Tulane Law Review's Flawed Empirical Study

A flawed empirical study published in the Tulane Law Review has draw the ire of the blogging community as well as the Louisiana Supreme Court Justices.  In, The Louisiana Supreme Court in Question: An Empirical and Statistical Study of the Effects of Campaign Money on the Judicial Function, authors Vernon Valentine Palmer and John Levendis argue their "empirical and statistical study of the Louisiana Supreme Court demonstrates that the court has been significantly influenced—wittingly or unwittingly—by the campaign contributions from litigants and lawyers appearing before it."  One (BIG) problem, the article "was based on empirical data coded by the authors, but the data contained numerous coding errors."  According to Tulane's Dean Ponoroff "because of the miscalculation in the underlying data, the reliability of some or all of the authors' conclusions in the study as published has been called into question." The Tulane Law Review has posted an erratum on its website apologizing for the mistake.  [RJ]