Characterizing the effect of retractions on scientific careers

Retracting academic papers is a fundamental tool of quality control when the validity of papers or the integrity of authors is questioned post-publication. While retractions do not eliminate papers from the record, they have far-reaching consequences for retracted authors and their careers, serving as a visible and permanent signal of potential transgressions. Previous studies have highlighted the adverse effects of retractions on citation counts and coauthors' citations; however, the broader impacts beyond these have not been fully explored. We address this gap leveraging Retraction Watch, the most extensive data set on retractions and link it to Microsoft Academic Graph, a comprehensive data set of scientific publications and their citation networks, and Altmetric that monitors online attention to scientific output. Our investigation focuses on: 1) the likelihood of authors exiting scientific publishing following a retraction, and 2) the evolution of collaboration networks among authors who continue publishing after a retraction. Our empirical analysis reveals that retracted authors, particularly those with less experience, tend to leave scientific publishing in the aftermath of retraction, particularly if their retractions attract widespread attention. We also uncover that retracted authors who remain active in publishing maintain and establish more collaborations compared to their similar non-retracted counterparts. Nevertheless, retracted authors with less than a decade of publishing experience retain less senior, less productive and less impactful coauthors, and gain less senior coauthors post-retraction. Taken together, notwithstanding the indispensable role of retractions in upholding the integrity of the academic community, our findings shed light on the disproportionate impact that retractions impose on early-career authors.Comment: 49 pages, 13 figures, 19 table

Structural Avenues for Mobilization - The Case of British Abolition

This thesis builds the micro foundations of the first modern social movement: the movement for the abolition of the slave trade in the early 19th century British context. I derive theories of action from the historical literature, and use work from historical sociology and movement theory to understand the decision to petition for abolition. Two major empirical undertakings are employed to adjudicate between different theories of action accounting for abolitionist petitioning. First, zooming in on Manchester, I deploy the signatures of an abolitionist petition to find the social-structural drivers of abolitionist mobilization. Through a careful reconstruction of the city’s historic geography, I place over 10000 residents in physical space along with important buildings, such as churches, inns and taverns: focal points that provided the basis of associational life and early civil society, places where politics was done at the time. I delineate the limits of the impact of the Quaker congregation, and demonstrate that in fact these focal points induced the spatial-clustering of abolitionist petitioners. Furthermore, I reveal that economic interests are not among key drivers of abolitionist petitioning, as no clear occupational-gradient is found among petitioners. Besides the theoretical contributions, I use innovative ways to test which social relationships were crucial for petitioning. Second, zooming out on the national petitioning campaign I use self-collected data on petitions form the Journals of the British Parliament to study the movement at the macro level. The analysis shows that contact with the London-based central movement-organization was key for the success of the first campaign, but it also reveals that the second campaign relied more on "horizontal" connections rather than hierarchical ones tying provincial towns to London. Second, I confirm that non-conformist religious organizations were pivotal for the inception, and scaling of the national campaign, but the Quaker church seem to exert more important and continuous influence compared to the Wesleyan Methodist organization. Last but not least, I show that industrialization plays a key, and increasingly important role in the campaign for abolition

The Course of Law: State Intervention in Southern Lynch Mob Violence 1882–1930

Collective violence when framed by its perpetrators as “citizen” justice is inherently a challenge to state legitimacy. To properly account for such violence, it is necessary to consider an opportunity structure incorporating the actions of both vigilantes and agents of the state. The motivation and lethality of lynch mobs in the South cannot be understood without considering how the state reacted to the legitimacy challenges posed by lynching. We trace the shifting orientation of state agents to lynching attempts between the end of Reconstruction and the start of the Great Depression. Analyzing an inventory of more than 1,000 averted and completed lynching events in three Southern states, we model geographic and temporal patterns in the determinants of mob formation, state intervention, and intervention success. Opponents of lynching often pled with mobs to “let the law take its course.” This article examines the course followed by the law itself, as state actors moved between encouraging, accommodating, and in many instances averting mob violenc

The Influence of Political Dynamics on Southern Lynch Mob Formation and Lethality

Existing literature focuses on economic competition as the primary causal factor in Southern lynching. Political drivers have been neglected, as findings on their effects have been inconclusive. We show that these consensus views arise from selection on a contingent outcome variable: whether mobs intent on lynching succeed. We constructed an inventory of averted lynching events in Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina—instances in which lynch mobs formed but were thwarted, primarily by law enforcement. We combined these with an inventory of lynching and analyzed them together to model the dynamics of mob formation, success, and intervention. We found that low Republican vote share is associated with a higher lethality rate for mobs. Lynching is better understood as embedded in a post-conflict political system, wherein all potential lynching events, passing through the prism of intervention, are split into successful and averted cases

The Population Level Impacts of Differential Fertility Behavior of Parents of Children with Autism

