Academic slams Harvard/FCC open internet study
Today is the deadline for submitting comments on the FCC’s study (prepared by the Harvard Berkman Center under the leadership of Yochai Benkler) as it relates to the National Broadband Plan. So, yeah, only nerds are interested, but late last week an economist (George S. Ford) came out with a scathing attack on Benkler’s work. I thought these nuggets were among Ford’s best critiques:
As shown below, the Berkman Study first improperly estimates its econometric model and then incorrectly interprets the results from it. The error in the interpretation is significant. While the study’s authors verbally conclude that open access policies stimulate increased consumption of broadband, the econometric model they rely upon shows the opposite—open access reduces the consumption of broadband. As shown here, the Berkman Study’s authors are befuddled by their own modeling effort.
[T]he Berkman Study peeks at the outcome and then tries to formulate some procedure to attribute observed differences to one factor or another. In other words, throughout the Berkman Study, the authors are separating the sick rats from the well ones and then assigning the treatment ex post. This scheme is taboo among research scientists, since such outcomes- driven analyses are likely to render biased results, both in a statistical sense and by the introduction of researcher bias.
The Berkman Study provides a woefully inadequate review of the literature and offers no new data, no new methods, and no innovative policy ideas. The statistical analysis is mostly unskilled and unenlightening. Indeed, the economic and econometric analysis used in the Berkman Study to support its “most significant finding” that unbundling improves broadband consumption is embarrassingly bad. The analysis is so convoluted that even the Study’s authors cannot understand the results. The Berkman Study claims that “open access” stimulates broadband consumption, but the correct interpretation of its own evidence is that unbundling reduces broadband consumption.
Here are some useful links:
