We’ve all seen the papers. You know, the ones that report a finding without citing the group that presented the same result years before. Or, more egregiously, claim outright to be the first to report it, when a simple literature search would reveal that not to be the case.
It’s a problem that affects every area of research: Authors omitting key citations, making the results appear more novel than they actually are. Sometimes it’s the result of an innocent oversight, sometimes an outright intent to deceive. The question is:
What should be done about it?
We’re resurrecting a regular feature on the site — “ask Retraction Watch” — to get your thoughts on the topic. Below, let us know how often you notice papers that lack essential citations — and how you believe journals should handle such omissions.
I voted that (a) less than 25% of papers that I read (but more than 10%) omit key references and (b) journals should correct the oversight when it is found. Like, how hard can that be? It could be 1-2 journal pages each year ... small costs, large benefits.
Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis (SBCA) Eighth Annual Conference and Meeting, March 17 – 18 - SBCA is an international group of practitioners, academics and others who are working to improve the theory and application of the tools of benefit-cost analysis.
Our Eighth Annual Conference and Meeting: Improving the Theory and Practice of Benefit-Cost Analysis, will take place at the Marvin Center at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., from March 17-18, 2015. Pre-conference professional development workshops will also take place at the Marvin Center on March 16.
The full conference and workshop schedule is now available on our website, and registration is open. Conference registration includes breakfast, break refreshments, lunch, and evening receptions as well as other activities onMarch 17 and 18. Workshop registration includes break refreshments for half-day workshops plus lunch for full-day participants.
This year's conference, as in previous years, includes several sessions with presentations that focus on BCA topics in relation to environmental issues:
EPA Implementation of Water Pollution Controls & the Role of Cost-Effectiveness
Distributional Considerations in Environmental Policy
Issues in Climate Policy
Accounting for External Environmental Benefits
Assessing Costs and Benefits of EPA Regulations
(Roundtable) Opportunities and Challenges for Benefit-Cost Analysis in the Paris Climate Agreement
I just noticed that the EVISE system, Elsevier has recently introduced as a new online editorial system for [journal], has sent you about 6 automated reminders to complete your review for [journal].
I deeply apologize for this technical mistake that I immediately reported to our technical support staff at Elsevier. In addition, we have been asking Elsevier to stop threatening reviewers of denying access to the submission if review time exceeds a certain time limit. We are very sorry that the EVISE technical staff has still not succeeded in stopping this practice as requested by the [journal] Editorial team, so please ignore the content of these reminders.
I very much hope you can accept my sincere apologies and that we can still count on you having a look at the relevant manuscript as your time allows!
My reply:
Sure, no problem. I ignore the reminders anyway ;->
Here is the 2/17 reminder:
Dear Prof. Whitehead,
You kindly agreed to review the above-referenced manuscript on 03/Jan/2016. We sent a reminder that your review was overdue on 16/Feb/2016 but have not yet received your review.
Please let us know as soon as possible if you cannot complete your review at this time.
If we do not hear from you within the next 85 days then we will process the submission without your input, and you will no longer be able to access the submission to review.
I was hoping they weren't going to send me a reminder each day for the next 85 days.
App State has become quick to cancel classes with the buses won't run. When that happens we are asked to "winterize" our courses. In other words, we're supposed to keep the students busy while they are enjoying no class time. My go to assignment has been Veconlab's supply and opportunity cost experiment. Here is the abstract from Mandell et al. (2009):
This paper describes an individual choice experiment that can be used to teach students how to correctly account for opportunity costs in production decisions. Students play the role of producers who require a fuel input and an emissions permit for production. Given fixed market prices, they make production quantity decisions on the basis of their costs. Permits have a constant price throughout the experiment. In one treatment, students have to purchase both a fuel input and an emissions permit for each production unit. In a second treatment, they receive permits for free, and any unused permits are sold on their behalf at the permit price. If students correctly incorporate opportunity costs, they will have the same supply function in both treatments. This experiment motivates classroom discussion of opportunity costs and emissions permit allocation under cap-and-trade schemes. The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme provides a relevant example for classroom discussion, as industry earned significant windfall profits from free allocation of emissions allowances in the early phases of the program.
Mandell, Svante, Chrles Holt, Erica Myers, Dallas Burtraw, and Markus Wråke. Teaching Opportunity Cost in an Emissions Permit Experiment. RFF-DP-09-22, 2009.
My MBA managerial economics class missed last wednesday and monday and so I fielded and debriefed the experiment on those days.
If students recognize the opportunity cost of free permits then the cap-and-trade and emissions tax regimes should result in the same supply curve. This doesn't happen for all of the students so the supply curve is too high for profit maximization when permits are freely distributed. Here is the estimated supply curve (OLS with random effects, n = 23, t = 16), quantity ranges from 0 to 3, price ranges from 1 to 10 and tax is equal to 0 for cap-and-trade and 1 for the tax regime:
"Last week, the Clean Power Plan was basically dead," said Brian Potts, a lawyer with the Foley & Lardner law firm who represents companies on environmental regulatory issues. "But with Scalia's death, everything has changed."
*No, I don't believe this. Just having fun imagining what the deniers might be thinking.
This paper aims to identify the causal effect of smoking on body mass index (BMI) using data from the Lung Health Study, a randomized trial of smoking cessation treatments. Since nicotine is a metabolic stimulant and appetite suppressant, quitting or reducing smoking could lead to weight gain. Using randomized treatment assignment to instrument for smoking, we estimate that quitting smoking leads to an average long-run weight gain of 1.5-1.7 BMI units, or 11-12 pounds at the average height. These magnitudes are considerably larger than those typically estimated by studies that do not account for the endogeneity of smoking. Our results imply that the drop in smoking in recent decades explains 14% of the concurrent rise in obesity. Semi-parametric models provide evidence of a diminishing marginal effect of smoking on BMI, while subsample regressions show that the impact is largest for younger individuals, females, those with no college degree, and those with healthy baseline BMI levels.
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan suffered a setback this week as the Supreme Court blocked the agency from requiring states to submit compliance plans until the program is reviewed by a lower court. Beyond the Clean Power Plan, and given polarized opinions on various regulatory approaches to tackling climate change, some argue that carbon emissions reductions would be better addressed by a carbon tax.
RFF experts discuss the issue:
Marc Hafstead and Roberton C. Williams III find that a carbon tax is unlikely to reduce the number of jobs in the US economy. Instead, jobs will shift away from polluting industries toward cleaner ones, a transition that can be made smoother by sound policy design.
Similarly, Chad stone notes that a climate rebate delivered through existing tax and benefit systems could “fully offset the impact of a carbon tax on the purchasing power of low- and moderate-income households."
Gilbert Metcalf discusses how including a carbon tax in overall tax reform could “contribute to the overall efficiency of the tax system.”
I'm not sure why a carbon tax is considered less polarizing than any other U.S. policy proposal next to Obamacare, but while we're at it there is also something called cap-and-trade that is unlikely to reduce the number of jobs in the U.S. economy, could generate revenue and rebates. All of the Clean Power Plan critics who are now looking for alternatives, all 3 of them, could consider it as well.
