“New Zealand’s data had been copied from the Netherlands, for example, and the United States’ data from the United Kingdom.”
Jönköping economist Almas Heshmati filled gaps in his green-patents dataset by dragging Excel’s autofill over the holes. Where there was nothing to autofill from, he borrowed a neighbouring country’s row. Well over one in ten cells were invented, and the paper still called it “balanced panel data.” Elsevier’s Journal of Cleaner Production has not answered. A PhD student caught it. The journal did not.