Saturday, April 30, 2011

On the ethics of research cloning

Even though the Journal of Economic Perspectives recently went open access, a move the American Economic Association should be applauded for, I am still receiving physical copies. It is a nice journal to read while lounging in the garden or on a plane ride. The last issue has as usual a good set of interesting articles, including one I had reported on earlier when it was still a working paper. But while checking what I had said about it, I noticed something rather odd: the paper I discussed was ultimately published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. I had to investigate.

The two papers are by Bruno Frey, David Savage and Benno Torgler. They both report on the sinking of the Titanic and discuss the characteristics of the passengers who survived versus those who perished. Both papers come to the same conclusions. The texts are different, though, and the published regressions are slightly different, with no explanation why, because there is no reference to the other paper. One has therefore to read in much detail to understand what the contribution of each paper is, if there is any.

All this is very fishy. It really looks like the authors are playing games here, trying to get multiple publications out of the same work. They do not mention the other work to fool editors and referees into thinking these are original contributions, as required for any submission to those journals. They tweak the results and rewrite the text so that they cannot be accused of blatant self-plagiarism. This is unethical behavior, but it is not unheard of in the profession.

But like a late-night infomercial, there is a bonus. Looking at the author's CVs, I notice that they have a third publication with the same topic and results, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Bruno Frey has also published two short pieces in German in magazines prior to the academic publications: 1, 2, both pdf.

Now, who are the authors? David Savage is a PhD student at Queensland University of Technology. He must have been following orders of the more senior authors, either without realizing their unethical behavior or watching in horror and not being able to do something about it. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt. His adviser is Benno Torgler, who has already an impressive track record for someone whose first refereed publication was in 2002. His RePEc profile lists 105 working papers and 52 journal articles. Looking at the published works, it seems to like to revisit previous papers by adding new twists to them. Nothing wrong with that, but it may explain why there is no major hit in the publications. There is simply too much slicing and no single slice is a major contribution worth a good publication. But early in his career, he published a series of articles on tax morale using the World Values Survey. Using the same data and the same methodology, he managed to publish several articles whose distinguishing feature is only that they look at a different set of countries: Asia, transition countries, Canada, Latin America, and possibly more. While I must confess that I have not read the papers in detail, there is simply too much material, and Benno Torgler may be innocent, I still find these patterns very disturbing.

It took me some time to figure out where Benno Torgler earned his doctorate. It is at the University of Basel, under the supervision of René Frey (Basel) and Bruno Frey (Zurich), who are brothers, after undergraduate studies at the University of Zurich. Which bring us to Bruno Frey. He is a researcher of international recognition, mostly for his work on welfare economics, happiness research, and critiques of fundamental assumptions in economic models. He credits himself with over 600 published articles and books, an astounding number in Economics. Of course, if this number comes about by slicing papers or republishing known results as described above, this number is less surprising. Looking at his list of major articles, one can surely suspect something is not quite right. I do not have the time (or the will) to go all of this, but there is indeed a lot of rehashing the same themes, which is OK when one uses new data sets or new approaches. But seeing those quantities, that seem unlikely.

Another aspect that I find disturbing in Bruno Frey's record is that his recent work has been railing against the tendency of academics (and especially their administrators and grant makers) to look for quantifiable evidence of their productivity, what he calls "evaluitis." He writes against the pressure to publish and the prominence of rankings of research output. I have reported about some of this writing myself (1, 2, 3). But again he seems to be repeating himself a lot, even in published articles, essentially criticizing a game that he seems to be excelling at. Either he is sarcastic or hypocritical, I cannot decide.

I realize the accusations I am making here can have severe consequences. But I am only accusing, not condemning. I leave the reader the opportunity to make her own opinion, as I have linked to plenty of evidence. I hope to be proven wrong, that these three individuals are indeed extremely innovative and productive. But from what I have seen so far, my prejudice is strongly negative in this regard.

Update (Sunday): I have been alerted that there is a fourth publication about the same Titanic study, in Rationality and Study.

Further update: A follow-up post.

44 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why are you wasting so much time on Europe? Europe no good.

Anonymous said...

Bruno Frey has becomes increasingly unethical in recent years, and it is good that someone finally calls him on that. He is now fully exploiting the network of former students and other followers of him and his brother and is conducting nefarious academic politics in Switzerland and Germany. With his influence, he is now bullying his way into journals and magazines. And the way he manages Kyklos is a scandal.

