Hi all,
Normally when a policy goes awry, you have to really search for the evidence to prove it. If we’re really lucky, we might get a rainfall IV paper a few months later; occasionally, there will be a cleverly-identified paper a couple of decades later; more often the policy will be the subject of endless, inconclusive long-reads in the better class of weekly magazines. It’s pretty rare that things go wrong quite as quickly, viscerally and heartbreakingly as they are in Afghanistan right now. This is the place where I usually insert a pithy joke, but my well of amusement has run completely dry in the face of not only the immense suffering and panic unfolding right in front of our eyes, but also the incredibly mean, ungenerous and frankly depressing response from the UK. This is one of those cases where we should be getting people to safety first, and then checking the fine print on the paperwork later; it’s both sad and unsurprising that the response seems to be set up to make sure that not one person we could find a reason to turn away manages to slip into the country by accident. I’d like to say that this isn’t us, but the evidence of the last decade or so suggests that this is, on the contrary, exactly who we are.
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While I’m in a mood of overwhelming pessimism about my fellow human beings, can I interest you in a story of outrageous (and comically incompetent) academic fraud? The amazing team at Data Colada have, together with a team of anonymous researchers who did most of the work, uncovered a case of outright data fabrication in a published paper on – wait for it – honesty. The story is properly jaw-dropping: in 2012, a paper came out in PNAS summarising the results of three studies; two run by researchers doing lab experiments, and a field study by Dan Ariely, he of multiple popular and well-written books of behavioural economics. The data fabrication was uncovered in the latter. I strongly encourage that you read the Data Colada piece, because it’s extraordinary how obvious it is once you take the time to investigate a little bit, essentially amounting to basically making up new data using a random number generator and a bit of copy-and-paste. While the team are very clear that they can’t pin down exactly who is responsible for the fraud, quite a bit of it points to either Ariely himself or the ultimate source of the data, though its hard to think why they would do so. As is often the case, one good turn begets another, and other iffy stories are now beginning to surface – an unverifiable stat in an NPR interview, and a 40,000-person experiment without an obvious publication and a seemingly impossible-to-implement treatment arm. And as ever, Andrew Gelman is here to carefully apply salt to the wounds.
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And while I’m piling on academia, here’s Dani Rodrik’s superb Project Syndicate piece on economics’ other diversity problem: the overwhelming dominance of researchers from Western Europe and North America (I feel like he should probably add India to that list, though maybe that’s just selection bias in the economists whom I most often read). I have nothing really to add here: he is correct. As long as econ ignores voices from most of the world, it will be a partial discipline. As an aside, his story about Hirschman reminds me of Branko Milanovic’s argument that exceptional scholarship demands exceptional lives.
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And speaking of Branko, and in a similar vein to Dani’s piece, here is his take on what Western commentators get wrong about China’s economic policy, citing a paper he wrote with Li Yang and Filip Novokmet. Both he and Yuen Yuen Ang emphasise this – that imagining one simple story about what China is or wants is the root of a great deal of misunderstanding.
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There is a fantastic story at the beginning of this Eric Barker piece on being more productive: about a phd student turning up to classes late and finding some tough homework problems on the board. After spending a few days working on them with great difficulty, he presented his answers rather sheepishly to his stunned supervisor. Why so surprised? Because these weren’t homework problems: George Dantzig had just resolved two mathematical problem that had been judged to be unsolvable. I don’t think reading the blog will turn you into a genius, but it can’t hurt.
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Nice write-up of a new Martin Ravallion piece on using macroeconomic indicators to understand movements in poverty and inequality.
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My favourite thing about reading FiveThirtyEight is that it’s sometimes the stuff furthest from my usual interests that winds up gripping me the most. Usually this is because it’s written by one of their amazing science writers (this time Maggie Koerth), as is the case here: why some people are prone to getting cavities and how – most worryingly – they can be contagious. If my hitherto pristine dental health (my teeth may look like Picasso’s Weeping Woman crossed with Shane MacGowan, but I’ve never needed a filling) takes a downward turn, I’m going to blame my wife rather than my escalating chocolate habit.
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It’s not the most important thing that’s happened in the last couple of weeks, but the news that Leo Messi was leaving Barcelona was seismic on its own scale. As someone whose earliest football memories were of Maradona working his magic on those great Italian backlines of the late 80s and early 90s (Maldini! Baresi! Costacurta! Tassotti!) watching Messi in my late 20s and early 30s was the first time I’d seen anyone who made me feel like a kid watching football again. LitHub have an excerpt from Simon Kuper’s book on Messi’s relationship with Barcelona which captures something of the magic of watching him play. I somehow doubt it will feel the same in Paris.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Disclaimer
CGD blog posts reflect the views of the authors, drawing on prior research and experience in their areas of expertise. CGD is a nonpartisan, independent organization and does not take institutional positions.