A few years back Dubner and I wrote a piece on Slate heralding a remarkable young economist, Emily Oster. She has continued to do great work.
She also has done something incredibly rare for an academic economist: she has admitted she was wrong.
In places like India and China, there are many “missing women.” In other words, the sex ratios in those places are out of whack. This is especially true now with the availability of ultrasound machines to aid in sex-selective abortion, but it was true long before that technology became available.
Emily wrote a paper arguing that high rates of Hepatitis B in China explained a large part of the missing women puzzle. Medical data suggested women with Hepatitis B gave birth to more sons — many women in China are infected, thus too many sons. It seemed like a crazy theory when I first heard it, but she put together extremely compelling evidence from a variety of sources to support her argument. Eventually we published it in the Journal of Political Economy, where I was an editor.
Then along came a host of other academics, including my friend and former student Ming-jen Lin, who gathered data from new sources that didn’t support Emily’s conclusions. Usually, these debates become quite acrimonious and linger on until no one cares any more. Certainly no one would admit they were wrong.
Much to Emily’s credit, however, she hit on a way to run a new study that could provide a “definitive” (or as definitive as you can get with this sort of social science research). She gathered new data in China, and after she analyzed it, she found that it did not support her conclusions. So she wrote a paper saying exactly that.
I have great admiration for her doing this. I know a lot of people who wouldn’t have done the same thing. They wouldn’t have undertaken a study that could show their biggest result was wrong, and if they found a negative result, they would try to bury it.
Also, hats off to Justin Lahart at the Wall Street Journal who wrote this article on the topic. Here are the key papers.
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. You can also watch it on 
I too am a young researcher (not running my own ship yet, but someday…) and I say BRAVO to Emily for having the guts to just say she was wrong, publish a correction, and move on. I can’t actually think of any other occasion where I’ve read or heard about that. Usually researchers either claim others “misinterpreted” the finding and use that mask to hold up a “clearer” (i.e., often completely different) explanation… or just resort to fighting like children over a toy, the chief difference being that scientists use bigger words and longer sentences. (Every now and then a reasoned debate emerges, but the far more common result is something like “You’re stupid and wrong!” “No, YOU’RE stupid and wrong!” “Oh yeah? Well, you’re stupider and wronger!” “Am not!” “Am too!”)
No doubt some researchers will see this as a sign of weakness on Emily’s part, but then, some researchers probably think our dear Mr. Levitt is a sellout and a hack for writing this blog
I would hope that such honesty isn’t suprising, at least it shouldn’t be.
a) You get another publication out of it.
b) You maintain intellectual integrity.
Heck, my dissertation has an appendix which I like to refer to as “Why this dissertation was a stupid idea”.
#4 said: “She will never get a job in the Bush administration.”
Unfortunately most politicians of whatever party or ideology subscribe to the “never admit fault” principle. The reason? It gives your enemies something to bludgeon you with, and disappoints your own followers (and the more ardently they follow you, the greater their disappointment).
Politicians are known to go so far as to resign in disgrace, yet STILL refuse to admit their wrongdoing, even though the whole planet knows what it is (e.g. ex-governor Spitzer, who was a Democrat).
“I know a lot of people who wouldn’t have done the same thing. They wouldn’t have undertaken a study that could show their biggest result was wrong, and if they found a negative result, they would try to bury it.”
I don’t doubt this, but it doesn’t bode well for any findings in any field. Too many people don’t realize how true this is and the result is the closed-minded thinking, bipartisanship, and extemism that pervades modern society.
I would echo Phil’s (#8) sentiments that really this is what she *should* have done, but I guess it really does deserve extra praise since so many other “experts” cannot come to terms with their past mistakes and biases.
I am getting that creepy feeling. I have the freakonomics desk calendar and on May 21st the factoid was this very piece from Emily Oster.
BTW, I bought the desk calendar in late January. At a steep discount. Just using the skills I learned from this blog.
This might explain part of the imbalance but how much?
The article does nothing to illuminate this.
Everyone seems eager to embrace the idea that infanticide and selective abortion is not occurring when there is much evidence that it is.
This posting isn’t about why is the Chinese has a disproportionate male to female population. This posting is to applaud a research who did something rare, admit fault.
There’s a lot of people even in the science community that wouldn’t even test opposing theory, and I have to say it’s great to hear there’s still actual researchers, versus those who treat their science as a religion.
Thanks for pointing this out. And thanks Emily. The world (especially the U.S.) could use more people who are willing to reconsider their opinions and / or admit when they are wrong – at all levels of society.