Bruno Frey (Image: Hannes Röst via Wikipedia)
After I wrote a large piece in Thurday’s Handelsblatt on Bruno Frey and his dodgy papers on the Titanic, Frey is fighting back. “20 Minutes”, a free daily newspaper edited in Zurich, published a remarkable interview with him on Friday.
(Many thanks to Marco Hafner aka “RBK_31″ on Twitter and a bloke calling himself Hans Wurst on this blog for pointing me to the piece.)
Below, you find an unofficial translation of Frey’s interview done by myself followed by my interpretation of Frey’s answers.
20 Minuten Online: Mr Frey, why didn’t put all cards on the table? Why didn’t you cross-reference between your articles on the ship catastrophes?
Bruno Frey: Because I just overlooked it. My two coauthors and I wanted to reach the broadest possible audience. Hence, we published our research on the Titanic in four different journals. While doing this, I lost track.
How could this happen to an experienced researcher like you, who has published so many academic papers?
We went through a long production process, and in life, you sometimes just make mistakes. I apologised to the affected journals.You also forgot to quote a 1986 paper dealing with the Titanic which addressed a similar question.
That paper dealt with a completely different research question: Why survived more passengers from the first class than from the third? This was the answer: Because the rich in those days got help more easily than the poor. We, however, wanted to know why more people from Britain than from the United States drowned.And why’s that?
Because the English in those days obliged to the rules of a gentleman and did not try to get a seat in the life boats by any means. They did not knock other passengers over. We also discovered that the crew took – instead of helping the passengers – took care of their own safety first.However, you should have cited the older paper anyway.
That was not compelling at all.Which lesson does this debate teach you?
I have to deal with the publication process more closely.Do you think the excitement about the missing citations is over the top?
Yes. The journalist of the German paper Handelsblatt who published a large piece on that matter yesterday, wrote a lot of wrong things. Additionally, he exaggerated my academic achievements. He described me as an economic bigshot (“Star-Volkswirt”). This exaggeration was necessary for making the article relevant.Do you think you’re treated unfairly?
I ask myself if the German are envious. Maybe some people in our neighbouring country don’t like the fact that a Swiss like me is often No. 1 in the rankings.
From my point of view, this interview is remarkable in a number of ways.
First of all, we can be pretty sure that Frey has not been misquoted by “20 Minuten”. In the German-speaking world, Q&A interviews are usually being published only after they have been reviewed and edited by the person who gave the interview.
I don’t know if this is also true for the interview Frey gave to “20 Minuten”, but I would be very surprised if this was not the case.
From my point of view, these are the most amazing points of the interview (some of them have also been raised on the “Economic Job Market Rumor” forum).
1) Frey contradicts Torgler with regard to the reason why the reference to the Hall (1986) paper is missing. Torgler wrote me that they just did not know the paper.
In the interview, however, Frey argues that the paper was dealing with a different research question and it was “not compelling” to cite it.
This collides with the views of Benno Torgler, Wayne Hall and David Autor, the MIT professor who’s the editor of the “Journal of Economic Perspectives“.
Trogler wrote to me:
“We were not aware of [the other studies]. We haven’t seen the Hall paper published in Social Science & Medicine beforehand, otherwise we would have cited it.”
Autor wrote me:
“My reading is that there is considerable overlap between Frey et al. and this 1986 paper. It would be extremely difficult to establish that Frey et al. knew of the Hall paper and had borrowed from it. Absent such proof, I would not make such an allegation. However, Frey et al. should have known about this article. It is their responsibility as scholars to fully research the literature in their field of study, and to acknowledge prior contributions accurately and fairly.”
It’s really weird that Frey now questions that the Hall paper should have been cited at all. Does this mean that he did not cite it on purpose, because he thought Hall’s paper was not closely related to their work? From my point of view, this contradiction increases damages their credibility and increases my personal suspicion.
2) Frey says that the missing cross-reference between his similar papers happened unintentionally and because he “lost track”. However, a number of people confidentially told me that this by far is not the first case of self-plagiarism conducted by Frey. If they are right (I can’t make any final judgement right now, but will have a look at this issue), his explanation would be not very credible, to say the least.
3) Frey accuses me of writing “wrong things”. As I’ve already pointed out here, I’m happy to correct any factual error I’m made aware of. (Just post a comment on the blog or write an email to o [dot] storbeck [at] gmail [dot] com.)
