"journals could start requiring a git link that contains data, code, and paper drafts."
But when the goal is to create a result rather than report it, transparency is the enemy
But when the goal is to create a result rather than report it, transparency is the enemy
I strongly believe that errors are a much more pervasive problem in science and related fields than malice is.
But we are talking about economics, and republican groups like fox news eat it up.
My favorite example is the 2011 chart distorting the display of the unemployment rate:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/12/12/today-in-dishonest-f...
Wherever the line is drawn, the dishonesty of some random Fox News chart is not related to the honesty or dishonesty of actual scientific research.
The much bigger problem in science is error.
Econ and Psych really do lie in a gray area, and by avoid the demarcation debate you completely miss the relevance of the issue at hand.
If policy makers weren't using this study to justify more austerity, then we probably wouldn't have such a prolonged discussion.
True, but I haven't seen a liberal think tank manipulate charts in that specific manner.
I suspect there are plenty of similar issues in economics. People with money are much more likely to support researchers whose work benefits or protects people with money. E.g., I happened to read a paper from a U of Chicago prof arguing that insider trading is actually beneficial. Boy, I wonder who the big donors are there. Probably not Mother Jones Magazine.
In science generally, probably. In areas tightly connected to perennial areas of sharp ideological policy divides, like macroeconomics, I'm less convinced.
The problem is that economics is not a field related to science. The vast majority of public policy economics starts with a conclusion, and then creates facts to support that conclusion. This is not science, it is religion.
(insert disclamier about this being an overgeneralization)