Why does he do this? He is now retired, why would he care? I think he is trying to get more honours, he wants to get his name mentioned as a Nobel Prize nominee and as the preeminent Swiss economist, before Ernst Fehr. At this point, it looks really desperate.

I cannot hide that I do not like him. I do so since I met him at a conference and I was seriously put off by his cocky attitude with anyone in the audience who dare to question anything he would say. Combine that with his new "I am the wise old guy now" view of things, and he is insufferable.

Anonymous said...

Where are Frey's minions? Is anybody defending him? Has he now gone too far?

Kansan said...

Frey's ranking in RePEc using the number of pages in articles is 14. Multiply this number of pages by the impact factor of the journals he publishes in, and his ranking drops to 408. So he manages to publish a lot, but in minor journals. But when he gets in a big journal like the JEP, he is caught red-handed.

The JEP invites papers. I wonder what the editor was thinking there, and especially why no one caught the plagiarism.

Anonymous said...

OK, I'll bite the bullet. I am not a Frey minion, but I can see the value of some of the publication duplication of Bruno Frey. His work is at the fringes of Economics, and he needs to address several audiences. If he publishes in an Economics outlet, it will be largely ignored in Psychology, and vice-versa.

Anonymous said...

He does something else that is worse. He often claims to be the pioneer in applying some new idea. He is not, but by not citing the right papers he gets away with these false claims of originality. To do this, of course, he has to publish his papers in the "wrong" journal. Otherwise the editor or referees catch him

Kansan said...

RePec has now a committee dealing with plagiarism cases. Is this something they would consider?

Kansan said...

Barkley Rosser, editor of JEBO, is frequently commenting on this blog. I wonder what he is thinking about the situation.

Anonymous said...

Why are you wasting so much time in this? Why don't concentrate on your own research?

Economic Logician said...

Why not? I do not particularly like unethical behavior, and when it appears to be at such a grand scale, I like to point fingers.

Kaspar said...

These two papers also look pretty similar to one another. And they do not cite each other, of course.

http://www.bsfrey.ch/articles/450_06.pdf
http://www.bsfrey.ch/articles/458_07.pdf

Anonymous said...

Bruno Frey (UofZurich), Benno Torgler (Queensland UofTech) and David Savage (Queensland UofTech) are known for this kind of approach to academia. They are not serious economists. They have crossed the line with this. No one will take them seriously anymore (even those who were fooled in the first place, like myself). What a waste of journal space.

Economic Logician said...

Yes, it is a waste of journal space, especially as Bruno Frey has been rambling himself that there is not sufficient journal space available to get all good research published.

In a stunning move, Benno Torgler has thanked me for discussing his research and pointed out some other research he has done. I looked at it and have been amazed at how he manages to cite his mentor Bruno Frey for mentioning a study, and said study is not cited.

Anonymous said...

Is Torgler delusional? Can anybody from Australia report?

Anonymous said...

There is an extensive literature on the sociology of panics, none of which they seem to cite. See for a nice summary Lee Clark (pdf).

Anonymous said...

Torgler is delusional. This was verified by colleagues at his university.

Anonymous said...

http://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/bruno-frey

Anonymous said...

Additional fact, Frey-Torgler-Savage claim novelty on this idea- FAIL!!!

Dawson (1995) is 15 years ahead of them
http://www.amstat.org/PUBLICATIONS/JSE/v5n1/simonoff.html#dawson

I do not see them citing him either.

Anonymous said...

These guys are not academics! I've seen Benno Torgler present at a top university in Australia a few years back and it was strange. He was questioned about his data and he froze like a deer in the headlights refusing to say where he got his data from. It made everyone one suspicious about his research and research methods.

Anonymous said...

See slide 22

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/news/events/frey.pdf

Anonymous said...

Please don't spread rumors about well respected and published academics. Our work is peer reviewed and goes through a robust process.

BT.

Anonymous said...

Benno Torgler is that you?

Anonymous said...

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1802367

Is Benno Torgler suggesting he's at Yale University now instead of Queensland University so he has a better chance of publishing the above article?

Seems like dirty tricks again!

Anonymous said...

That is a solid paper. Easy AER publication.

