12 ms·
I became suspicious because the writing style of this paper was very superfluous, yet the conclusions were very strongly worded. Here is an example in the very
by dude_abides 14y ago
I became suspicious because the writing style of this paper was very superfluous, yet the conclusions were very strongly worded. Here is an example in the very first page:
for each additional 1% pre-shutdown Megaupload penetration, the post-shutdown sales unit change was 2.5% to 3.8% higher, suggesting that these increases are a causal effect of the shutdown.
This does not suggest causality. You need more rigorous inductive reasoning, and randomized trials, if you want to conclude causality.
Edit: Just found out that SSRN is not even a peer reviewed journal! ( http://www.ssrn.com/update/general/ssrn_faq.html#no_paper_sub http://www.ssrn.com/update/general/ssrn_faq.html#no_paper_su... )
- andrewfelix 14y agoI agree it would be hard to draw sound conclusions from the study. The changes probably aren't even outside variability. But are these the claims really that outrageous? ie. The biggest piracy site in the world has a slight effect on sales?
- drucken 14y agoIt is meant to be a scientific study. What's the use of an unsubstantiated claim? In fact, its been proven to be highly counterproductive (at least in other fields) as others go on to build works and further claims around it, only to later discover the errors and depth of uncertainties. Using the same principle, I could posit (probably quite defensibly), that the amount of alleged copyright infringment of Megaupload Limited's limited access and centralized services would be dwarfed by that from Bittorrent and other P2P methods.
- pfisch 14y agoThese claims are just conjecture. I mean if it is ok for a scientific paper to be made up of unproven conjecture then I guess it is fine.
- dscrd 14y ago"But are these the claims really that outrageous? ie. The biggest piracy site in the world has a slight effect on sales?" Well, there has been some evidence pointing towards there being a positive effect on sales. So not outrageous but controversial still.
- djcapelis 14y ago> Edit: Just found out that SSRN is not even a peer reviewed journal! It's not really a journal at all. It is a repository for papers in the social sciences, kind of like arXiv is for some other fields. Most of their target audience is well aware of this, but it might seem confusing if you're coming from outside academia. They're not trying to pretend they're something they're not. Putting pre-prints of papers on SSRN is considered good practice. SSRN is actually a pretty important source for open access research.
- anigbrowl 14y agoJust found out that SSRN is not even a peer reviewed journal! Nobody claimed it was. It's a platform for sharing preprints/working papers, like arxiv. Obviously you don't like this study or its conclusions much, but throwing the kitchen sink at it doesn't strengthen your argument either.
- cynicalkane 14y agoYou need more rigorous inductive reasoning, and randomized trials This is usually impossible in social science research studying real-world phenomena that can't be reproduced in the laboratory. It's a cargo cult attitude to think all science must look like an FDA drug application. Part of science is making do with the information you can collect.
- Retric 14y agoI think you have it backwards, economics is for the most part a cargo cult science because it pretends it's OK not to test hypothesis. Many people thought Phrenology was also scientific and they measured things and made predictions. However, if you apply the rules of Feynman's lecture they both fail. http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html