine,
| engineering and law is enough to cross the threshold and jump
| from college to uni.
| dash2 wrote:
| "Journal of Cleaner Production" is not "highly ranked" in
| economics. Economists are pretty hierarchical about their
| journals and know which are the top 5, which are top field
| journals etc. That one is a non-entity, I have literally never
| heard of it.
| nsajko wrote:
| "Highly ranked" probably refers to a formal metric like the
| impact factor. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_ranking
| kratom_sandwich wrote:
| It appears not to be an economics journal at all, at least it
| is not featured in RePEc's rankings:
| https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.journals.simple.html
| boppo1 wrote:
| What are the top 5?
| Shrezzing wrote:
| Depends a bit on the branch/focus of economics you're looking
| at, and which nation/region you want to read about, but a
| broadly uncontroversial list would be:
|
| The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press
| (colloquial known as "the QUGE")
|
| Econometrica, Econometric Society
|
| Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association
|
| Journal of Economic Growth, Springer
|
| Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier
|
| Maybe swap in the Journal of Political Economy if you're
| looking for more political leaning research. Swap in the
| American Economic Review if you're interested in more
| American-centric research.
| othello wrote:
| That's incorrect, the Top 5 in econ are (in no particular
| order):
|
| - Econometrica
|
| - American Economic Review
|
| - Quarterly Journal of Economics
|
| - Journal of Political Economy
|
| - Review of Economic Studies
| bachmeier wrote:
| Just to add some context, the term "Top 5" is not
| subjective, it's a reference to those five journals.
| Tenure and promotion decisions in top departments based
| their decisions on publications in those journals.[1]
|
| [1] https://newsroom.iza.org/en/archive/research/the-
| tyranny-of-...
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| This is the correct answer and would get the agreement of
| probably better than 95% of the profession.
|
| The suggestion above that JEL is a top five is bizarre.
| The CS equivalent is saying that the book "learn python
| in 21 days" is a top outlet for CS research.
|
| The authors of this paper should be deeply embarrassed
| about the way they handled that data, but I'm _slightly_
| relieved to see that this garbage was published in a
| tenth-rate journal no one has ever heard of. (Though to
| be clear there are definitely problems with what gets
| through in top journals too!)
| dash2 wrote:
| QJE and Econometrica yes. JEL is excellent but not one of
| the "top 5": it's literature reviews. JFE is big in finance
| but not top 5. JEG, not even close - it's a field journal.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I'm not surprised that results of this study were not surprising.
| bouncing wrote:
| > If I had other intensions [sic] and did not believe in my
| imputation approach, I would not share the data with him.
|
| Admittedly this isn't my field. But that sounds a lot like "I
| only show my work to people who will validate it," does it not?
| timmb wrote:
| I disagree, I think it means "my actions have demonstrated that
| I'm not trying to cover anything up"
| munch117 wrote:
| That's my interpretation as well.
|
| It doesn't put him in a much better light, though. It's like
| he's so incompetent that he didn't even realise that there
| was something that needed covering up.
| anjc wrote:
| There wasn't something that needed covering up. If he'd
| reported the methodology in the paper there would have been
| no issues.
|
| It's likely that this was omitted from the paper as an
| oversight; such imputation likely wouldn't have affected
| the outcome of peer review.
| thimp wrote:
| Oh this is nothing. Go look at the social sciences. They get data
| that compromises their entire profession, tell the university
| it's inconclusive and wait until the research grant runs out and
| fail to publish. Then do the same thing again.
|
| I have seen this with my own eyes. A bit of excel drama is
| usually behind their published papers. Also seen that with my own
| eyes.
|
| The field has trouble collecting data too because it's expensive
| and very subjective. The worst one I saw was somehow turning 7
| data points via imputation and interpolation into a hundred or
| so. The principal researcher on that I actually had to teach
| BIDMAS to and her calculations were completely whacked out (excel
| again)
| screenoridesaga wrote:
| A lot of people are upset when their grant doesn't get funded
| and it's easy to suppose there's some sort of sinister motive
| behind it. In truth it's probably that the science is very
| difficult and only a tiny fraction of people get anywhere in
| social sciences.
|
| Try marine biology, they are always looking for decent papers.
| concordDance wrote:
| What profession have you seen compromised?
