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Content:Opp, Karl-Dieter: The Production of Historical “Facts”: How the Wrong Number of Participants in the Leipzig Monday Demonstration on October 9, 1989 Became a Convention JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 598-607.
+ show abstract- hide abstractThis paper deals with the demonstration in Leipzig on October 9, 1989, an important episode
in the history of the East German Revolution. It is generally held that 70,000 demonstrators
participated. This paper shows that this number is clearly wrong. The paper describes briefly
the results of a survey that were inconsistent with this number and how the authors of the study
proceeded to make a new estimate. The paper further outlines how the original estimate was
made and found its way into the media and historical accounts. Finally, some general lessons
are drawn from the case. The case study this paper focuses on is not an example of the faking of
data, but rather of negligent data handling. However, it is argued that the lessons fromthis case
discussed in the final section hold for faked data as well. Krämer, Walter, Gerhard Arminger: “True Believers” or Numerical Terrorism at the Nuclear Power Plant JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 608-620.
+ show abstract- hide abstractFor decades, there has been a heated debate about whether or not nuclear power plants contribute
to childhood cancer in their respective neighbourhoods, with statisticians testifying on
both sides. The present paper points to some flaws in the pro-arguments, taking a recent study
prepared for the political party “Bu¨ ndnis 90 /Gru¨ ne” as a specimen. Typical mistakes include
an understatement of the size of tests of significance, disregard of important covariates and
extreme reliance on very few selected data points. Greiser, Eberhard: One-eyed Epidemiologic Dummies at Nuclear Power Plants. A Reply to Walter Krämer and Gerhard Arminger’s Paper “True believers” or Numerical Terrorism at the Nuclear Power Plant JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 621-627.
+ show abstract- hide abstractKrämer and Arminger in a preceding article in this volume insinuated that in a meta-analysis on
childhood leukaemia in the vicinity of nuclear power plants (NPP) in five countries gross methodological
errors had led to falsified statistics. Major assumptions were a) arbitrary exclusion
of publications with nil results, and b) publication bias in conduct of the meta-analysis. It is
demonstrated that all appropriate publications providing data on incident cases of leukaemia
and on the underlying population or rates of incidence with confidence intervals had been included.
In addition it is demonstrated that all publications excluded from the meta-analysis
either did not provide sufficient data on NPPs or cases of these publications had been already
included into the meta-analysis from other publications. Diekmann, Andreas: Are Most Published Research Findings False? JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 628-635.
+ show abstract- hide abstractIn a provocative article Ioannidis (2005) argues that, in disciplines employing statistical tests
of significance, professional journals report more wrong than true significant results. This
short note sketches the argument and explores under what conditions the assertion holds.
The “positive predictive value” (PPV) is lower than 1/2 if the a priori probability of the truth
of a hypothesis is low. However, computation of the PPV includes only significant results. If
both significant and non-significant results are taken into account the “total error ratio” (TER)
will not exceed 1/2 provided no extremely large publication bias is present. Moreover, it is
shown that theory-driven research may reduce the proportion of errors. Also, the role of replications
is emphasized; replication studies of original research are so important because they
drastically decrease the error ratio. Auspurg, Katrin, Thomas Hinz: What Fuels Publication Bias? Theoretical and Empirical Analyses of Risk Factors Using the Caliper Test JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 636-660.
+ show abstract- hide abstractSignificance tests were originally developed to enable more objective evaluations of research
results. Yet the strong orientation towards statistical significance encourages biased results, a
phenomenon termed “publication bias”. Publication bias occurs whenever the likelihood or
time-lag of publication, or the prominence, language, impact factor of journal space or the
citation rate of studies depend on the direction and significance of research findings.
