Bad Research - Academics - Check the numbers...

[WhiskeyGirl]

It seems to me that many of the Obama folks are academics...that's who's helping us out of this

 crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.crisis.

Posted: February 19, 2009, 8:01 PM by NP Editor
 
Ross McKitrick and Bruce D. McCullough, research practices

From the U.S. subprime crisis to global warming, bad research is driving disastrous public policy

By Ross McKitrick and Bruce D. McCullough

Empirical research in what are commonly called “peer-reviewed” academic journals is often used as the basis for public policy decisions, in part because people think that “peer-review” involves checking the accuracy of the research. That might have been the case in the distant past, but times have long since changed. Academic journals rarely, if ever, check data and calculations for accuracy during the review process, nor do they claim to. Journal editors only claim that in selecting a paper for publication they think it merits examination by the research community.

But the other dirty secret of academic research is that the data and computational methods are so seldom disclosed that independent examination and replication has become nearly impossible for most published research...

Is this why some of the policy just doesn't make common sense?  Doesn't seem to match the historical experience?

Our report also explores numerous examples from other academic disciplines, such as medicine, history, environmental science and forestry, in which prominent or policy-relevant research was shielded from independent scrutiny by withholding data and/or computer code. In some cases the research was exposed as faulty only years later, sometimes only through government intervention to force data disclosure, and sometimes after laws had already been passed based on the faulty research.

Derivatives?  Legalized gambling with the futures of hardworking Americans just trying to save a little for retirement?

One striking example in the context of the current U.S. housing meltdown concerns a 1992 study by economists at the Boston Federal Reserve, published in the prestigious American Economic Review, that purported to show statistically significant evidence of racial discrimination in U.S. mortgage lending practices. Based on this study, federal regulations were rushed into place that forced banks to loosen lending standards and threatened them with severe financial penalties for failure to correct the alleged discrimination.

It took nearly six years, and a Freedom of Information Act request, for independent economists to discover coding errors in the data that invalidated the original conclusions. But by this time the new lending rules were in place that ultimately contributed to the buildup of bad mortgage debt now ravaging the U.S. financial system.

"Spending our way out of recession/depression..."  We haven't done enough in the crisis, it'll just take another 100 TRILLION dollars...  Maybe the next two hundred years of poverty and despair...

Academics rightly insist on the freedom to do their research without public or political interference. But when that research influences policy, the public has a right to demand independent verification. Researchers might want to influence policy but if they plan to keep their data and computer code to themselves, they should keep their results to themselves too.

Financial Post
Ross McKitrick, an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph, and Bruce D. McCullough, a Professor of Decision Sciences at Drexel University in Philadelphia, are authors of “Check the Numbers: The Case for Due Diligence in Policy Formation,” published by the Fraser Institute.

Check the numbers and follow the money...

read more here -
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/02/19/check-the-numbers.aspx

jmho