However, neither he nor Torgler nor anybody else complained to Handelsblatt.
There was a slight mistake in the piece published by the Swiss daily “Tagesanzeiger”, though: They claim that Wayne Hall, Benno Torgler and David Savage all work at the same University in Brisbane. That’s not true, and I’ve never made this statement. Hall’s at the University of Queensland in Brisbane while Torgler and Savage are at the Queensland University of Technology in the same city. I pointed ”Tagesanzeiger” to this on their website.
In my original post on the whole thing, I initially got the affiliation of Torgler and Savage wrong. I affiiliated them with the University of Queensland. I did not know where Hall was working at that point of time. Within minutes after I put the post online, a graduate of that institution pointed me to this mistake and I rectified this error.
I invite everyone to fact check my articles. Whoever finds a factual error with regard to Frey’s Titanic papers will be invited to my city of birth, Gelsenkirchen. I’ll take you to a home game of the iconic (and chronically unsuccessful) football club Schalke 04. I’ll pay for the ticket, the beer and the currywurst (but not for travel costs).
I’ll also send an email to Frey and ask him to elaborate his claim.
4) Frey says that I exaggerate this academic achievements when I call him a top economist (“Star-Ökonom”). He tops the lifetime-achievement category of the Handelsblatt ranking, is the German-speaking economist with the most downloads on Repec and No. 38 worldwide and received numerous awards.
If Frey isn’t a top economist, who is in the German-speaking world? (Well, apart from you, Professor Sinn, of course. 
5) In a way, Frey is trying to shift the blame to his coauthors. Between the lines he says this only happened because he was dealing with the production process of the papers at arm’s length. (He argues that the lesson he takes home is that he has “to deal with the publication process more closely”).
On the EJMR forum, somebody puts it like this:
“That sounds like he is throwing his co-auhtors under the bus…”
Benno, what do you make of this?
5) The last answer of the Q&A, where Frey is dwelling on his nationality, is completely ridiculous, from my point of view. I don’t give a damn which passport is in his wallet. He could be Bavarian, Scottish or from southern Sudan, this would not affect my views on his conduct.
Recently, as some readers may remember, I’ve criticised the truly German Hans-Werner Sinn harshly, and several years ago my colleague Norbert Häring rightly criticised the dodgy behaviour of Steven Levitt (an American) as an editor of the Journal of Political Economy.
Additionally, I don’t know how many times I’ve praised the Econ Department of the University of Zurich and its researcher, especially Bruno Frey and Ernst Fehr. (Example one, two, three, four, five and six). On top of that, our research rankings nowadays are even compiled by a Swiss institution, the KOF Swiss Economic Institute.
Suggesting that I (a German) attack Frey (a Swiss) because of his nationality completely misses the point and is utterly helpless.
Of course, it would have made a big difference if Frey had been a Schalke supporter, though. Then, I would have kept my mouth shut.
Frey’s argument is incredibly poor and way below Frey’s (and my) dignity. To me, this shows that he is completely desperate.
Another big irony is that Frey et al framed their work on the Titanic as an examination of ” behaviour unter extreme circumstances”. In this realm, Frey’s interview is another case study.
Update: This is the email I sent to Bruno Frey (cc Benno Torgler and David Savage)
Dear Professor Frey,
With great interest I read your interview in “20 Minuten”
(http://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/23158193)You make the claim that I wrote “a lot of wrong things” in my article
for printed Handelsblatt (the article is available online, here:
http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/oekonomie/nachrichten/staroekonom-schreibt-bei-sich-selbst-ab/4367878.html)I’m not aware of any factual errors in my articles about your work.
However, if there are any, I’m happy to correct them instantly. Hence,
I’d be grateful if you were able to elaborate what precisely is wrong
in my articles.I’d also ask you to have a look at my English translation of your
interview that I published on my blog.
http://olafstorbeck.com/2011/07/09/bruno-frey-fights-back/Please let me know if there are any issues with my translation of your
words. I’m happy to improve the translation.Many thanks and best regards
Olaf Storbeck
Update: In an ealier version of the English version of Frey’s interview, there was a slight mistranslation. Initially, I translated his answer to the question which lessons this debate teaches him like this: “I have to deal with the production process more closely.” However, in fact he said: “I have to deal with the publication process more closely.” Apologies, and many thanks to Mario, wo pointed me to this error in a comment on this blog.
