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No one has ever been unfairly accused. The bar for being accused is so incredibly high. People are given so many possible outs and are allowed to produce the m

No one has ever been unfairly accused. The bar for being accused is so incredibly high. People are given so many possible outs and are allowed to produce the most implausible explanations. And then, even having one or two faked papers basically has no impact. Here's an example. Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart. Professors at Harvard. Despite having faked the paper that introduced austerity to the world, had an immense impact on the economy, and caused massive and needless suffering for hundreds of millions of people. That paper still continues to haunt countries today. To make their paper work they had to lie 3 times: to exclude some countries, exclude data from others selectively, and reweight all of the data. None of this is reported in their paper! Each of these took deliberate actions on their part, they cannot be mistakes. Every single "mistake" they made is carefully calculated to produce the result they want. Every one of them is needed otherwise their paper would be junk. What happened to them? Well, Reinhart has been promoted to the Chief Economist of the World Bank and is still a professor at Harvard. Rogoff is still a professor at Harvard too. Their faked paper literally resulted in deaths, toppled governments, and the rise of the alt right in places like Greece. But they got a promotion for it. The only people who are afraid are the people who are faking their data. No real scientist is getting accused of anything here.

lukeasrodgers 3y ago
What do you make of Reinhart and Rogoff’s rebuttal to this criticism? They acknowledge the excel error but dispute the rest. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/opinion/reinhart-and-rogoff-responding-to-our-critics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/opinion/reinhart-and-rogo...
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  Look at it from the point of view a scientist. They published a paper that claimed they ran analysis X. Reviewers look at it, and believed them, because we usually don't assume that people are lying. And it's hard to read over every line of code and compare it to the paper to make sure they did run the analysis they claimed. But in reality, they did a totally different analysis. They hid data, they fudged data, they inserted weighting factors into the analysis. And they never mentioned in this in the paper. In the article, they claim this was justified. But hiding the true nature of the analysis they did was not. That hiding, of making the paper read one way but the code another, is plan and simple scientific fraud. If what they believed in reality is that the code is correct, and that's the better analysis, then they should have just reported in the paper. The reason they didn't, is because reviewers would have looked at it and said that this is unacceptable and doesn't meet basic scientific standards. So they lied.
stefan_ 3y ago
Even if you are caught red-handed in fraud it's not the end. Dan Ariely, mentioned in the article, continues to be a professor at Duke.
diogocp 3y ago
> the paper that introduced austerity to the world This is complete nonsense. The paper was published in 2010. The principle of fiscal austerity for EU member states was enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 (Article 104) and the accompanying Protocol No 20 on the excessive deficit procedure. [1] > The reference values referred to in Article 104(2) of this Treaty are: > — 3 % for the ratio of the planned or actual government deficit to gross domestic product at market prices; > — 60 % for the ratio of government debt to gross domestic product at market prices. In fact R&R cite the Maastricht Treaty as the source of the 60% magic number in their paper! These numbers were basically pulled out of thin air by a French civil servant in 1981. [2] That is how government policy is actually decided. Not based on an academic paper published 20–30 years after the fact. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/treaty/tec_1997/oj https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/treaty/tec_1997/oj [2] https://openeuropeblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/from-archives-story-of-3-deficit-limit.html https://openeuropeblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/from-archives-st...
