Call for Papers
International Workshop on Scientific Misconduct and Research Ethics in Economics
Date: 21-22 August 2014
Venue: Swiss Hotel Grand Ephesus, Izmir, Turkey
Workshop website: www.EconEthics2014.org
Workshop calendar:
16 March 2014 (Deadline for abstract submissions)
4 May 2014 (Notification of acceptance)
27 July 2014 (Deadline for full-paper submissions)
Submissions: http://econethics2014.org/
Workshop committee:
Altug Yalcintas, Ankara University
Robert Mcmaster, University of Glasgow
Wilfred Dolfsma, University of Groningen and the Review of Social Economy
Keynote speakers:
James Wible, University of New Hempshire
Stephen T. Ziliak, Roosevelt University
Workshop fee:
250 € (payable upon arrival). Workshop fee includes participation in the workshop, lunches, and coffee breaks.
Our intention is to waive the workshop fee for all PhD researchers This is currently under negotiation with our
sponsors.
Local organizing team:
Altug Yalcintas, Ankara University
Mehmet Basaran, Collective Minds
Funda Demir, the Netherlands for Higher Education in Ankara.
Please note that the workshop is limited by 20 participants Information with regard to lodging and
transportation will soon be available on the workshop website.
*
Since the screening of Inside Job in movie theatres around the world in 2010, research integrity in economics
has been questioned by scholars and public intellectuals. Prestigious economists and policy makers are accused
of conflicts of interest (Ferguson 2010) while prominent economists are charged with plagiarism and
self-plagiarism. Recently, errors and omissions in a number of influential papers, uncovered in 2013 by UMass
researchers, caused scholars to raise serious questions about the reliability of findings in economics. Some of
these economists replied to accusations about themselves while many others have preferred not to respond at all.
These days, economists hear the following question more often than before: “what is wrong with economics?”
Despite serious concerns regarding the honesty of economists, scientific misconduct in economics, entailing
plagiarism, fraud, and fabrication of data, has been among the issues drawing inadequate attention and remaining
unexplored. The number of publications on the collective responsibility of economists is too small and there are
only a few undergraduate and graduate courses in the US and Europe where economics students are taught about
breaches of research integrity. Research ethics is not part of the standard curriculum in many research
universities.
Concerned by the unresponsiveness of the community of economists about the significance of the problem, we
invite authors to submit paper proposals to a two-day workshop on Scientific Misconduct and Research Ethics in
Economics to be held in Izmir, Turkey in August 2014. Submitted articles will first be reviewed by the workshop
committee, involving Altug Yalcintas, James Wible, and Wilfred Dolfsma, for inclusion in the workshop. A
selection of workshop papers will then be invited to the regular submission process of the Review of Social
Economy for publication in a special issue on the same topic. Guest editors of the special issue will be Altug
Yalcintas and James Wible.
In this special issue, we aim at opening a platform for debates on the nature, scope, and pervasiveness of
questionable research practices in economics.
• Nature of questionable research practices in economics: Why do economists involve themselves in breaches of
research integrity? How should one explain the violation of the principle of “truth-seeking”?
• Scope of questionable research practices in economics: What are the forms of breaches of research integrity in
economics? What has ethics got to do with it?
• Pervasiveness of questionable research practices in economics: What is the frequency of cases of breaches of
research integrity in economics? Are these cases just a few “bad apples” or are they a real threat to the
reliability of economic research?
Research topics that we would welcome in this special issue include but are not limited to:
• Cases of scientific misconduct and best practices of scientific conduct in economics (such as the editorial
policies of Econ Journal Watch publishing scholarly comments on “inappropriate assumptions, weak chains of
argument, phony claims of relevance, and omissions of pertinent truths” as well as American Economic Review,
Journal of Political Economy, Econometrica, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, Empirical Economics, and
Labour Economics, among others, making research data and codes available on the websites of journals so that
potential readers are able to replicate the results that papers reach. See, for instance, Dewald, Thursby, and
Anderson 1986 and the website of “Journal Data Program Archives”.)
