Harvard Business School Professor Martin Schmeldon released results of research findings that suggest that excessive Twitter use may have caused the current economic downturn, according to a blog posting today.
"We see the rapid rise of Twitter usage in 2008 correlating very strongly with a tremendous decrease in American productivity," said Schmeldon. "Our regression analysis on the data suggests a causal relationship that may actually be larger than the impact of the much-touted subprime collateral debt refinancing triggers."
Employees who might otherwise be working productively and contributing
to the economy can instead create Tweets, such as "I just realized I
clipped all of my nails today except for one" or "My co-worker is
drinking pepsi . Pepsi!!! I want some. Stupid Lent," reports the blog posting.
The posting goes on to say ....
Beltway insider and renowned economic advisor, West Tirrettia, believes
Schmeldon's study could have some implications for economic policy that
comes out of the current legislative session. "Congress has duly taken
note of this research," said Tirrettia. "We may see some Twitter
moratoriums coming in future stimulus bills. It's really just a
question of whether lawmakers are willing to put their necks out
against something that has become very popular back home in their
constituencies."
The statistical validity of Schmeldon's research has been questioned by many statisticians and economists, including Pat Sooshisif, an associate professor of public policy at the Yale School of Management. "I think an informed reader of this research paper should be able to determine that Schmeldon wasn't engaging in serious statistical analysis of this data," wrote Sooshisif in the March 2009 issue of The Journal of Economic Perspective and Analysis. "Schmeldon cites a dual inflection point in December 2008. The stochastic confidence interval for that assertion is very low, and it is our conclusion that the z-factor is not statistically significant." Professor Schmeldon did not return repeated calls seeking comment on this research.
The statistical validity of Schmeldon's research has been questioned by many statisticians and economists, including Pat Sooshisif, an associate professor of public policy at the Yale School of Management. "I think an informed reader of this research paper should be able to determine that Schmeldon wasn't engaging in serious statistical analysis of this data," wrote Sooshisif in the March 2009 issue of The Journal of Economic Perspective and Analysis. "Schmeldon cites a dual inflection point in December 2008. The stochastic confidence interval for that assertion is very low, and it is our conclusion that the z-factor is not statistically significant." Professor Schmeldon did not return repeated calls seeking comment on this research.
Clearly, we have proven the value of economic analysis and statistics. :-) (Tip of the hat to Sandy Bendorf. Thanks for pointing it out.)
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