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Reply to ‘Sampling bias does not exaggerate climate–conflict claims’

Nature Climate Change volume 8, pages 442–443 (2018)Cite this article

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Ide et al. reply — We clarify three arguments regarding our study1.

First, sampling bias is a serious issue in climate–conflict research. Although there are several forms of sampling bias that do not affect estimates, the specific kind of bias we criticize — sampling on the dependent variable — is very likely to lead to an overrepresentation and overestimation of climate–conflict links. Because cases experiencing both climate extremes and conflict are much more widespread in the sample of cases studied than in the general population of cases, the relationship between these variables will seem to be more prevalent than it is. This problem of a ‘sampling on the dependent variable’ strategy is widely recognized in the social sciences in general and in the environmental security literature in particular2,3.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, University of Melbourne, Carlton, Victoria, Australia

    Tobias Ide, Jon Barnett & Courtland Adams

  2. Georg Eckert Institute, Braunschweig, Germany

    Tobias Ide

  3. Department of Political and Social Sciences, Freie Universitat Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Adrien Detges

Authors
  1. Tobias Ide
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  2. Jon Barnett
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  3. Adrien Detges
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  4. Courtland Adams
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Correspondence to Tobias Ide.

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Ide, T., Barnett, J., Detges, A. et al. Reply to ‘Sampling bias does not exaggerate climate–conflict claims’. Nature Clim Change 8, 442–443 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0171-4

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