User:Robert McClenon/Garrett relation

The history of the article on Garrett relation, resulting in the current appeal of its deletion via Articles for deletion/Garrett relation is, as Spock would say, "interesting". First, in my opinion, the idea of the Garrett relation is an interesting one with significant implications for environmental policy, energy policy, and the climate debate. Wikipedia ought to have an article about the discussion of the theory of the Garrett relation. However, it appears that that discussion has not yet happened outside Wikipedia. This means that Garrett relation is an example of what Wikipedia calls original research. It isn't really original research in the sense of using Wikipedia as a journal. It is really a matter of using Wikipedia to publicize academic research that has received very little attention by the larger academic community. The paper is primary, and there hasn't been significant secondary coverage. Since Wikipedia is a tertiary medium, we should only have an article on the Garrett relation when there has been secondary coverage.

Second, the history of the article itself is that it is almost entirely the work of two single-purpose accounts, User:SalviaStellarum and User:Nephologue. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Garrett_relation&action=history User:Nephologue is Timothy J. Garrett. User:SalviaStellarum is either Timothy Garrett or an associate of Garrett. (No. See below for fuller explanation). The third account that has defended the article is another SPA, User:Gordonschuecker, who has popped up for the AFD and the DRV, who also either is Timothy J.Garrett, or is an associate of Garrett. There are between one and three humans contributing to and defending the article. This is an attempt to use Wikipedia to publicize a theory that should be publicized more, but that is not what Wikipedia is for.

We probably should have an article on Timothy Garrett as an academic who has published a theory that should be given more attention as to its rightness and wrongness. It is too soon to have an article on the theory of the Garrett relation.

(new entry from SalviaStellarum) below...

I'm SalviaStellarum: the user name of Richard Nolthenius, PhD, and not associated with Tim Garrett. I am department chair of Astronomy at Cabrillo College in California and I've never met Tim Garrett, although we've now corresponded. The motivation for writing the article I wrote is described below. Secondarily, I felt it right to have a compact term for this otherwise cumbersome mathematical relationship, and so it was solely my idea to name this "The Garrett Relation". I do try to be generous with compliments when they can be honestly paid (since too much of humanity these days is.... off on a tangent, let's say). It felt right to give it a name, and I didn't seek permission from Garrett to do so when I began using the term in my own educational materials. Who knows, if the theoretical support ends up showing non-support, maybe Garrett will not welcome the name. My first introduction to Garrett's work actually induced a bias against, since I heard about Garrett from well known "near term human extinction" advocate Guy McPherson, whose work I do not support at all. It was only months later, after actually reading Garrett's published papers in peer-reviewed quality journals, that I saw how potentially important this relation was, if it remained true. That said, I was still skeptical as the theoretical justification seemed tentative and suggestive at best. So I decided to see if the relation could be attacked instead by looking more carefully at the data which gives the relation. I did so, reconsidering the inflation term, the PPP vs MER accounting, a phenomenon I found in Federal Reserve publications and named (for brevity) the "Recession-GDP bias", and the so far missing relationship with the "shadow economy". I found after working on these issues that Garrett's treatment did warrant changes which I included in my own informally published PDF on the Garrett Relation, which I teach to my students and remains available online to all. In fact, I recently heard from Garrett that he's in the late stages of publication of a new paper on this work in collaboration with two economists, and he agrees now that his original treatment of inflation was incorrect, in that while his treatment might be an interesting variant, the real question is its relation to actual dGDP published values. If this "Garrett Relation" is to be validated, the mathematical inputs must be clear and unambiguously defined. To summarize, I found the Garrett Relation constancy actually improved when these potential weak points were addressed. Garrett finds with the older definitions that the constancy is beginning to waver. However, given the political tinkering of official vs real inflation measures, and how much of asset price inflation should be in the accounting, the question of the statistical validity in past data of the Garrett Relation remains strong and certainly not invalidated. The real work I'd hoped to inspire with publishing the Wiki article was to stimulate deeper theoretical work on why it might be - or convincingly shown not to be - true. Garrett is not an economist by trade, nor am I, although both of us are competent thinkers and academics with not a little experience and thoughtful learning and in the field. Regardless - a relationship of this importance should be judged on the mathematical, data, and theoretical merits and not on who holds what degrees. If I may share a personal note on that exact topic.... when I was a PhD student at Stanford University, I strongly considered changing my direction towards Astronomy and especially observational astronomy, from theoretical physics, and I asked Robert V. Waggoner, who was head of the physics department at the time, whether my career would be best served by earning a 2nd PhD. He strongly advised "No". His argument was that once you've earned a PhD in a science, you've proven your ability to do original thinking and research. If I wanted to change directions, I should just go learn the new field and do it, and not waste time on a new PhD. I think it was good advice, and am dismayed at how some people still use the "degree" argument to do petty turf-guarding. While conventional (vs energy-) economists have shown antipathy towards the Garrett Relation, they have not shown scholarly arguments which forbid its possible truth. The GR Wiki article itself would be an excellent forum for this contention to play out. I've entered my own criticisms in the "Criticisms" section of the Wiki, as proper. Those who find the GR arguments and data significantly flawed I would welcome their input. For developing fields, this is exactly what good scholarship is about. The GR is only 10 years old and not gotten the attention it deserves, perhaps because Garrett is not an economist and in fact there's a bit of open contention in Garrett's "Nephalogue" blog on the subject of traditional economists. Perhaps some of the antipathy also has to do with the fact that economists by the large majority take as an axiom that economic growth is of course a positive good for society, while those concerned with the sustainable future of our planet, such as I do, argue otherwise. That sort of philosophical difference should not be an excuse to simply end the inquiry by clamoring to delete the entire wiki article. I find that frustrating and discouraging.

I disagree with your final conclusion that the Wikipedia forum is not appropriate for this. After all, the work has 10 years of maturity and several good published papers to it, and has gone through peer-review from Garrett's end many times (I'm at a small college and not enough time and resources to invest in publications of my work as yet, although Garrett by email has encouraged me, recently, to do so). No field is truly "done" and ready for a carved in stone Wiki that wraps it up. That's why the freedom to edit in a Wiki article is so valuable. The Wiki forum is perfect for hashing out the relation, and it should be un-deleted in my judgment. If conventional economist find fault, let them explicitly explain their reasoning and evidence in the article itself, not ad hominems from the sidelines as was the only visible input in the deletion discussion. To further support the rather empty contention that this work does not have published peer reviewed support, I just received word that Garrett, Grasselli and Keen (2020) is now published here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237672. And, on this issue of the importance of the relation, I've noted that of the 400 billion stars in our galaxy, even the most mundane of barely visible naked eye stars, which number in the thousands, have had wikipedia articles written about them - of vastly less consequence than the validity of this economics vs energy relationship in shaping future policy and technological efforts towards climate change - the most profound issue of the 20th and (through neglect) especially the 21st century.