Just how do economists reach their conclusions?

Here’s a primer:

Let’s start with how economists reach our conclusions. Non-economists might be forgiven for presuming that we construct our arguments in the same way that they do: apply their preferred mixture of values and interests in order to decide whether or not they like a policy, and then assemble arguments to support that position. [...]

Illusory link between income and happiness

Ttwo Princeton professors, economist Alan B. Krueger and psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, in collaboration with three others from other universities (psychologists David Schkade of the University of California-San Diego, Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan and Arthur Stone of the State University of New York-Stony Brook) are reporting something quite interesting:

While most [...]

The Ward Churchill case

Jon Wiener, professor of history at the University of California at Irvine, recounts the story of the investigation by a faculty committee into allegations of academic misconduct by Ward Churchill, “Native American activist and professor of ethnic studies at [the University of Colorado at Boulder]“. It appears to be a balanced story, and there are [...]

Is Economics the ‘New’ Physics?

For a long time, physicists have had a reputation for boldly venturing into other disciplines. Indeed, in a recent Physics Today article recounting the history of physics since 1931, Spencer Weart specifically mentions the rise of ‘hyphenated physics’ (bio-physics, geo-physics, etc) during this period as a key development.

The natives of the other disciplines, of course, [...]

Online books in materials science?

Note: Originally posted on 24 January 2005.
Towards the end of his Netspeak column in today’s Hindu, J. Murali points to the Internet Text Archive, “an excellent web location that hosts links to several free open source textbook digitizing [or] hosting projects that include Project Gutenberg, Children’s Library, Million Books Project and Open Source Books”. It [...]

Crystallization

Bento, a chemical physicist (or should it be a physical chemist?) has a two part   series on the liquid-to-solid transformation (aka solidification in metallurgy!). The treatment, which uses the concept of an order paramter, is quite common in physics and chemistry literature (actually, statistical mechanics literature). Those working with phase filed models should [...]

Papers retracted by chemistry professor: an update

Remember this post from three months ago? Now, we have an update by Kenneth Chang in the NYTimes. Prof. Dalibor Sames, the Columbia University professor of chemistry, who retracted two papers in March has now retracted four more papers. These papers were published in 2002 and 2003, and Sames was the lead author in all [...]

Flow

Pleasure by itself does not bring happiness. We can experience pleasure (e.g. eating, sleeping, sex) without an investment of psychic energy. Enjoyment on the other hand, happens only as a result of an unusual amount of attention. Pleasure is fleeting and, unlike enjoyment, does not bring complexity (growth) to the self. [...]

Hwang says he didn’t fake it, his underlings did

The disgraced scientist, Hwang Woo Suk, firmly believed his lab’s purported stem cell breakthroughs were genuine until confronted last year with evidence that they were faked, his lawyer insisted Tuesday at the start of Hwang’s trial for fraud. …

The opening comments by Hwang’s lawyer, Park Jong Rok, appeared to stem from Hwang’s long-running strategy of [...]