Environmental Economics

"Many Academics Have Taken Money From Google Without Disclosing It"

Where have I heard a story like this before?

The tech giant Google has paid academics up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to research topics that support the company’s business practices, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, based on data compiled by the Campaign for Accountability, an advocacy group that has received funding from companies that compete with Google.

The newspaper reported that Google at times compiled “wish lists” of academic studies, complete with titles and abstracts, and then searched for academics who were game to write the papers. In many cases, the Journal reported, the authors of the papers failed to disclose that they had received funding from Google.

Those studies included research suggesting that collecting user data was a fair trade for the services Google provides or that it hadn’t competed unfairly against market rivals. The article also states that Google has provided the research to lawmakers, and sometimes covered travel costs for professors to meet government officials.

The company told the newspaper that since its beginnings at Stanford University, it had maintained close ties to higher-education institutions. “We’re happy to support academic researchers across computer science and policy topics, including copyright, free expression and surveillance, and to help amplify voices that support the principles of an open internet,” the company told the newspaper.

Paul Heald, a law professor at the University of Illinois, was among the professors named by the Journal as having taken money from Google, but he said it didn’t influence his research. He added, “That’s purely oversight” that he failed to mention that Google had sponsored his paper on copyright.

Here’s the Campaign for Accountability’s list of authors who have accepted funding from Google.

via www.chronicle.com

Based on my limited search of the 300+ studies, the economics research acknowledges funding from Google. 

Or, how about climate scientists at tribal council?

They could vote the most obnoxious scientist off the island until the sole survivor gets to explain climate science to the masses:

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt wants scientists to debate the science of climate change, possibly on television.

Pruitt’s idea, outlined to Reuters, is part of a program he’s organizing to challenge the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, including that human activity via greenhouse gases is far and away the primary cause of global warming.

“There are lots of questions that have not been asked and answered,” Pruitt said regarding climate science.

“Who better to do that than a group of scientists ... getting together and having a robust discussion for all the world to see,” he said, according to Reuters.

Asked if the debate should happen on television, Pruitt continued, “I think so. I think so. I mean, I don’t know yet, but you want this to be open to the world. You want this to be on full display. I think the American people would be very interested in consuming that. I think they deserve it.”

via thehill.com

The debate idea is cool because they are just so very informative:

Industry shill scientist: “Everything I see, [industry] has no respect for this person.”

Climate scientist: “Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet on the EPA science advisory board.”

Shill: “No puppet. No Puppet.”

Scientist: “It’s pretty clear...,”

Shill: “You’re the puppet!”

Yes, debates are a good way to provide useful information.

I've been known to have dumb ideas but, risking criticism, here goes: Or, we could have some sort of written forum where,  after years of careful research, results are written up and distributed to peers who help decide what research is worthy of being released by the forum "for all the world to see." 

Phew, that was a close call

News from the Ohio legislature:

Under a previous version of the two-year budget plan, board of trustees at every Ohio college would have had to create a policy for post-tenure reviews at least every five years to help “ensure accountability”

The legislature declined to make a decision on the post-tenure review issues.  This year.

I have mixed feelings on post-tenure review.  Tenure is in place to prevent undue influence on the independent research conducted by academics.  A noble and warranted justification.  However, as an economist trained to identify the incentives in policies, tenure comes with a downside:  once guaranteed a permanent job, the incentives to be productive decrease.  As much as we would like to rely on the intrinsic motivation of intellectuals to continue to produce basic knowledge regardless of the external incentives, that simply is unrealistic.  Passions and motivations ebb and flow through a lifetime.  

Here at Ohio State, while we don't have post-tenure review, we have annual merit based compensation.  At the department level (in my department we have 21 faculty members) the annual state approved raise pool (typically in the 2% range) is reallocated based on annual performance reviews.*  We pool the 2% into a lump sum and then divide the lump sum based on performance--and as department chair, I get the thrill of dividing up the tiny pie--and yes, it is possible to get a 0% raise in a particular year based on lack of performance.  So there is an incentive, albeit low as dictated by the state, to perform both pre- and post- tenure**.  Pre-tenure faculty members have the added incentive that their future depends on demonstrating performance to their colleagues in order to get tenure

Personally, I don't think I would protest too, too much at a post-tenure review system that maintains the decision authority at the department level (we don't want those damned sociologists deciding the future of economists!), and provides for opportunities for recovery.  Perhaps a system with a 5-year review post-tenure and a more frequent review (2-year?) based on a performance improvement plan if the 5-year review is negative, and a trigger mechanism for withdrawal of tenure based on repeated non-performance.