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  You have just enough knowledge to completely misread and misunderstand EU treaties. And, to be rude about it. These are not hard ceilings. God does not descent from the heavens and smite your country when you go over them. Virtually every EU country has gone over these ceilings routinely. Germany is above the 3% mark right now, and has routinely exceeded it! Heck, the average deficit to GDP ratio in the EU is above 3! https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w/2-21042023-ap https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w... These are aspirations to be applied as needed, not a proscription for austerity. The behavior of the ECB, the European Central Bank, is what matters. And that's a political and economic decision made with essentially a free hand (given that it has only one legal goal). Austerity is an economic and political choice. No mechanism in the EU forces it.
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    Neutral party here, after reviewing the thread: I read it as an argument for a causal chain of 2 professors => paper => Greece elects far right. A few problems with this: 1. Paper came far after the idea of cutting government spending, so causation is wrong off the bat, as OP gently pointed out. 2. The aspect of the treaty doesn't have a clear enforcement mechanism, yes. However, it was a major part of many countries actions at the time.[1] 3. "What are they going to do, kick me out?" doesn't obviate rules without a clear enforcement mechanism. 4. It's unclear why Greece electing a far right party at some point in the 2010s is enough to motivate the argument, it has a liberal technocratic government and has turned things around substantially, in fact, recent elections delivered an unexpectedly wide reelection victory. [1] To wit, that's why the Greece stuff took O(years) to resolve. To wit, recently, it was shared that Merkle _broke down crying_ when she felt she was being bullied into enabling violations of it. n.b. On a personal note, I found the tone you're adopting surprising and not the conduct I'm familiar with after 14 years on HN. What stood out was making personal attacks in response to innocuous comments by interluctors, and the aggressive insistence that they don't understand -- dang has a wonderful shibboleth, "come with curiosity", and I don't see that here. I see someone berating other people for engaging at all because it feels like they're questioning you. If it's the case you are 100% wedded to the idea two Harvard professors created "austerity", it's not worth saying anything at all, it's ill-defined and there's a 1000 ways to read "austerity", 999 of them may conflict with however you are internally defining it.
js8 3y ago
> Despite having faked the paper that introduced austerity to the world, had an immense impact on the economy, and caused massive and needless suffering for hundreds of millions of people. [..] But they got a promotion for it. There is a book from Clara Mattei, The Capital Order (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707...), which explains they were not the first, and probably are not the last.
amelius 3y ago
This reads like an accusation in disguise ...
huitzitziltzin 3y ago
Completely and totally different case. You are wrong on the facts. There is no one in the economics profession who thinks Reinhardt or Rogoff deliberately made that error bc they had something personal at stake in convincing policymakers that austerity policies were the right outcome. Quite unlike the cases of ariely or gino or various others. They made an embarrassing error but ultimately it was a coding error.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  This is an appeal to authority and regardless, if you pass off something as proven fact you should have to be damned sure. Being wrong and claiming later that it’s a coding error should not cut it. This should result in a total loss of credibility
  - huitzitziltzin 3y ago
    I don’t mind appealing to authority when I know the economics profession personally. To be clear: it is an embarrassing error. Everyone also thinks this. They have been dragged for it quite a bit. But it was not deliberate. In terms of the “total loss of credibility” … the fraction of empirical papers with some coding error approaches 1. The question is how bad it is.
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  I'm right about the facts, you're misinformed about what is wrong about the paper. They did 3 things in that paper. One of them they have called a coding error. Ok. Two of the 3 were intentional. They intentionally omitted date ranges for some countries. And they weighted countries differently. This they admit to. And they defend. Yet, nowhere in the manuscript does it say that in order to get these results you must apply weights to the data and you must leave out some inconvenient data points. I can make up any argument for anything that I feel like if I start to apply weights to the data designed to make my argument work. They failed the most basic of scientific ethical standards.