Although there is much evidence concerning the existence of publication bias in all scientific disciplines
and although its detrimental consequences for the progress of the sciences have been
known for a long time, all attempts to eliminate the bias have failed. The present article reviews
the history and logic of significance testing, the state of research on publication bias, and existing
practical recommendations. After demonstrating that more systematical research on the risk factors
of publication bias is needed, the paper suggests two new directions for publication bias
research. First, a more comprehensive theoretical model based on theories of rational choice
and economics as well as on the sociology of science is sketched out. Publication bias is recognized
as the outcome of a social dilemma that cannot be overcome by moral pleas alone. Second,
detection methods for publication bias going beyond meta-analysis, ones that are more suitable
for testing causal hypotheses, are discussed. In particular, the “caliper test” seems well-suited for
conducting theoretically motivated comparisons across heterogeneous research fields like sociology.
Its potential is demonstrated by testing hypotheses on (a) the relevance of explicitly vs. implicitly
stated research propositions and on (b) the relevance of the number of authors on incidence
rates of publication bias in 50 papers published in leading German sociology journals. Weiß, Bernd, Michael Wagner: The Identification and Prevention of Publication Bias in the Social Sciences and Economics JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 661-684.
+ show abstract- hide abstractSystematic research reviews have become essential in all empirical sciences. However, the validity
of research syntheses is threatened by the fact that not all studies on a given topic can be
summarized. Research reviews may suffer from missing data, and this is especially crucial in
those cases where the selectivity of studies and their findings affects the summarized result.
So-called publication bias is a type of missing data and a phenomenon that jeopardizes the
validity of systematic or quantitative, as well as narrative, reviews. Publication bias exists
if the preparation, submission or publication of research findings depend on characteristics
of just these research results, e. g. their direction or statistical significance. This article describes
methods to identify publication bias in the context of meta-analysis. It also reviews empirical
studies on the prevalence of publication bias, especially in the social and economic sciences,
where publication bias also seems to be prevalent. Several proposals to prevent publication bias
are discussed. Schräpler, Jörg-Peter: Benford’s Law as an Instrument for Fraud Detection in Surveys Using the Data of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 685-718.
+ show abstract- hide abstractThis paper focuses on fraud detection in surveys using Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data as an
example for testing newlymethods proposed here. A statistical theoremreferred to as Benford’s
Law states that in many sets of numerical data, the significant digits are not uniformly distributed,
as one might expect, but adhere to a certain logarithmic probability function. In order to
detect fraud, we derive several requirements that should, according to this law, be fulfilled in
the case of survey data.We show that in several SOEP subsamples, Benford’s Law holds for the
available continuous data. For this analysis, we developed a measure that reflects the plausibility
of the digit distribution in interviewer clusters. We are thus able to demonstrate that
several interviews that were known to have been fabricated and therefore deleted in the original
user data set can now be detected using this method. Furthermore, in one subsample, we
use this method to identify a case of an interviewer falsifying ten interviews not previously
detected by the fieldwork organization. Shikano, Susumu, Verena Mack: When Does the Second-Digit Benford’s Law-Test Signal an Election Fraud? Facts or Misleading Test Results JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 719-732.
+ show abstract- hide abstractDetecting election fraud with a simple statistical method and minimal information makes the
application of Benford’s Law quite promising for a wide range of researchers. Whilst its specific
form, the Second-Digit Benford’s Law (2BL)-test, is increasingly applied to fraud suspected
elections, concerns about the validity of its test results have been raised. One important caveat
of this kind of research is that the 2BL-test has been appliedmostly to fraud suspected elections.
Therefore, this article will apply the test to the 2009 German Federal Parliamentary Election
against which no serious allegation of fraud has been raised. Surprisingly, the test results indicate
that there should be electoral fraud in a number of constituencies. These counterintuitive
resultsmight be due to the naive application of the 2BL-test which is based on the conventional
v2 distribution. If we use an alternative distribution based on simulated election data, the 2BLtest
indicates no significant deviation. Using the simulated election data, we also identified
under which circumstances the naive application of the 2BL-test is inappropriate. Accordingly,
constituencies with homogeneous precincts and a specific range of vote counts tend to have a
higher value for the 2BL statistic. Bauer, Johannes, Jochen Gross: Difficulties Detecting Fraud? The Use of Benford’s Law on Regression Tables JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 733-748.
