I previously noted here an article by Charles Keckler in the Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy. I said that we would not be adding it to our deterrence abstracts list because JLEP is not a peer-reviewed journal. Turns out that although JLEP is published by a law school and run by students, the articles are peer-reviewed. We stand corrected and have added the article to our collection of abstracts.
There are two reasons that we are so picky about the peer-reviewed-journal criterion. First, despite its flaws, this is the best available criterion for nonexperts in the field to filter out the complete garbage, and there is a lot of it floating around. That is not to say that everything published in peer-reviewed journals is valid and everything else is garbage. However, it is a good first cut that the author had enough confidence in the piece to submit it for peer review and it survived that review.
Second, this is an objective criterion outside of our control. By including all articles meeting this criterion (that we know of) and none that do not, our list is not subject to the criticism of selection on the basis of whether the article supports our preferred result. That is precisely what our adversaries do, and we want to avoid even the appearance of doing that.
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