You know, the job market, the tweets and the RCT, here is a complaint from Christopher Phelan. Here is the paper. I’m just going to make a few hit-and-run remarks:
1. I’m not convinced that IRBs should have any say in these kinds of issues one way or another. (I think they should stop professors from injecting patients with syphilis.) In that sense, I’m not upset that this happened.
2. Given today’s standards (I would prefer much weaker IRBs), I don’t think this experiment should have been approved. This corrupts an evaluation process.
3. Consider my behavior M. As you may know, every job market season I blog a number of job market articles and usually say or at least imply something positive about the candidate and from his work. (As an aside, I guess I now think it helps them, and I wasn’t sure before.) I take this process very seriously and try to look at as many candidate websites and articles as possible. possible. To this end, I will also look at business schools and public policy schools, as well as a large number of schools not in the top ten. I would not randomize this process for the purpose of conducting an experiment. I think it would be unfair to the candidates, unfair to M readers, and somehow corrupting the integrity of the economic labor market. I know my tastes are weird! But these are my real tastes, and I want my readers to know that. I would not have participated in this experiment. In fact, I feel like the experiment very slightly calls into question the integrity of the articles I choose to cover, as some readers might think that I too am a randomizer in the manner of this experiment.
I don’t think “learning something about the job market” is enough to make up for these problems.
4. From a practical point of view, experience shows us that finding talent in new or unusual places can be relatively successful. I agree, and Daniel Gross and I pushed this theme in our book on talent.
5. If you have read this far, I hope you have heeded the title of this article.