Update II: Christopher Shea picked up the issue on ”Ideas Market”, a blog by the “Wall Street Journal”: “Economist Slammed for ‘Concurrent Publications’”. Great post, many thanks. However, I’d like to point out (as I’ve done before several times) that I joined the party rather late. The issue was discovered by Andrew Gelman (NYU) (in an earlier version of this post, I misspelled the Andrews last name as Geldman, apologies) and an anonymous blogger calling himself “Economic Logician” several month ago and was also intensively discussed on the “Economic Job Market Rumor” forum.
Chris writes that I’m “hounding” Frey. I’m not too found of this idea, to be honest. This sounds like me being on a personal crusade. I don’t think I am. This is not to be meant personally and I don’t have any dog in this fight. I really liked Frey and his work and wrote about him and papers by him in very favourable terms in Handelsblatt a number of times. I still think the discipline owes him a lot.
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Nice post.
Frey going against Torgler and Savage! The truth is coming out.
Shows the measure of the guy and how desperate he is to get out of this by blaming the others on his team.
Even more proving is that he is retired or will be soon, hence his opportunity cost of being punished is the lowest out of the three (Torgler’s and Savage’s academic careers are over according to numerous profs. in the US). But still he blames Torgler and Savage, which proves that all the academic crimes were done with intention (it is not too wise to work with Frey).
And, the statement that the 1986 Hall paper is not worth citing is crucial: (1) shows that he had read the paper and knew about it beforehand, (2) they copied Hall’s idea of using data on the Titanic, which is just low. At the same time, if any editor of an economics journal (such as the JEBO or JEP) knew of the Hall paper, the Frey et al. submission would have been desk rejected (based on plagiarism and low creativity).
There is also an interview in the print version of the NZZ today. The Swiss media is really covering the case extensively, it seems.
Many thanks for this pointer, I’ll try to get hold of the interview.
The Swiss press joins party pretty late. Economic Logician wrote me tha his posts were mailed to some newspapers in Switzerland monthsq ago….
another claim/example from EJMR:
http://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/plagiarism-in-ej/page/3
This time the top UK based journal is involved:
“Yes, let’s talk about plagiarism in the EJ. Does the following count as a good example:
Frey and Stutzer, “Happiness Prospers in Democracy” published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. (2000)
And
Frey and Stutzer, “Happiness, Income and Democracy” published in the Economic Journal. (2000).
Neither paper cites the other. But Section 5 of the former and Section 3 are almost the same. “
Olaf, have you heard anything from the hierarchy at the institution of the other co-authors? Are they taking it as serious as those at the University of Zurich?
No, I haven’t been in touch with the Queensland University of Technology at all. Aren’t there any economics journalists in Australia around?
Let’s try the factual errors thing. You’re writing in Handelsblatt:
“Torgler und Frey erklärten dem Handelsblatt, sie hätten erst durch die Handelsblatt-Anfrage von all diesen Aufsätzen erfahren und noch nie etwas von Wayne Hall gehört.”
So you claim that Frey told you he didn’t know about the Hall paper from 1986. In the interview in “20 Minuten” Frey says he knew about it. So concerning this bit of information either Frey has been lying to you or to 20 Minuten or your claim is wrong and it was only Torgler who told you that he didn’t know about Wayne Hall.
however, frey/torgler/savage are authors and therefore responsible. The – if I may say so – economics of scale argument of coauthoring a paper comes with the risk of shared responsibilty of what your coauthors publish under one’s own name.
hopefully the frey/torgler/savage case changes the rules of the game of the journal business. There is no free authorship-lunch.
Detlef, thanks for you comment. However, I think you get it slightly wrong here.
In the interest of fairness, I’d like to point out thatt in “20 Minutes” Frey does not say anything about the question if he knew the Hall paper when he wrote his papers or not. He’s contradicting Torglers claim (made in anin an email to me and published here in an earlier post) that they would have cited the paper if they had known it.
The NZZ on Saturday quoted Frey with the remark that the Hall (1986) paper was published in a journal he had never heard about and that was made available in electronic databases only in 2010. This is more or less consistent with Torgler’s claims (which are probably correct wrt to Repec. I’m not sure about Google Scholar, though.
