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Elaine K. Hill, a doctoral candidate in Cornell University’s department of applied economics and management, found evidence that fracking is associated with the frequency of low birth weight babies. The findings of her study implied that for mothers living close to a fracking site, the probability of a low birth weight baby increased by 25 percent.
While this might be important information for government officials and the general public to have when considering restrictions on fracking, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin is outraged that an unpublished study is being widely circulated and could impact public policy. From his blogpost, it sounds like Revkin gave Hill a really serious grilling about the ethics of allowing her unpublished study to influence debate on a major national issue. (Don’t you wish reporters would just once give the same sort of grilling to Jamie Dimon or some other corporate honcho?)
There are two problems with Revkin’s outrage. First, while he wants to be a real tough guy and show that this study should not be taken seriously, absolutely nothing in his piece calls into question the main findings of the research. Revkin presents at some length the views of David Ropeik, who Wikepedia identifies as “an independent consultant to government, business, trade associations, consumer groups, and educational institutions.”
While Ropeik appears angered about Hill’s speculation on how fracking might affect the number of low birth weight children, he gives no reason whatsoever to question the main finding. Specifically, Ropeik does not in any way question the statistical relationship that Hill found between fracking and low birth weight children. If the study was as bad as he seems to think it is, it should have been easy to find at least some potential flaws in its statistical analysis. Apparently he didn’t.
Another source raises some very tentative questions about the statistical method, but does not really draw them out. As a practical matter, Revkin has given readers no substantive reason for questioning the basic finding, that being near a fracking site substantially increases the risk for pregnant women of having a low birth weight baby.
Moving beyond the substance, Revkin seems to find it outrageous that an unpublished study would have an impact on public debate. Surely no serious news outlet would ever take the findings of an unpublished study seriously.
Is that true? Five years ago, the Washington Post gave a column to an economist affiliated with the conservative Manhattan Institute to tout the benefits of new drugs. The economist, Frank Lichtenberg, argued that new drugs increased life expectancy and lowered overall health care costs based on the findings of a then unpublished study. The quite explicit moral of the story was that the government should be willing to pay for expensive new drugs through Medicare, Medicaid and other public health care programs. (Here’s one of my pieces making fun of Lichtenberg’s study.)
In economics at least, unpublished studies find their way into print all the time. That would concern me, except I have seen all sorts of dreck also find its way into highly respected journals. It would be nice if we could view the academic review process as providing efficient and effective quality control, but we don’t live in that world.
Hill has uncovered an important finding. If there is some fundamental error in her methodology then the more senior people in the field who are condemning her, should be able to quickly identify it. Revkin found people with plenty of bad things to say about Hill, but he was apparently unable to find anyone with fundamental questions about her methodology or who could suggest an alternative explanation for her findings.
Given the importance of these findings, it would have been irresponsible for Hill not to make them public. It’s unfortunate she has to deal with people who are more concerned about credentials than science.
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economy and Policy Research. He also writes a regular blog, Beat the Press, where this post original appeared.
9 Comments
It seems to me that the 25% birth-weight reduction through proximity to Fracking establishes the process to be a kind of poisoning.
Do our politicians intend to poison our children, just because somebody gave them some money?
… and to deal with bought-and-paid-for journalists, academics, and consultants who are more concerned about the bottom-lines of their sponsors.
http://blackagendareport.com/
It doesn’t appear to have undergone peer-review yet if it hasn’t been published. And if this is a doctoral candidate then the work probably hasn’t been defended yet. When you add that to the fact that this work is coming out of a school of applied economics and management rather than say a school of public health (are there any epidemiologists or biostatisticians in this school or on the Dissertation Committee?), I’d say there are lots of red flags without even getting into the statistics or study design. Correlation is not the same thing as cause and effect btw.
I live in PA and am sympathetic to the cause but peer-review, credentials, and expertise all matter – a lot!
I don’t understand why people who are arguing on such studies (Pros or Cons). After watching Gasland DVD, one can clearly see the ground water in Fracking area is contaminated with Hydrocarbons. And when that happens, expect health problems within the neighboring community (Benzene is the main culprit).
Revken obviously knows shit about how academic research is now disseminated. Except for scoops (like discovering the form of DNA) it is circulated in working papers before publication. Publication is the final step. By the time something is published, it is usually out of date. This is particularly true in economics, where no one bothers to replicate anything.
Absolutely, either Revken doesn’t know, as he should if he’s going to raise the matter, or he’s willing to bullshit an unknowing public on that point because he really has no instantly dismissive criticism to make of the paper.
And I’ve certainly heard of similar practices in other disciplines, especially if all that’s needed is data which might already exist.
She also has to deal with people protecting an industry. It would be refreshing if a “journalist” like Revkin would choose to exhibit his adversarial chops against the powerful on behalf of the powerless rather than the other way round.
Well, sure, but any argument ought to stand on its own in any case. If the science and methodology is not sound, then find the flaw and point it out. What bothers me the most though is that the same standards are not being applied to claims made by industry supporters. Where are the peer-reviewed studies supporting all the ridiculous claims made by the fracking industry? Is there any independent, peer-reviewed work showing this potentially dangerous technique to be safe? Note that Revkin is basing his attack on the issues of “transparency” and to be fair he has attacked the industry for not being transparent. But I still don’t like his equivalency: not disclosing the toxins you pump into the ground, or how much money you are pouring into academia and legislatures is in no way equivalent to using an unpublished study, wherein the methodology and data are all laid out. This is a “both sides are equally at fault” cop-out, when in fact the debate is notably one-sided. And what is particularly disingenuous is demanding that a study like this be peer-reviewed before its findings are used–a lengthy process–whilst fracking itself proceeds full pace without any adversarial review of any kind by regulators. The burden of proof is always on the critics, it seems.