Like most ideas, this one is not original. In this case I have pilfered it from @ECONOMISTHULK, one of the funniest and most insightful (but anonymous) economists on Twitter:
Yep. It should not have taken so long to replicate/refute the original paper (see here if this story is new to you).
My only contribution to this would be a reminder that as far as I can tell, open research (including open data) should be the norm, and that there are already open-access models that would be workable.
HT to Chris Blattman for the original pointer, which is actually pretty relevant to the R&R revision.
Update: Ryan Avent has some related comments, and a very interesting anecdote about blogging vs. peer review. Tyler Cowen also points us to two papers about closedness in the economics profession, and “failures and biases in the market for scientific information.”