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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I'm not entirely convinced that writing against polywater was the cause of anyone's career stagnation.

I would say it is worth considering whether correlation (i.e. writing "con" opinions on polywater correlates with lower citations and earnings later) is really causation in this case. (If this is addressed in the larger study, my apologies - this is just looking at the abstract.)

If you have the time to write papers opposing polywater, doesn't this mean less time devoted to your own research? Could it mean your own research career is stalling? Or that you are more interested in getting your name out there rather than producing meaningful results of your own? If you are too busy with your own pressing research, are you really going to take time out to write against what seems to you to be an obvious scientific dead-end?

Engaging contrarian views may be unproductive. Or it may signal an underlying lack of productivity in the rest of one's work.

Interesting study and fantastic blog.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

This was a good discussion of some issues related to my paper---sorry to add to it way late. Another related example: Stigler is not much remembered for his refuting Berle and Means, even though their book was important before the Stigler refutation. I say a bit more on this at:http://www.artdiamondblog.c...

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