Bruno Frey busted
(161 posts)-
I love translating German to English so, so much:
20 minutes online: Mr. Frey, why do not you play with open cards and always beautifully written, where you have published about what your shipwreck research?
Bruno Frey: Because I went through the cloth. Me and my two co-authors wanted to reach a wider audience, so we published our Titanic research in four scientific journals. And I've lost track. -
The 20min interview is hilarious. Essentially, he blames his young co-authors:
Q: Did you learn something from this?
A: I will have to be more closely involved in the publication process myself in the future.And the other guilty party is ZE GERMANS, who are envious of his publication record. Is he nuts?
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Summary? Sure:
1. That he did not cite himself was an oversight. He was so focussed on reaching different audiences that he lost track of what to cite.
2. It was a mistake and he sent excuses to the journals.
3. The Hall 86 paper has nothing to do with what he did and therefore it wasn't really necessary to cite it.
4. As 30e6 said, he has to be more closely involved in the publication process (of his own papers...) in the future.
5. The whole debate is exaggerated. The journalist from Handelsblatt writes lots of wrong stories. He is making up that he is a "star-economist" just to get the necessary attention. And the likely motivation for the journalist to bring up the topic is that the journalist is German. He concludes that Germans are envious people who can't stand that a Swiss guy is on top of certain rankings (many Swiss non-academics will probably buy into this kind of argument. Its in a Swiss newspaper)
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^^^^^
He did not say he deliberately did not cite it. He argues that Hall answers a "completely different question" (different booking classes and survival, whil ehe looks at English vs. Americans), and hence it was far from necessary to cite it. As648f explained. -
The idea worth to accept the paper for one journal is the analysis of the Titanic passenger data and to conduct data mining to find whichever pattern. Even in case the interpretations of the papers were sufficiently different, no journal would have accepted them just for an original interpretation.
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here's an English version of my Handelsblatt article on Frey's dodgy publications. http://olafstorbeck.com/2011/07/07/a-summary-of-the-bruno-frey-affair/
will post English translation and my views on his 20 Minutes interview tomorrow
Cheers
Olaf Storbeck (Handelsblatt) -
The 20min interview is hilarious. Essentially, he blames his young co-authors:
Q: Did you learn something from this?
A: I will have to be more closely involved in the publication process myself in the future.
And the other guilty party is ZE GERMANS, who are envious of his publication record. Is he nuts?That sounds like he is throwing his co-auhtors under the bus...
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There is also the earlier matter of his publishing a piece on Economic publishing as prostitution in Public Choice and then an essentially identical version of it not citing the first one a few years later in the European Journal of Law and Economics (hack, cough).