• Cases of scientific misconduct in social and natural sciences as analyzed from an economic perspective (such
as Hoover 2006; Arce, Enders, and Hoover 2008; Ziliak and McCloskey 2008; Lacetera and Zirulia 2011).
• Surveys providing evidence on the extent of fraud, lack of financial disclosure, conflicts of interest etc.
(such as Gaffney and Harrison 2007; Feld, Necker, and Frey. 2012; Enders and Hoover 2004; List et al. 2001).
• Replication failure, epistemic costs, intellectual path dependence (Wible 1998; Yalcintas 2013; Ramell 2013;
Folbre 2013).
• Student misbehavior and teaching scientific misconduct in undergraduate and graduate programs.
• Normative issues: accountability and proposals for reform (such as codes of conduct, oaths, and honorary
systems, see the 2013 Special Issue of the Review of Social Economy 71 (2), “Oaths and Codes in Economics and
Business”)
References
“Oaths and Codes in Economics and Business”. 2013. Special Issue of the Review of Social Economy 71 (2).
“Plagiarism: Legal, Moral, and Educational Aspects” Conference of European Federation of Academies of Sciences
and Humanities, 4 December, 2011, Amsterdam: http://www.allea.org/Pages/ALL/31/400.bGFuZz1FTkc.html
Arce, Daniel G., Walter Enders, and Gary A. Hoover. 2008. “Plagiarism and Its Impact on the Economics
Profession” Bulletin of Economic Research 60 (3): 231-243.
Dewald, William, Jerry G. Thursby, and Richard G. Anderson. 1986. “Replication in Empirical Economics: The
Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking Project” American Economic Review 76 (4): 587-603.
Enders, Walter and Gary A. Hoover. 2004. “Whose Line is It?: Plagiarism in Economics” Journal of Economic
Literature 42 (2): 487-493.
Feld, Lars P. Sarah Necker, and Bruno S. Frey. 2012. “Scientific Misbehavior in Economics – Evidence from
Europe” Working Paper. Available: http://www.eea-esem.com/files/papers/eea-esem/2012/1745/PAPER%20Norms_EEA.pdf
[Accessed October 2013].
Ferguson, Charles. 2010. “Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 3
October.
Folbre, Nancy. 2013. “Replicating Research: Austerity and Beyond” The New York Times, 22 April.
Gaffney, Mason and Fred Harrison. 2007. The Corruption of Economics. (Shepheard-Walwyn).
Herndon, Thomas, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin. 2013. “Does High Public Dept Consistently Stifle Economic
Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff” PERI Working Paper Series 322. Available:
http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_301-350/WP322.pdf [Accessed October 2013].
Hoover, Gary. A. 2006. “A Game-Theoretic Model of Plagiarism” Atlantic Economic Journal 34 (4): 449-454.
“Journal Data and Program Archives” Website: http://www.aeaweb.org/RFE/showCat.php?cat_id=9 [Accessed October 2013]
Lacetera, Nicola, and Lorenzo Zirulia. 2011. "The Economics of Scientific Misconduct." Journal of Law,
Economics, and Organization no. 27 (3):568-603.
List, John A., C. Bailey, P. Euzent, and T. Martin. 2001. “Academic Economists Behaving Badly? A Survey on Three
Areas of Unethical Behavior” Economic Inquiry 39 (1): 162-170.
Rampell, Catherine. 2013. “A History of Oopsies in Economic Studies” The New York Times, 17 April.
Wible, James. 1998. The Economics of Science: Methodology and Epistemology as if Economics Really Mattered.
(Routledge).
Yalcintas, Altug. 2013. “The Problem of Epistemic Cost: Why Do Economists Not Change Their Minds (about the
‘Coase Theorem’)?” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 72 (5) November.
Ziliak, Steve T. and Deirdre N. McCloksey. 2008. The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error
Costs Jobs, Justice, and Lives. (The University of Michigan Press).
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