But, who is Marco Piatti?
Another one following the cheating mafia. Econ at the Queensland University of Technology seems to be full of these clowns.

Anonymous said...

Academics in East Asia have now been alerted to this issue.

Anonymous said...

Dear Economic Logician,

you may need to write another blog entry:

From EJMR:

Yes, let's talk about plagiarism in the EJ. Does the following count as a good example:
Frey and Stutzer, "Happiness Prospers in Democracy" published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. (2000)
And
Frey and Stutzer, "Happiness, Income and Democracy" published in the Economic Journal. (2000).

Neither paper cites the other. But Section 5 of the former and Section 3 are almost the same.

Barkley Rosser said...

Kansan inquired what I had to say about all this. As the editor of JEBO when the earliest version of it was considered, accepted, and published, the Nobless Oblige paper EL had previously discussed, it is unsurprising that I have participated in the discusssions about this matter, but have been unable to comment publicly for obvious reasons.

In any case, I think it can now be publicly revealed that my successor at JEBO, William Neilson, has sent a formal letter to all three authors declaring them to be in violation of ethics standards at Elsevier regarding self-plagiarism ("concurrent publications" is the buzz phrase) for submitting such similar papers later to other journals without citing the one published in JEBO, and he informed them that he will not be accepting any papers from them for consideration at JEBO as long as he is editor.

I cannot speak for what other journals may or may not be doing. I also note that while EL and I have often disagreed, on this matter that appears not to be the case for once.

Barkley Rosser said...

I will add that I have actually written a paper on plagiarism, forthcoming in a book of essays by journal editors. It can be accessed near the bottom of my website at http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb and is entitled, "Tales from the editors' crypt: Dealing with accusations of plagiarism, true, uncertain, and false." There is a section in it dealing with self-plagiarism in which I emphasize that the failure to cite closely related papers is the "red flag" of this phenomenon.

Barkley Rosser said...

Kansan inquired what I had to say about all this. As the editor of JEBO when the earliest version of it was considered, accepted, and published, the Nobless Oblige paper EL had previously discussed, it is unsurprising that I have participated in the discusssions about this matter, but have been unable to comment publicly for obvious reasons.

In any case, I think it can now be publicly revealed that my successor at JEBO, William Neilson, has sent a formal letter to all three authors declaring them to be in violation of ethics standards at Elsevier regarding self-plagiarism ("concurrent publications" is the buzz phrase) for submitting such similar papers later to other journals without citing the one published in JEBO, and he informed them that he will not be accepting any papers from them for consideration at JEBO as long as he is editor.

I cannot speak for what other journals may or may not be doing. I also note that while EL and I have often disagreed, on this matter that appears not to be the case for once.

[This comment was originally published on May 12, 2001, but apparently lost during a Blogspot outage. EL]

Barkley Rosser said...

I will add that I have actually written a paper on plagiarism, forthcoming in a book of essays by journal editors. It can be accessed near the bottom of my website at http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb and is entitled, "Tales from the editors' crypt: Dealing with accusations of plagiarism, true, uncertain, and false." There is a section in it dealing with self-plagiarism in which I emphasize that the failure to cite closely related papers is the "red flag" of this phenomenon.

[This message was originally posted on May 12, 2011, but was apparently lost in a Blogspot outage. EL]

Kansan said...

Thanks for the update Barkley. I am glad JEBO is reacting, I am disappointed that all what Frey and consorts get is a slap on the wrist. That letter needs to be published in JEBO and be put on the record. Mentioning it on EL is not going to be sufficient. Otherwise, it sends the message that what they it is not that bad. Getting banned from one journal is hardly a punishment.

Anonymous said...

^Agreed. Tougher measures need to be taken. The Editors of the Journals have to send a strong signal to the academic community that such behavior is unacceptable in academia and the consequences should be severe. The general public and policy makers are, as it is, already skeptical about the research we economists do.

Anonymous said...

There are also very similar papers on how World War II has been reflected in capital markets ....

see: (1)
World War II as reflected on capital markets, Econ Letters (2000):
http://www.bsfrey.ch/articles/344_00.pdf
(2) History as Reflected in Capital Markets: The Case of World War II, Journal of Economic History (2000): http://www.bsfrey.ch/articles/340_00.pdf
They do not cite each other either....

Robert Dawson said...

