Science Authors Seek Better Social Science Research Transparency by Kathleen Maclay, University of California Berkeley (02 January 2014) and the journal Science (03 January 2014) ssg: Evidence and causation seem alien to those who confuse ideological persuasion with scientific method. There are many social scientists who do quality work of high integrity but — sad to say — their efforts are dragged down by practioners who cling to botched theory and over-reliance on correlations. Berkeley, CA, USA. An interdisciplinary group is calling on scholars, funders, journal editors and reviewers to adopt more stringent and transparent standards to give social science research more credibility, substance and impact. The authors hope to change a set of practices that they contend has contributed to a distorted body of research that tends to exaggerate the effectiveness of programs that deal with important issues affecting millions of people. These include programs in, for example, health, agriculture, education and environmental policy. They cite as an example of flawed research a 2010 paper by Harvard University economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. It concluded that that when gross external debt hits 60 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, a country’s annual growth declines 2 percent, and when debt exceeds 90 percent, growth is roughly cut in half. Budget hawks seized on its conclusions until economists reviewing the work discovered coding errors, selective exclusion of available data and unconventional weighting of summary statistics. To prevent such errors from working their way into public policy, the 19 authors of the Science paper recommend key changes. Click on the article title to read the complete text at UC Berkeley and review the research paper (cf. below). Promoting Transparency in Social Science Research. E. Miguel, C. Camerer, K. Casey, J. Cohen, K. M. Esterling, A. Gerber, R. Glennerster, D. P. Green, M. Humphreys, G. Imbens, D. Laitin, T. Madon, L. Nelson, B. A. Nosek, M. Petersen, R. Sedlmayr, J. P. Simmons, U. Simonsohn, M. Van der Laan. Science 2014; 343(6166): 30-31. doi:10.1126/science.1245317 Abstract There is growing appreciation for the advantages of experimentation in the social sciences. Policy-relevant claims that in the past were backed by theoretical arguments and inconclusive correlations are now being investigated using more credible methods. Changes have been particularly pronounced in development economics, where hundreds of randomized trials have been carried out over the last decade. When experimentation is difficult or impossible, researchers are using quasi-experimental designs. Governments and advocacy groups display a growing appetite for evidence-based policy-making. In 2005, Mexico established an independent government agency to rigorously evaluate social programs, and in 2012, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget advised federal agencies to present evidence from randomized program evaluations in budget requests. https://sciencemag.org/content/343/6166/30.summary #news #science #scienceeveryday #sciencesunday #socialscience #transparency #experimentation #correlation #evidence #OpenScienceFramework #CenterForOpenScience #research #abstract #sharongaughan
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 14:48:25 +0000
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