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Great job! and you should also write about this blunt plagiarism in Economic Journal by Vania Sena ..she is not a ‘star’ and not ‘swiss’.. so she wont blame ya
http://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/plagiarism-in-ej
Olaf, it looks like you play the role of the party pooper, you should have been more patient with your story: Is it not obvious that Frey was over the last decade setting up his own case study by publishing almost the same papers in different journals? The goal of the study is to shed light on the sloppy publication process of various journals. The results of the study would have been published next year…..in 4 different journals at the same time, of course.
So this was all part of a big experiment… Gosh, this is utterly brilliant. Frey really deserves the Noble prize
Do you think that this discussion will have any repercussions for the reputation of the journals involved?
A quick look at the Handelsblatt journal ranking 2010 http://tinyurl.com/6bcn3r2 shows that the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization ranks at 59 and the Journal of Economic Perspectives at 119. Other key indicators like Impact Factor and Eigenfactor show even much better standing: sometines among the top 20.
Nice work; and how I love it when my fellow country men complain about German giants being resentful of Swiss dwarfs being even bigger giants.
Regarding the translation: It’s the publication process (Publikationsprozess) he has to deal with more closely, not the production process. In the 20min interview he mentions both, so that’s probably why you messed it up.
But I guess this doesn’t win me a stay in Gelsenkirchen?
Just noticed another great one. In the second to last answer he whines about you making him a big shot – and then in the last he actually dares calling himself a big shot (“look at me, I’m No. 1 so often!”) and you’re attacking him because you’re jealous and/or begrudge the Swiss dwarf his giantly success.
I mean, how contradictory can you get without blushing?
Mario, many thanks for your comment. I’ll change the translation, you have a point. Let’s see how the fact checking endeavour pans out and if anyone manages to find a real factual error. Otherwise you’d be my man for Schalke.
Sumeet Kulkarni has had the same thought regarding Freys contradiction. He tweeted: “So he is not a star-economist but you are jealous of him for his stature? Sure that makes sense.”
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In my opinion, Frey does not necessarily contradict Torgler with respect to the Hall paper. It could be that they were not aware of the paper. After all the reports and blog entries, it seems natural to me that they (or Frey) finally read the paper in order to check the criticism. That they now disagree about the necessity of citing this paper is no evidence that they were aware of the paper before or during the writing of their papers. Another thing, the name of the NYU guy is Gelman, not Geldman.
Olaf, I truly appreciate your effort in this issue, but I do not agree with the way you report about it. You should also not be too surprised that some commentators (including me) think you are “hounding”, etc. How many blog entries and how many posts on this issue do you have? Was it really necessary to call for a fact check? That seems to me childish. Sometimes I also miss the necessary distance or neutrality in your posts.
Many thanks for your feedback and apologies for misspelling Andrew’s last name. I’ve already corrected that typo.
As you can see here, I’ve published six different posts. Apart from the summary of the whole story each post was dealing with new pieces of information (my initial post, the rebuke by the JEP and the answer by Torgler, the investigation of the University of Zurich, the missing apology to PNAS and Frey’s interview in “20 Minutes”. I’m deeply convinced that this coverage was absolutely appropriate. This is a blog and not a wiki, where the articles are constantly re-written.
With regard to the bid to fact-check my articles: I’m just trying to defend my reputation that Frey is trying to tarnish. He is making bold (and I think utterly wrong) claims about me “writing many wrong things”. However, he does not bother to elaborate and did not answer my email regarding those alleged mistakes. In former times, some journalists were defaming the people they write about. Nowadays however, at least in the economics profession it seems to have become fashionable that those people defame the journalists. Frankly, I think this behaviour by Frey is disingenuous. (Again, if there are any mistakes, please let me know!)
Regarding the lack of “necessary distance or neutrality”: Well, I really try hard to describe the facts as accurately as possible and also point out where the critics are over the top (for example wrt to the claim by “Economic Logician” that they “tweaked” the resultes in the different papers). I also try to give my personal interpretation of these facts which you may or may not share. I hope it is clearly visible where I write about facts and where I present my own opinion. And again, this a personal blog, and neither a wiki nor a printed newspaper. I think a blog SHOULD be more opinionated and informal than a neutral article in a printed paper.
I am following this blog with interest. Another case of bold self-plagiarism by Mr Frey might be:
- “Corporate Governance: What Can We Learn From Public Governance?” (Academy of Management Review, 2007) by Matthias Benz and Bruno Frey
- “Can Private learn from Public Governance?“ (Economic Journal, 2005) by Matthias Benz and Bruno Frey
Again, in the 2007 article there is no references to the 2005 article…
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