Yet Another Example of Why Economists Should Stick to Their Own Field

An unfortunate side-effect of Freakonomics -- a book that I have issues with but that I appreciate for its cleverness and popular appeal -- is that economists have been bolstered to continue forays into other disciplines that they know nothing about, produce some kind of odd result that's statistically significant, and then gain unprecedented press coverage for their "brilliance." The infiltration of economists into crime research, without any fundamental knowledge of criminology or sociology, is exasperating. Today's paper highlights just another example of this problem. The headline reads: "Study links unusual names to juvenile delinquency." Their point is that kids with unusual first names are more likely to get into trouble than those with more common names. The article concludes with this quote: "it's not the name per se that causes the juvenile to behave badly, but it's the family background." Really? Well, any intro criminology textbook would have told you that. I actually started to read this paper and got so annoyed that I had to stop so I wouldn't spend the entire day fuming. Somebody please tell me what the point of this line of inquiry is. On second thought, I should save this paper as an example for students of a poorly constructed research question.

*Okay, so the title is misleading in its snarkiness. There is nothing wrong with interdisciplinary research. My point is that you should actually take time to learn something about the field that you weren't trained in before you go "revolutionizing" it with your half-baked ideas and fancy statistics.