Paul Krugman posted an excellent piece revealing major tendencies in data/idea exchange via the Internet. With a smart request, one can retrieve what s/he needs right now (appropriately formatted) skipping all unnecessary information. This option makes almost all research processes much faster except the one related to the creation of new ideas. Thus, this is the time for ideas to compete.
With all (free) math and statistical tools it takes couple days now to process huge amounts of data and get result in publishable formats, i.e. nicely drawn figures and tables. Why wait years for a journal publication? However, all references in any publication still have to be “good”, i.e. top ten journals in the field are required independent on the quality and priority of ideas in the referenced publications. This is important for career and general prosperity. This is like wisdom of old days. Elder generations always had life wisdom advantage to control youngsters. It’s not working any more with technology revolutions every 10 years and signers/football players/computer geeks earning millions.
Can we expect the end of influence of major journals in the economic profession? And what is the difference between physics and economics? The latter question is easier to answer. Physics is chiefly based on experiments which can be formally validated. The scientific community follow up common rules of testing hypothesis, procedures and results and thus represents one big expert. In that sense the influence of top journals as subsets of the unified expert will never fade away. In economics, there is no harmonized understanding of underlying economic processes and there is no formal methodology to reject or accept any hypotheses and/or results. It makes journals to be “political” and follow only one “school of thought” (For example, no American macroeconomic journals like the European school of econometrics demanding statistical justification of macromodels.) . In that sense, the influence of top economic journals will fade away when one formulates a scientific methodology to reject or accept any hypotheses and/or results”. Currently, these journals are strongholds of thinking tanks.
The "Internet economics” is the platform for revolutionary findings in economics since it is not limited by artificial rules of top journals. It’ll take some time to understand that there is a new paradigm. But this is inevitable if the new paradigm describes reality better than any of the existing economic theories. The scientific community easily abandon any theory which is proved to be wrong.
With all (free) math and statistical tools it takes couple days now to process huge amounts of data and get result in publishable formats, i.e. nicely drawn figures and tables. Why wait years for a journal publication? However, all references in any publication still have to be “good”, i.e. top ten journals in the field are required independent on the quality and priority of ideas in the referenced publications. This is important for career and general prosperity. This is like wisdom of old days. Elder generations always had life wisdom advantage to control youngsters. It’s not working any more with technology revolutions every 10 years and signers/football players/computer geeks earning millions.
Can we expect the end of influence of major journals in the economic profession? And what is the difference between physics and economics? The latter question is easier to answer. Physics is chiefly based on experiments which can be formally validated. The scientific community follow up common rules of testing hypothesis, procedures and results and thus represents one big expert. In that sense the influence of top journals as subsets of the unified expert will never fade away. In economics, there is no harmonized understanding of underlying economic processes and there is no formal methodology to reject or accept any hypotheses and/or results. It makes journals to be “political” and follow only one “school of thought” (For example, no American macroeconomic journals like the European school of econometrics demanding statistical justification of macromodels.) . In that sense, the influence of top economic journals will fade away when one formulates a scientific methodology to reject or accept any hypotheses and/or results”. Currently, these journals are strongholds of thinking tanks.
The "Internet economics” is the platform for revolutionary findings in economics since it is not limited by artificial rules of top journals. It’ll take some time to understand that there is a new paradigm. But this is inevitable if the new paradigm describes reality better than any of the existing economic theories. The scientific community easily abandon any theory which is proved to be wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment