Friday, May 22, 2009

Sex Hormones do not effect economic behaviour

Thanks to Peter for pointing this out

“The study reinforces the importance of conducting carefully controlled randomized studies”, added Magnus Johannesson at Stockholm School of Economics. “Previous studies looking at correlations between sex hormones and economic behavior have indicated that sex hormones are important. But such correlative evidence does not prove that sex hormones affect economic behavior. It may just reflect that sex hormones vary together with some other factor that affects economic behavior.”

Another possibility is that the previous correlative results are due to publication bias; the tendency of scientific journals to only publish so called “positive results” (and decline publishing countervailing evidence). “Publication bias is probably the worst problem of scientific publishing today. We were lucky to have a serious editor”, Johannesson concluded.

http://www.hhs.se/BusinessAndSociety/press/pressreleases/Pages/economicbehavior.aspx

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