[martynr]

Surely this can’t be justified as a ux driven “oversight” - I am not an economics professor but I would be feeling totally sketchy if I manipulated a data source in such an apparently arbitrary manner.

In combination with the (reportedly)blatant lack of any reference to the methodology in his paper this feels like wilful gross misconduct in professor-land.

IMO this sort of thing rightly undermines confidence and credibility of research in a much broader context and should be a sackable matter if shown to be true as asserted.