lukeasrodgers 3y ago

What do you make of Reinhart and Rogoff’s rebuttal to this criticism? They acknowledge the excel error but dispute the rest. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/opinion/reinhart-and-rogoff-responding-to-our-critics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/opinion/reinhart-and-rogo...

light_hue_1 3y ago
Look at it from the point of view a scientist. They published a paper that claimed they ran analysis X. Reviewers look at it, and believed them, because we usually don't assume that people are lying. And it's hard to read over every line of code and compare it to the paper to make sure they did run the analysis they claimed. But in reality, they did a totally different analysis. They hid data, they fudged data, they inserted weighting factors into the analysis. And they never mentioned in this in the paper. In the article, they claim this was justified. But hiding the true nature of the analysis they did was not. That hiding, of making the paper read one way but the code another, is plan and simple scientific fraud. If what they believed in reality is that the code is correct, and that's the better analysis, then they should have just reported in the paper. The reason they didn't, is because reviewers would have looked at it and said that this is unacceptable and doesn't meet basic scientific standards. So they lied.

stefan_ 3y ago

Even if you are caught red-handed in fraud it's not the end. Dan Ariely, mentioned in the article, continues to be a professor at Duke.

diogocp 3y ago

> the paper that introduced austerity to the world This is complete nonsense. The paper was published in 2010. The principle of fiscal austerity for EU member states was enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 (Article 104) and the accompanying Protocol No 20 on the excessive deficit procedure. [1] > The reference values referred to in Article 104(2) of this Treaty are: > — 3 % for the ratio of the planned or actual government deficit to gross domestic product at market prices; > — 60 % for the ratio of government debt to gross domestic product at market prices. In fact R&R cite the Maastricht Treaty as the source of the 60% magic number in their paper! These numbers were basically pulled out of thin air by a French civil servant in 1981. [2] That is how government policy is actually decided. Not based on an academic paper published 20–30 years after the fact. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/treaty/tec_1997/oj https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/treaty/tec_1997/oj [2] https://openeuropeblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/from-archives-story-of-3-deficit-limit.html https://openeuropeblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/from-archives-st...

light_hue_1 3y ago
You have just enough knowledge to completely misread and misunderstand EU treaties. And, to be rude about it. These are not hard ceilings. God does not descent from the heavens and smite your country when you go over them. Virtually every EU country has gone over these ceilings routinely. Germany is above the 3% mark right now, and has routinely exceeded it! Heck, the average deficit to GDP ratio in the EU is above 3! https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w/2-21042023-ap https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w... These are aspirations to be applied as needed, not a proscription for austerity. The behavior of the ECB, the European Central Bank, is what matters. And that's a political and economic decision made with essentially a free hand (given that it has only one legal goal). Austerity is an economic and political choice. No mechanism in the EU forces it.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  Neutral party here, after reviewing the thread: I read it as an argument for a causal chain of 2 professors => paper => Greece elects far right. A few problems with this: 1. Paper came far after the idea of cutting government spending, so causation is wrong off the bat, as OP gently pointed out. 2. The aspect of the treaty doesn't have a clear enforcement mechanism, yes. However, it was a major part of many countries actions at the time.[1] 3. "What are they going to do, kick me out?" doesn't obviate rules without a clear enforcement mechanism. 4. It's unclear why Greece electing a far right party at some point in the 2010s is enough to motivate the argument, it has a liberal technocratic government and has turned things around substantially, in fact, recent elections delivered an unexpectedly wide reelection victory. [1] To wit, that's why the Greece stuff took O(years) to resolve. To wit, recently, it was shared that Merkle _broke down crying_ when she felt she was being bullied into enabling violations of it. n.b. On a personal note, I found the tone you're adopting surprising and not the conduct I'm familiar with after 14 years on HN. What stood out was making personal attacks in response to innocuous comments by interluctors, and the aggressive insistence that they don't understand -- dang has a wonderful shibboleth, "come with curiosity", and I don't see that here. I see someone berating other people for engaging at all because it feels like they're questioning you. If it's the case you are 100% wedded to the idea two Harvard professors created "austerity", it's not worth saying anything at all, it's ill-defined and there's a 1000 ways to read "austerity", 999 of them may conflict with however you are internally defining it.

js8 3y ago

> Despite having faked the paper that introduced austerity to the world, had an immense impact on the economy, and caused massive and needless suffering for hundreds of millions of people. [..] But they got a promotion for it. There is a book from Clara Mattei, The Capital Order (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707...), which explains they were not the first, and probably are not the last.

amelius 3y ago

This reads like an accusation in disguise ...

huitzitziltzin 3y ago

Completely and totally different case. You are wrong on the facts. There is no one in the economics profession who thinks Reinhardt or Rogoff deliberately made that error bc they had something personal at stake in convincing policymakers that austerity policies were the right outcome. Quite unlike the cases of ariely or gino or various others. They made an embarrassing error but ultimately it was a coding error.

edgyquant 3y ago
This is an appeal to authority and regardless, if you pass off something as proven fact you should have to be damned sure. Being wrong and claiming later that it’s a coding error should not cut it. This should result in a total loss of credibility
- huitzitziltzin 3y ago
  I don’t mind appealing to authority when I know the economics profession personally. To be clear: it is an embarrassing error. Everyone also thinks this. They have been dragged for it quite a bit. But it was not deliberate. In terms of the “total loss of credibility” … the fraction of empirical papers with some coding error approaches 1. The question is how bad it is.
light_hue_1 3y ago
I'm right about the facts, you're misinformed about what is wrong about the paper. They did 3 things in that paper. One of them they have called a coding error. Ok. Two of the 3 were intentional. They intentionally omitted date ranges for some countries. And they weighted countries differently. This they admit to. And they defend. Yet, nowhere in the manuscript does it say that in order to get these results you must apply weights to the data and you must leave out some inconvenient data points. I can make up any argument for anything that I feel like if I start to apply weights to the data designed to make my argument work. They failed the most basic of scientific ethical standards.