Persuasion Bias in Science: Can Economics Help?

TY - JOUR

T1 - Persuasion Bias in Science

T2 - Can Economics Help?

AU - Di Tillio, Alfredo

AU - Ottaviani, Marco

AU - Sørensen, Peter Norman

PY - 2017/10/1

Y1 - 2017/10/1

N2 - We investigate the impact of conflicts of interests on randomised controlled trials in a game-theoretic framework. A researcher seeks to persuade an evaluator that the causal effect of a treatment outweighs its cost, to justify acceptance. The researcher can use private information to manipulate the experiment in three alternative ways: (i) sampling subjects based on their treatment effect, (ii) assigning subjects to treatment based on their baseline outcome, or (iii) selectively reporting experimental outcomes. The resulting biases have different welfare implications: for sufficiently high acceptance cost, in our binary illustration the evaluator loses in cases (i) and (iii) but benefits in case (ii).

AB - We investigate the impact of conflicts of interests on randomised controlled trials in a game-theoretic framework. A researcher seeks to persuade an evaluator that the causal effect of a treatment outweighs its cost, to justify acceptance. The researcher can use private information to manipulate the experiment in three alternative ways: (i) sampling subjects based on their treatment effect, (ii) assigning subjects to treatment based on their baseline outcome, or (iii) selectively reporting experimental outcomes. The resulting biases have different welfare implications: for sufficiently high acceptance cost, in our binary illustration the evaluator loses in cases (i) and (iii) but benefits in case (ii).

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Randomised controlled trials

KW - Strategic selection

KW - Welfare

KW - D82

KW - D83C10

KW - C90

U2 - 10.1111/ecoj.12515

DO - 10.1111/ecoj.12515

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85032354093

SN - 0013-0133

VL - 127

SP - F266-F304

JO - The Economic Journal

JF - The Economic Journal

IS - 605

ER -