Drawing on population level data of exceptional quality (including detailed diagnostic information on the autism status of sibling pairs of over 3 million different mothers), this study confirms that stoppage is the average fertility response to a child born with autism, thereby reducing observed concordance in sibling pairs and leading to potentially biased estimation of genetic contributions to autism etiology. Using a counterfactual framework and applying matching techniques we show, however, that this average effect is composed of very different responses to suspicion of autism depending on birth cohort, the character of the disorder (severe versus less severe), the gender of the child, poverty status, and parental education. This study also sheds light on when parents suspect autism. We find that parents’ fertility behavior changes relative to matched controls very early after the birth of a child who will later be diagnosed with autism

Prediction of emerging technologies based on analysis of the US patent citation network

Abstract The network of patents connected by citations is an evolving graph, which provides a representation of the innovation process. A patent citing another implies that the cited patent reflects a piece of previously existing knowledge that the citing patent builds upon. A methodology presented here (1) identifies actual clusters of patents: i.e., technological branches, an

Prediction of Emerging Technologies Based on Analysis of the U.S. Patent Citation Network

The network of patents connected by citations is an evolving graph, which provides a representation of the innovation process. A patent citing another implies that the cited patent reflects a piece of previously existing knowledge that the citing patent builds upon. A methodology presented here (i) identifies actual clusters of patents: i.e. technological branches, and (ii) gives predictions about the temporal changes of the structure of the clusters. A predictor, called the {citation vector}, is defined for characterizing technological development to show how a patent cited by other patents belongs to various industrial fields. The clustering technique adopted is able to detect the new emerging recombinations, and predicts emerging new technology clusters. The predictive ability of our new method is illustrated on the example of USPTO subcategory 11, Agriculture, Food, Textiles. A cluster of patents is determined based on citation data up to 1991, which shows significant overlap of the class 442 formed at the beginning of 1997. These new tools of predictive analytics could support policy decision making processes in science and technology, and help formulate recommendations for action

Structural Avenues for Mobilization - The Case of British Abolition

This thesis builds the micro foundations of the first modern social movement: the movement for the abolition of the slave trade in the early 19th century British context. I derive theories of action from the historical literature, and use work from historical sociology and movement theory to understand the decision to petition for abolition. Two major empirical undertakings are employed to adjudicate between different theories of action accounting for abolitionist petitioning. First, zooming in on Manchester, I deploy the signatures of an abolitionist petition to find the social-structural drivers of abolitionist mobilization. Through a careful reconstruction of the city’s historic geography, I place over 10000 residents in physical space along with important buildings, such as churches, inns and taverns: focal points that provided the basis of associational life and early civil society, places where politics was done at the time. I delineate the limits of the impact of the Quaker congregation, and demonstrate that in fact these focal points induced the spatial-clustering of abolitionist petitioners. Furthermore, I reveal that economic interests are not among key drivers of abolitionist petitioning, as no clear occupational-gradient is found among petitioners. Besides the theoretical contributions, I use innovative ways to test which social relationships were crucial for petitioning. Second, zooming out on the national petitioning campaign I use self-collected data on petitions form the Journals of the British Parliament to study the movement at the macro level. The analysis shows that contact with the London-based central movement-organization was key for the success of the first campaign, but it also reveals that the second campaign relied more on "horizontal" connections rather than hierarchical ones tying provincial towns to London. Second, I confirm that non-conformist religious organizations were pivotal for the inception, and scaling of the national campaign, but the Quaker church seem to exert more important and continuous influence compared to the Wesleyan Methodist organization. Last but not least, I show that industrialization plays a key, and increasingly important role in the campaign for abolition

Non-transformative climate policy options decrease conservative support for renewable energy in the US

Motivated by ongoing partisan division in support of climate change policy, this paper investigates whether, among self-identifying liberals and conservatives, the mere presence of a non-transformative climate policy such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), lowers support for a renewable energy (RE) policy. To interrogate this question, we use a survey experiment asking 2374 respondents about their support for a RE policy when presented with the RE policy alone, and when presented alongside a CCS policy whose funding and implementation leverage independent funding sources. We find that among conservatives, the presence of a CCS policy lowers support for RE. Furthermore, despite the lack of apparent political party cues, when presented with the policy-pair, conservatives tend to view the RE policy in more partisan terms, specifically, less supported by Republicans. Additional experimental conditions with explicit party cues reinforce this interpretation. These findings suggest that the triggering of partisan perceptions even without explicit partisan cues—what we call political anchoring—might be a key impediment to bipartisan support of climate solutions in the U.S. context

Durable Change in U.S. Urban Mobility Networks, 2019–2022

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly altered how people move between neighborhoods. Tracking these changes is important because a growing literature demonstrates that mobility networks influence social and environmental exposures that interact directly with urban inequalities. Using four years of weekly smartphone-based mobility data in the 25 largest U.S. cities, we investigate how mobility changed in 2021 and 2022. We measure mobility networks with three previously used indices and introduce a fourth, the Dissimilar Mobility Index, to capture the demographic dissimilarity experienced in a mobility network. We find that although mobility hubs and their associated patterns of segregated mobility returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2021, neighborhood isolation remained depressed until the end of 2022 compared to 2019. Together, these results indicate that despite vaccine availability in 2021, structural changes in urban mobility networks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic were durable for over two years after its onset