Environmental Economics

I say bad science and if you don't share data you should be outed as a jerk. Nicole Janz:

I recently read a blog post by statistician Andrew Gelman, in which he commented on authors unwilling to share their data: “I’m not accusing [them] of scientific misconduct in not sharing their data.” I immediately remembered how I said to a group of grad students and post-docs at Berkeley that not sharing your data is not really misconduct, because they are not plagiarizing or committing fraud.

But was I right in saying that? Is withholding your data simply bad science, or does it – should it – fall under scientific misconduct? This question is crucial because we need to find new ways to fight data secrecy. A study by Krawczyk and Reuben published in 2015 sent data requests to 200 authors of articles in economic journals, and to authors of working papers. Only 44% provided the data on request. We are not talking about data that cannot be shared due to confidentiality or privacy concerns – obviously it is fine not to make these data public. In fact, the study had not addressed authors that did not promise to publish their data. Only those who stated that ‘data are available on request’ were targeted.  If we can punish data secrecy – and breaking promises – by labelling it misconduct, this could send a strong signal to the community.

via blogs.lse.ac.uk

Here is the 2012 abstract from Krawcyzk and Reuben (here is the Taylor and Francis link):

This article reports results of a field experiment in which two hundred e-mails were sent to authors of recent articles in economics that had promised to send the interested reader supplementary material, such as alternative econometric specifications, "upon request." The e-mails were sent either by a researcher affiliated at Columbia University, New York or the University of Warsaw, Poland; furthermore, the authors' position (assistant professor) was specified in half the e-mails only. Overall, 64% of the approached authors responded to our message, of which two thirds (44% of the entire sample) delivered the requested materials. The frequency and speed of responding and delivering were very weakly affected by the position and affiliation of the sender. Gender or affiliation of the author, number of citations or journal impact factor or the type of object in question seemed to make no difference. However, authors of published articles were much more likely to share than authors of working papers.

I can understand not sharing your data when it is a working paper. You want to get the paper published before people (a) find that you made a mistake and/or (b) use your data to get an article published themselves. But, breaking a promise to the journal that published your paper by not sharing data or results is really scandalous.

Hat tip: Retraction Watch