But really, I need to think about this more as to this point I have taken tenure for granted.  And it sounds like this isn't going away any time soon.

*...which makes the title of the article highly misleading: "Tenured professors won't get performance reviews under new Ohio budget plan."

**Other states differ with some having lock-step raises which creates even less incentive to perform. 

Is Climate Change Fair?

Just got around to reading the Hsiang et al piece in Science on the inequitable economics impacts of climate change.  Here's the abstract:

Estimates of climate change damage are central to the design of climate policies. Here, we develop a flexible architecture for computing damages that integrates climate science, econometric analyses, and process models. We use this approach to construct spatially explicit, probabilistic, and empirically derived estimates of economic damage in the United States from climate change. The combined value of market and nonmarket damage across analyzed sectors—agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality, and labor—increases quadratically in global mean temperature, costing roughly 1.2% of gross domestic product per +1°C on average. Importantly, risk is distributed unequally across locations, generating a large transfer of value northward and westward that increases economic inequality. By the late 21st century, the poorest third of counties are projected to experience damages between 2 and 20% of county income (90% chance) under business-as-usual emissions (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5).

Here's a pretty picture (with a really long caption) that sums things up:

Caption: County-level median values for average 2080 to 2099 RCP8.5 impacts. Impacts are changes relative to counterfactual “no additional climate change” trajectories. Color indicates magnitude of impact in median projection; outline color indicates level of agreement across projections (thin white outline, inner 66% of projections disagree in sign; no outline, ≥83% of projections agree in sign; black outline, ≥95% agree in sign; thick white outline, state borders; maps without outlines shown in fig. S2). Negative damages indicate economic gains. (A) Percent change in yields, area-weighted average for maize, wheat, soybeans, and cotton. (B) Change in all-cause mortality rates, across all age groups. (C) Change in electricity demand. (D) Change in labor supply of full-time-equivalent workers for low-risk jobs where workers are minimally exposed to outdoor temperature. (E) Same as (D), except for high-risk jobs where workers are heavily exposed to outdoor temperatures. (F) Change in damages from coastal storms. (G) Change in property-crime rates. (H) Change in violent-crime rates. (I) Median total direct economic damage across all sectors [(A) to (H)].

Env-Econ Summary: We're all screwed, just some of us are screwed more than others.   

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"What is the relevant uncertainty for climate change policy?"

Tyler Cowen on May 3:

A number of people have climbed onto Twitter and outlined (correctly) how increased uncertainty about the impact of climate change increases the value of doing something about it.  There is downside risk, and of course we wish to buy insurance against that in the form of a more active climate change policy.  Still, that is not looking deeply enough.  I see some of the relevant uncertainties as embodied in the following scenario, which is more about policy means than climate change science:

Following a Trump debacle, finally the Democrats win all branches of government and pass a climate change bill.  There is a carbon tax, and further anti-coal measures, but it isn’t enough to shift energy regimes in a transformational sense (besides, truly transformational technologies require luck and “the right time” far more than price incentives).  Instead the United States becomes more like Western Europe, with higher levels of conservation but no ground-breaking new energy source.  Solar goes up by ten percentage points, and wind by two or three, given NIMBY opposition.  Fracking becomes more efficient yet, which nudges fossil fuels back a bit onto center stage.  Nuclear is closed down altogether, and hydroelectric also goes in reverse or stagnates.  China is as China does, and they slowly move away from their installed coal base, in the meantime taking steps to control their particulate matter but not so much their carbon, copying America in this regard.  India starts a shift from coal to natural gas but still has rising carbon emissions.  Africa and Vietnam exceed growth expectations, with a lot of solar power to be sure, but not enough to counteract their growing industrialization.  The carbon tax causes a mild recession in America, and environmentalism becomes less popular.  The global boost in temperature continues, unchecked.  The people who die each year from regular air pollution — six to seven million at last count — diminish in number with economic growth, but we react largely with indifference to that problem, because it doesn’t fit into domestic political struggles very neatly.

Now, to me something like that is the single most likely scenario, albeit with a lot of uncertainty.  I am still happy to try remedial policy measures, and to try them now, if only out of non-complacency or perhaps just desperation.  But come on, let’s be honest.  If all you are doing is trying to combat uncertainty about the science, you are unwilling to look the actual problem square in the eye, just like the climate deniers, the very people you so much decry.

via marginalrevolution.com

Word of the Day: *%#@!!!!!

