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A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data

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Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data

#61

Post by whimsicalism »

wjnc wrote: post #46
peterthehacker wrote: post #27

> In the first sign of something amiss, the 13,488 drivers in the study reported equally distributed levels of driving over the period of time covered in the study. In other words, just as many people racked up 500 miles as those who drove 10,000 miles as 40,000-milers. Also, not a single one went over 50,000. I have a hard time believing that Dan Ariely didn’t know about this. The uniform distribution of mileage mak…

It’s not damning per se. That depends on the sampling (or otherwise it would be a tiny, tiny insurer). I’ve done studies where I sampled an insurance population to get equal group size on a few key parameters because we then did follow up questionnaires and I needed to account for non response. No point in random sampling then because all I probably would get was data on the largest groups in the population. As it tu…

Sorry, but you seem to be suggesting that non-response bias would be responsible for the uniform distribution seen in the Update mileage digits as well as the uniform miles driven distribution?

Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data

#62

Post by thaumasiotes »

unreal37 wrote: post #26

What's weird is that this blog post is really just expanding on the 2020 study by the original authors which says that the original data is unreplicatable. And provides the original data. The original authors probably should have retracted the 2012 paper in 2020. That was a mistake not to do that. Which leads to this. This blog article is just science at work. You have a study that says X. Then people try to replicat…

> And in this case, the original authors all come out and say "it seems this conclusion was wrong".

Well, not really. They published a paper with that conclusion. But they were happy to lie about it elsewhere. Compare the discussion at https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/08/19/a-scandal-... :

> Ariely is the author of the 2012 book, “The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves.” A quick google search finds him featured in a recent Freakonomics radio show called, “Is Everybody Cheating These Days?”, and a 2020 NPR segment in which he says, “One of the frightening conclusions we have is that what separates honest people from not-honest people is not necessarily character, it’s opportunity . . . the surprising thing for a rational economist would be: why don’t we cheat more?”

> But . . . wait a minute! The NPR segment, dated 17 Feb 2020, states:

>> That’s why Ariely describes honesty as something of a state of mind. He thinks the IRS should have people sign a pledge committing to be honest when they start working on their taxes, not when they’re done. Setting the stage for honesty is more effective than asking someone after the fact whether or not they lied.

> And that last sentence links directly to the 2012 paper—indeed, it links to a copy of the paper sitting at Ariely’s website. But the new paper with the failed replications, “Signing at the beginning versus at the end does not decrease dishonesty,” by Kristal Whillans, Bazerman, Gino, Shu, Mazar, and Ariely, is dated 31 Mar 2020, and it was sent to the journal in mid-2019

> Ariely, as a coauthor of this article, had to have known for at least half a year before the NPR story that this finding didn’t replicate. But in that NPR interview he wasn’t able to spare even a moment to share this information with the credulous reporter? This seems bad, even aside from any fraud.

(emphasis original)

Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data

#63

Post by lolthishuman »

This is actually amazing when looked at another perspective. Data can only ever be naturally false. The only time it ever has truth is because you assigned it truth, either by your experience or a delegation to third party. Truth is convergence on consensus and ultimately a bias of experience in reality.

This shows that how we use the concept of truth in directing society will need to be unpacked in a time where data and fact are abundant and not directly experienced. This leads to great potential but we must reevaluate our perspectives and weights regarding certainty, truth, non truth and so on.

Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data

#64

Post by pessimizer »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #20
efitz wrote: post #7

Science is a process, a way to find truth. It is not in itself truth. It is subject to all the same human flaws and venality as any other human endeavor. Just because something is published in a paper doesn’t make it true. Just because the paper was peer reviewed doesn’t make it true. Just because there is a “consensus” doesn’t make it true. I’m sick and tired of people saying “the science is settled” or “trust the s…

> I’m sick and tired of people saying “the science is settled” or “trust the science”. You’re right, but also, there’s more to it. There is a difference between what people say and what people mean and context is important. When I’ve heard people say “trust the science” it is always directed to people who have demonstrated that they do not understand the scientific method and the meaning of the word “healthy skeptici…

> When I’ve heard people say “trust the science” it is always directed to people who have demonstrated that they do not understand the scientific method and the meaning of the word “healthy skepticism”.

I've virtually never heard it from somebody who is a scientist or even an educated layman. Those people are usually talking about specific studies or papers. The people who say "trust the science" in my experience might as well be saying "trust the television" for all they understand of the science.

And I agree they certainly are saying it "to replace a person in a robe, or a person in a uniform with a person in a lab coat." But I don't think that's a positive thing. They aren't scientists, they're NPR listeners regurgitating something they've heard.

Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data

#65

Post by ryelee »

ad8e wrote: post #60

Another instance of suspicious behavior from Ariely: he has an experiment which shows that most people cheat a little, and very few cheat a lot. The experimental method involves prying off the teeth of shredders with a screwdriver. However, others could not replicate this method. http://fraudbytes.blogspot.com/2021/08/top-honesty-researche... Someone has claimed that getting a shredder from Home Depot is suspicious […

Adding on to this: Ariely at one point in time bandied around this unfounded claim about how roughly half (!) of dentists willfully misinterpret medical images in order to fill cavities that don't exist, quoting Delta Dental. But:

> “But according to Dr. Ariely, he was basing his statement on a conversation he said he had with someone at Delta Dental,” said Pyle. “But he cannot cite Delta Dental in making that claim because we don’t collect any data like that which would come to such a conclusion.”

> So what happened?

> Ariely said he got that 50 percent figure from a Delta source who told him about “some internal analysis they have done and they told me the results. But they didn’t give me the raw data. It’s just something they told me.”

> Ariely did not provide the name of the Delta medical officer, whom Ariely said was not interested in talking with me."

[1] https://www.wbur.org/npr/131079116/should-you-be-suspicious-....

Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data

#66

Post by cm2187 »

efitz wrote: post #7

Science is a process, a way to find truth. It is not in itself truth. It is subject to all the same human flaws and venality as any other human endeavor. Just because something is published in a paper doesn’t make it true. Just because the paper was peer reviewed doesn’t make it true. Just because there is a “consensus” doesn’t make it true. I’m sick and tired of people saying “the science is settled” or “trust the s…

Though applying the word "science" to refer to psychology is a very liberal use of the term.

Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data

#67

Post by cm2187 »

throwawayboise wrote: post #23
Revenant-15 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more concerned about people who doubt science as a default point of view more than the people who trust the science. If you don't trust science as a process, then you're just putting your faith in random crap that gets through your arbitrary filters. That's how we get stupid stuff like Qanon and Pizzagate. We're always putting our trust in one thing or another. Personally, I'd prefer if we put our trust in a meth…

Climate science isn't falsifiable though. We cannot go back to the year 1600 and rerun the last 400 years without human industrial activity but keeping everything else the same and observe how the climate differs.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. It is a fundamental challenge of climate science. You can backtest a model all you want, but anyone familiar with confronting backtested models to reality knows that this gives you very little comfort. Climate science fundamentally deals with untested mathematical models.

It is not the only domain of science that has this problem. Medecine is a big one. You can experiment to some extent but for obvious ethical reasons, there are lots of stuff you can't experiment on, and as a result we keep getting contradictory studies on issues that should be purely factual.

Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data

#68

Post by adolph »

iratewizard wrote: post #58
BurningFrog wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when it's only a single study with a surprising result. Those go viral easily, but are usually wrong.

The replication crisis has been a long standing problem in social sciences and medicine. The former's darkest stain is its collective need to prove their preconceived world view. The latter's seems to be motivated by profit. I'm sure nobody is surprised that zealotry and greed have made some of science as reliable as psychic readings.

A more charitable interpretation of the tendency of error in both is that humans and the world are more complex than expected. Sure, there are examples of fraud, etc but my general intuition is that people are generally well intentioned and interested in honesty and that those qualities are not immunity from error. So, malice, incompetence or a world that defies our finite minds?

Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data

#69

Post by fastaguy88 »

throwawayboise wrote: post #23
Revenant-15 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more concerned about people who doubt science as a default point of view more than the people who trust the science. If you don't trust science as a process, then you're just putting your faith in random crap that gets through your arbitrary filters. That's how we get stupid stuff like Qanon and Pizzagate. We're always putting our trust in one thing or another. Personally, I'd prefer if we put our trust in a meth…

Climate science isn't falsifiable though. We cannot go back to the year 1600 and rerun the last 400 years without human industrial activity but keeping everything else the same and observe how the climate differs.

Just because one can imagine an impossible experiment does not prove that a “science” is not falsifiable. There are lots of predictions that climate science makes that are falsifiable. And one can imagine that at some point in the future, we will be able to do experiments on appropriately paired sets of planets.

The phase “unfalsifiable” is often used to suggest that something is not scientific. My recollection is that Popper thought that evolution was not a scientific theory for the same reason. But unfalsifiable depends a lot on the kinds of experiments that are possible, or might become possible in the future.

Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data

#70

Post by DominikPeters »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #62
unreal37 wrote: post #26

What's weird is that this blog post is really just expanding on the 2020 study by the original authors which says that the original data is unreplicatable. And provides the original data. The original authors probably should have retracted the 2012 paper in 2020. That was a mistake not to do that. Which leads to this. This blog article is just science at work. You have a study that says X. Then people try to replicat…

> And in this case, the original authors all come out and say "it seems this conclusion was wrong". Well, not really. They published a paper with that conclusion. But they were happy to lie about it elsewhere. Compare the discussion at https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/08/19/a-scandal-... : > Ariely is the author of the 2012 book, “The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselv…

I’ve seen a tweet by an NPR journalist saying the interview happened in 2017 and was rebroadcast in 2020. Sorry no link.
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