Tatsuma Wada: Between Criticism and Pursuit

2018/10/18

In my field of economics, there has been much discussion recently about the increasing page counts of papers submitted to international peer-reviewed journals. Recently, the July 23rd edition of The Wall Street Journal featured an article with a headline starting with "Economists Can't Write Economically." As the article notes, ideas that could actually be summarized in a few pages end up becoming papers of about 50 pages. One reason for this is that, to avoid rejection during the rigorous peer-review process, authors preemptively address potential criticisms from reviewers from various angles within the paper. Of course, the idea that a good paper consists of rigorous analysis capable of withstanding criticism is persuasive, and it is highly unlikely that a paper with immediately obvious errors would pass peer review in a prestigious academic journal.

For this reason, I also take great care regarding the reproducibility of estimations and simulations in my research; however, some papers have pointed out that many research results published in academic journals cannot be reproduced.

Consequently, people outside the research community sometimes suspect that "misconduct for the sake of reputation or securing research grants is rampant among researchers." Therefore, various measures have been taken in recent years to prevent research misconduct. However, what is important here is the difference between intentional falsification or fabrication and unintentional errors that are not immediately obvious, and the distinction between the two is not always clear-cut. The former is a crime in research, but what is the latter?

In the United States during the 1980s and 90s, investigations into research misconduct involved even Congress and prosecutors. In the midst of this, Robert E. Pollack, a professor at Columbia University, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times stating, "Published error is at the heart of any real science." Being overly preoccupied with not making mistakes likely results in nothing more than a rehash of already known facts, much like an authorized textbook. While researchers conduct their work with the mindset that it must withstand criticism, from the perspective of the original purpose of research—the pursuit of new knowledge—it is, in a sense, natural for errors to occur. I tell myself to think big in my research.