The R-squared on this is kinda low, no? (Nobel prize edition)

An economist who would prefer anonymity points to the above wacky graph of a “robust regression.” It’s from a paper written by 2 out of the 3 recent Nobel prize winners in economics!

The full paper is here, and my correspondent points us to p. 921 of the published version.

My correspondent writes:

They can do what they want. They ignore all criticism, even when repeated by mainstream economists in whispers.

“They ignore all criticism” seems pretty standard in science. I guess the only hope is for the field to advance through external criticism. In that sense, it’s fine for questionable papers to be published, as long as data and code are made available and as long as the journals do not hold criticism to higher standards than the original work.

Unfortunately, giving out Nobel prizes is kind of the opposite of criticism (and here’s another recent example).