Freakonomics Obsession With Patents Strikes Again: Says If More Women Got Patents The Economy Would Grow
from the logical-leap dept
While the Freakonomics guys have shown a willingness in the past to be skeptical about the traditional claims concerning copyright, they often seem to have a blindness to similar criticisms of patents. In fact, in the Freakonomics book sequel Superfreakonomics, there's what's basically a puff piece about massive patent troll Intellectual Ventures. Thus it's disappointing, but not surprising, to hear that one of the Freakonomics duo, Stephen Dubner, is talking up some claims about how "closing the patent gap" between the number of patents that men get and women get (by basically convincing more women to patent stuff) could increase our GDP by a staggering 2.7%.That's a huge leap, and a rather astounding claim. And you would think that these guys, who are so focused on trying to sniff out interesting points from data, wouldn't leap so blindly past a whole variety of questionable assumptions, including the big one: the assumption that there's a causal relationship between more patents and economic growth. Similarly, Dubner, in his radio piece, goes so far as to claim that patents are a reasonable proxy for innovation -- directly asserting that the fact that fewer women get patents means that women have "the most room for improvement in the innovation field."
To put it simply, that's ridiculous. Just because people aren't getting patents, it doesn't mean that they're not being innovative. In fact, multiple studies have shown absolutely no link between patents and innovation. It's a shame that Dubner would take the easy way out and leap to the false conclusion that patents are a reasonable proxy for innovation -- and, even worse, that he would then encourage an increasing rate of patenting, when one of the biggest problems facing the innovation sector today is over-patenting.
To be fair, Dubner is basing his report on some new research into the "patent gap" between men and women, which makes these particular claims (including the GDP growth claim). There is some interesting data in the paper showing just how few patents are given to women, but there are a bunch of questionable assumptions and logic leaps as well. Others have been pointing out some of the problems with the report, including new data showing that, based on the trendline, women are already increasing the rate at which they get patents very quickly. The bigger problem, though, is just the facile (and simply unsupportable) claim that more patents automatically leads to greater GDP. As economist Alex Tabarrok notes sarcastically in response:
Right; and since only 10% of construction workers are women, closing the gender gap would result in many more housesThis is a first year stats student type error, assuming this kind of causal relationship where none exists. The authors of the paper should have known better, but Dubner and the Freakonomics crew, who give this kind of work a stamp of approval, should be even more careful. Disappointing.
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Filed Under: freakonomics, gdp, stephen dubner, women
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Re: Face Gap
We'll need to give faces to the corporations or remove faces from the inventors--equalling this out will lead to greater innovation.
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Re:
We come up with ideas, and spread them around.
We don't go all "MINE, PATENT, MINE, SUE". We just share the info.
He's thinking that if women get patents, then they will go around actin' a fool like the men are.
Those darn women, they want everything for free...
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Re: Re:
That's what she said
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Stupid people make my brain bleed...
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Reading (or in this case, listening) is fundimental
On what I listened to, their whole point was that men were dominating patenting, which lead them to look at the positions women were getting in the workplace which lead them to not be the ones to do so, and take from there what happens when you have mixed genders in the workplace compared to actually segregating them, and the results from there (spoiler alert: women did better when men weren't around).
At no point was the conclusion that patents were causing innovation or anything even remotely close to what's mentioned in the OP. So, either things were presented VERY differently in other places.....or this article is one giant attempt to troll.
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The most obvious points here is that there isn't 2.7% MORE patents that are going to just get issued because women ask for them. The assumption that the patent universe is like Mcdonalds burgers, that you can just order up some more is mindless. It doesn't begin to look at the reality of obtaining patents.
After that, it all just falls down.
Mike, I would say you should take this as a bit of a warning or caution in your own work and views. Some things just don't scale absolutely. You cannot ignore the whole of a system and how it works, and narrowly focus on one small part of it (marginal costs, as an example in industries with heavy up front costs). While you may be technically correct in the small area, your assumptions likely won't work out properly in a larger overall real world system.
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Re:
The ones that can extrapolate from insufficient data.
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There is! It's an inverse squared relationship.
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uhhhhh
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Says: If More Women Got Patents The Economy Would Grow
I wish happy camping those who buy into what they say.
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Read Franklin
That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
We've really lost that message.
The founding fathers didn't trust monopolies or anything in perpetuity either.
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If Pinocchio said that, his nose would grow.
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supporting women is a good thing
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