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Because there are bad apples, doesn't mean you should throw out
| the scientific method.
|
| Over 50% of social science studies do replicate.
|
| Sorry that isn't high enough. We should definitely just give up
| on understanding ourselves.
|
| Or, maybe fix the financial incentives.
|
| Any industry across all fields, if the incentives are miss-
| matched, will produce crap.
| ace2358 wrote:
| > Over 50% of social science studies do replicate
|
| There is some tasteful irony here. Could you link to a study
| on this claim? And ideally a few other studies that support
| its claim? Thank you.
| lkdfjlkdfjlg wrote:
| You post on HN, people see it as a UI problem. Everything is
| tech, everything is tooling.
|
| But if you knew anything the history of science, you'd know that
| a sloppy scientist with good tools gets you sloppy science, and a
| diligent scientist with bad tools might still get you as-good-as-
| possible science.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| People aren't uniform, but they're all human.
|
| Improvements in tooling raise the baseline universally, making
| the "sloppy" scientists malfeasance obvious and helping the
| "diligent" scientist avoid inadvertent mistakes.
|
| Moralizing about humans being humans and wishing we were better
| gets us nowhere, but technology carries us into the future.
| lkdfjlkdfjlg wrote:
| I'm not moralizing. There's no moral anywhere in what I
| wrote. Being sloppy isn't a moral judgement.
| moron4hire wrote:
| This is called "econometrics".
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| This reminds me of an error in the Excel sheet used by the EU to
| justify austerity programs back in 2008 the led to trouble in the
| PIGS countries.
|
| Someone double checked that and found that there was an error in
| the equation is correction show that austerity programs were
| mildly worse for recovering from economic disasters.
|
| --
|
| On an editorial note, it seems to me that economics is just
| highfalutin astrology and this does nothing to convince me
| otherwise
| codeulike wrote:
| Reinhart, Rogoff... and Herndon: The student who caught out the
| profs (2013)
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190
| immibis wrote:
| Many excuses have been used to justify austerity. If this study
| didn't work, they'd use another. If 99 studies said austerity
| was bad and 1 study said it was good, I suspect that one would
| be more likely to get published; in either case it would get
| used to justify austerity. It seems to me like austerity is the
| pre-determined conclusion, and then they go looking for
| reasons.
| raid2000 wrote:
| I expected to read a paper about some obscure Excel trick to
| manipulate stats output. Instead, this is just old-fashioned
| manipulation by hand or "imputation" as the paper describes it.
|
| > In email correspondence seen by Retraction Watch and a follow-
| up Zoom call, Heshmati told the student he had used Excel's
| autofill function to mend the data. He had marked anywhere from
| two to four observations before or after the missing values and
| dragged the selected cells down or up, depending on the case. The
| program then filled in the blanks. If the new numbers turned
| negative, Heshmati replaced them with the last positive value
| Excel had spit out.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| The crazy thing about it is that the author doesn't seem to
| understand why it's bad. He doesn't appear to be hiding it. He
| just says "yeah that's what I did, whoops, I forgot to say it
| in the paper". He's either decided that acting like a complete
| moron is better than being thought of as an an intentional
| fraud, or else he really does think it was totally above board.
| richbell wrote:
| I had a similar thought. My interpretation is that he
| genuinely thinks what he did was ok, because Excel has
| _computer magic_.
|
| This quote seems unintentionally telling:
|
| > "If we do not use imputation, such data is almost useless,"
| Heshmati said. He added that the description of the data in
| the paper as "balanced" referred to "the final data" - that
| is, the mended dataset.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| ""Is the evidence for austerity based on an Excel spreadsheet
| error?"
|
| Lets not forget that people/politicians also will ignore errors
| if they support their point of view. This can lead to policy
| decisions that impact the global economy.
|
| The US 'Right' believe strongly in biblical/moral individual
| responsibility, so any study that supports that gets a pass.
|
| This lead to 'austerity' measures after 2008. Because "everyone
| should just be more responsible in their spending".
|
| ""They actually found, using a different method, that the
| economic growth would be around 2.2 percent. Reinhart and Rogoff
| admitted that their spreadsheet was accidentally omitting 5 rows
| in an Average formula, and claimed that the corrected result
| would be a positive growth but of just 0.2 percent.""
|
| https://www.powerusersoftwares.com/post/2016/08/11/the-excel....
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/18/uncovered-e...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/16/is-th...
| gjvc wrote:
| see also https://eusprig.org/
| hermitcrab wrote:
| There is plenty of software that can do imputation for you. Video
| of how to do it in our Easy Data Transform software at:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXAGhtqI5xw
|
| Is is jaw-dropping that a professor would use Excel auto-fill.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-11 23:02 UTC)