Anonymous wrote:

"Additional fact, Frey-Torgler-Savage claim novelty on this idea- FAIL!!!
Dawson (1995) is 15 years ahead of them..."

Modesty and accuracy compel me to point out that in the JSE note referred to above, I merely cleaned the data set (not perfectly, but as well as could easily be done in the pre-movie days) of a exercise (not involving formal regression) that was already in anonymous circulation. I cannot claim to have been 15 years ahead of anybody. However, Jeffrey Simonoff's 1997 paper, in the same journal, did apply logistic regression to the same data set. He's the one who was (13) years ahead.
RD

Anonymous said...

Plagiarism Rewarded!!
Last week, Mr. Frey has been awarded with the special degree "Doctor honoris causae" at the University of Innsbruck (http://www.uibk.ac.at/ipoint/blog/884041.html). Obviously, some universities seem to reward the malpractice of Mr. Frey and his co-authors.

Economic Logician said...

This blog post seems to take a life of its own now in Germany and Switzerland. Here is a compendium of stories that I know about.

In English:
Is Bruno Frey sailing on the Titanic? On cloned papers and missing citations Economics Intelligence
"Journal of Economic Perspectives" rebukes Bruno Frey - plus: replies by Torgler and Frey Economics Intelligence
University of Zurich looks at Frey's conduct Economics Intelligence
Bruno Frey, PNAS, and a missing apology Economics Intelligence
A summary of the Bruno Frey affair Economics Intelligence
Bruno Frey fights back Economics Intelligence

In German:
Versteckte Eigenplagiate? - Schwere Vorwürfe gegen Bruno Frey Handelsblog
Sitzt Bruno Frey auf der Titanic? Handelsblog
"Journal of Economic Perspectives" tadelt Bruno Frey öffentlich Handelsblog
Bruno Frey: Starökonom schreibt bei sich ab Handelsblatt
Ich habe nich zu wenig zitiert 20Min online
Professor Frey soll Professor Frey abgeschrieben haben Tagesanzeiger
Bruno Frey - jetzt ermittelt die Uni Zürich Handelsblog
Der Journalist des Handelsblatts schreibt viel Falsches Handelsblog

Anonymous said...

The word of the street is that the particular exercise FST did in their papers in a standard exercise in undergraduate statistics classes. In fact, the very dataset they used is included in the standard installation of the R statistical package.

Anonymous said...

The editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives published correspondence with Bruno Frey where the latter accepts blame for his conduct: pdf.

Anonymous said...

check out these five papers by Frey and Stutzer

Check out page 12 and 13 of this 2002 World economics paper (40 citations):
http://www.bsfrey.ch/articles/365_02.pdf

And page 428 of this 2002 JEL paper (1387 citations):
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2698383.pdf?acceptTC=true

But neither of these two articles cite this 1999 Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics paper (90 citations), check out page 762-770:
http://ideas.repec.org/a/mhr/jinste/urnsici0932-4569(199912)1554_755mpbsw_2.0.tx_2-6.html

And also the conclusions on page 91 of this 2000 Journal of Happiness Studies paper (84 citations):
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u71603h4w2385208/fulltext.pdf

But look on page 919 of this Economic Journal paper (744 citations):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0297.00570/pdf

Anonymous said...

for an overview:

http://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/bfs-co-authors-want-to-defend-yourselves

Anonymous said...

or better:

http://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/for-olaf-summary-of-all-known-plagiarism-cases-involving-bruno-frey-aug-29-2011

Anonymous said...

The habits seems to be equally endorsed by well-known US scholars. Have a look to

Indirect Liability for Copyright
Infringement: Napster and Beyond
William Landes and Douglas Lichtman
by William Landes and Douglas Lichtman, Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 17, Number 2—Spring 2003—Pages 113–124

and

INDIRECT LIABILITY FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT: AN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE
by Douglas Lichtman and William Landes,
Harvard Journal of Law & Technology
Volume 16, Number 2 Spring 2003

The former is almost EXACTLY the same as the latter, just shortened. No cites of course.

Anonymous said...

As they say ... do it like an Austrian!

Anonymous said...

A conference in the defense of self-plagiarism will take place in Erfurt (Germany) on 9 December 2011. It is organized by big Bruno Frey fan Jürgen Backhaus, who has re-published several Frey articles, thereby openly violating copyrights.

announcement (pdf).