The Hardness of Conceding That You Were Wrong

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I think it was a some relative to some of these other like very longstanding, like back and forth in economics about this stuff. This puts you in a very small class of academics who have the privilege of conceding that you were wrong. And even better publishing a paper showing it. That's really, it stuns me. I'm not being facetious at all. How rare it is in our profession that someone when when a paper comes out that counters with the original paper found, someone then concedes that they were actually wrong.

Emily Oster of the University of Chicago and author of Expecting Better talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about her book on pregnancy and the challenges of decision-making under uncertainty. Oster argues that many of the standard behavioral prescriptions for pregnant women are not supported by the medical literature. The conversation centers around the general issue of interpreting medical evidence in a complex world using pregnancy advice as an application. Alcohol, caffeine, cats, gardening and deli-meats and their effect on pregnant women are some of the examples that come up. The conversation closes with a discussion of Oster's work on hepatitis-B and the male-female birth ratio.