No point to this post (like most of my posts) but I just found this amusing, and it's summer, and I like to use profanity, and I think Chris Christie embodies everything wrong with politics right now, and he doesn't care so why should I?

Gov. Chris Christie’s trip to a closed state beach during the state government shutdown didn't go over well, according to a Monmouth University poll released Monday.

Almost all respondents — 86 percent — saw the pictures. When asked to describe it, the most popular word New Jerseyans used was "disgusted," at 7 percent, with "anger" and "disbelief" a close second. Other popular words: "Selfish," "hypocrite" and "arrogant." Less than 10 percent either said something positive or that they weren't bothered by it.

And then there was this: "Another 6% of those polled simply used some form of profanity to express their sentiments about Christie's beach day," said the news release circulated with the poll.

 

Cherry-picking empirical results: is it really worth it?

Yes to this:

A sloppy attitude towards statistics has led to exaggerated and unjustified claims becoming commonplace in science, according to one of Britain’s most eminent statisticians.

Speaking ahead of his president’s address to the Royal Statistical Society, Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, said that questionable practices such as cherry-picking data and “hacking statistics” to make findings appear more dramatic threatens to undermine public trust in science.

“We’re not concerned with either lies, utter falseness or fabrications. It’s to do with exaggerations or misleading claims,” he said. “It’s more difficult to deal with.”

The lecture, entitled Trust in Numbers, draws parallels between concerns around the reliability of published scientific research and the rise of fake news and alternative facts in politics.

“Both are associated with claims of a decrease in trust in expertise, and both concern the use of numbers and scientific evidence,” he said.

By the time the general public comes to read about a scientific result, often after it has been filtered through a university press office and a media outlet, they would be right to treat it with suspicion, Spiegelhalter argues.

“In my darkest moods I follow what could be called the ‘Groucho principle’: because stories have gone through so many filters that encourage distortion and selection, the very fact that I am hearing a claim based on statistics is reason to disbelieve it,” he will say in the address on Wednesday evening.

He said that an overwhelming pressure to publish even marginal and mediocre work was partly to blame for dragging down the reliability of published scientific findings.

Half my time as a referee is spent trying to figure out if the authors are cherry-picking results. it's worse at the top journals as authors feel the need to publish there or someone in their department will give them a hard time for publishing in a [gasp!] second tier field journal. There is plenty of room in lower ranked journals for honest research with interesting results that are not totally robust to alternative specifications. If you present one, and only one, result (which reviewers know is an extreme), don't do the robustness checks and/or argue against robustness checks then this is a red flag. If you then exaggerate the implications of your result based on cherry-picked results then "the very fact that I am hearing a claim based on statistics is reason to disbelieve it."

And now, I'll try to dismount from my high horse and write a referee report. 

Hey, how about if you put my name on your paper? I need a publication

This is an interesting reaction to a legitimate question:

In January 2017, a chemist based in Mexico had finished writing a paper describing the structure of a molecule. Sylvain Bernès, at the Instituto de Física Luis Rivera Terrazas, asked his co-author—the head of the lab where the molecule had been synthesized 10 years ago—to review the draft and include any co-authors involved in the initial work.

The researcher added three co-authors to the paper. Bernès became concerned. He wanted to follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship recommendations as strictly as possible. As far as Bernès could tell, none of the new authors had actually contributed to the work, potentially violating the recommendation about authorship contributions.

The current ICMJE authorship recommendations, which were updated in August 2013 to include an author’s responsibility to ensure the accuracy of the work, are as follows:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Bernès emailed the director of the lab and the co-authors to voice his concerns:

I feel that 3 co-authors never participated in that work

He then asked for the authors to explain what “they actually contributed to the work”:

This was probably a bad idea.

His colleague responded:

“de inmediato no hay ninguna duda al respecto: se suspende toda relación de trabajo contigo“. (“there is no doubt about it: any working relationship with you is cancelled”).

via retractionwatch.com

I like the ICMJE criteria for authorship.

I've only had one authorship dispute over the years. A non-lead author wanted to be the lead author, I was junior but the lead author. At the time the hassle wasn't worth it so I went along even after some questions raised by other co-authors. I wish I had had the stomach to ask the question above.   

And here is some unsolicited advice: when you pursue this sort of behavior (and even less egregious behavior) your co-authors won't want to work with you again. 

I'm cleaning out my email inbox (1800+ messages)

I'm sending this message to a bunch of people that sent me a message that I never replied to (and I should have):

Sorry that I never got back to you on this ... I just stepped down as department chair and I hope to be a better human being sometime in the near future.