+ show abstract- hide abstractThe occurrence of scientific fraud damages the credibility of science. An instrument to discover
deceit was proposed with Benford’s law, a distribution which describes the probability of significant
digits in many empirical observations. If Benford-distributed digits are expected and
empirical observations deviate from this law, the difference yields evidence for fraud.
This article analyses the practicability and capability of the digit distribution to investigate
scientific counterfeit. In our context, capability means that little data is required to discover
forgery. Furthermore, we present a Benford-based method which is more effective in detecting
deceit and can also be extended to several other fields of digit analysis. We also restrict this
article to the research area of non-standardized regressions. The results reproduce and extend
the finding that non-standardized regression coefficients follow Benford’s law. Moreover, the
data show that investigating regressions from different subjects demands more observations
and hence is less effective than investigating regressions from single persons. Consequently,
the digit distribution can discover indications for fraud, but only if the percentage of forgery
in the data is large. With a decreasing proportion of fabricated values, the number of required
cases to detect a significant difference between real and fraudulent regressions rises. Under the
condition that only few scientists forge results, the investigation method becomes ineffective
and inapplicable. Coutts †, Elisabeth, Ben Jann, Ivar Krumpal, Anatol-Fiete Näher: Plagiarism in Student Papers: Prevalence Estimates Using Special Techniques for Sensitive Questions JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 749-760.
+ show abstract- hide abstractThis article evaluates three different questioning techniques for measuring the prevalence of
plagiarism in student papers: the randomized response technique (RRT), the item count technique
(ICT), and the crosswise model (CM). In three independent experimental surveys with
Swiss and German university students as subjects (two web surveys and a survey using paperand-
pencil questionnaires in a classroom setting), each of the three techniques is compared to
direct questioning and evaluated based on the “more-is-better” assumption. According to our
results the RRTand the ICT failed to reduce social desirability bias in self-reports of plagiarism.
In contrast, the CM was more successful in eliciting a significantly higher rate of reported
sensitive behavior than direct questioning. One reason for the success of the CM, we believe,
is that it overcomes the “self-protective no” bias known from the RRT (and which may also be
a potential problem in the ICT).We find rates of up to 22 percent of students who declared that
they ever intentionally adopted a passage from someone else’s work without citing it. Severe
plagiarism such as handing in someone else’s paper as one’s own, however, seems to be less
frequent with rates of about 1 to 2 percent. Franzen, Axel, Dominikus Vogl: Pitfalls of International Comparative Research: Taking Acquiescence into Account JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 761-782.
+ show abstract- hide abstractAcquiescence can be the source of a serious response bias in international comparative research.
We demonstrate this by referring to an example taken from environmental sociology.
The effect of wealth on individuals’ willingness to pay for environmental protection is controversially
discussed in the literature. Studies analyzing the International Social Survey
Programme (ISSP) report that individuals in wealthier nations are more concerned about
the environment, while studies using the World Values Survey (WVS) or the European Values
Study (EVS) come up with the opposite finding. The puzzle is resolved when the different levels
of acquiescence are taken into consideration. As it turns out, respondents in poorer nations in
Asia and Eastern Europe have higher levels of acquiescence than respondents in richerWestern
nations. Thus, acquiescence conceals the wealth effect of studies analyzing the WVS or EVS
and the issue is resolved when acquiescence is properly controlled for in multivariate statistical
models.
Book Reviews Aoyama, H., Y. Fujiwara, Y. Ikeda, H. Iyetomi, W. Souma: Econophysics and Companies. Statistical Life and Death in Complex Business JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 783-783.
Postler, Andreas: Nachhaltige Finanzierung der Gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 784-784.
Ramser, Hans J., Manfred Stadler (Hrsg.): Marktmacht JBNST - Vol. 231/5+6 - 2011, pp. 785-785.
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