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

Post by BenjiWiebe » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #78

enkid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 95% effectiveness was based on the version of COVID that was circulating at the time. No one said it would be 95% effective against every possible mutation. Claiming the results of those studies are wrong instead of a result of a changing environment is itself a misunderstanding of science.

Claiming that the vaccines were necessary to "end the pandemic" without factoring in the possibility of variants for which the vaccines were not as effective was not scientific thinking.

Post by peterthehacker » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

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…

Post by jsnell » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 1:44 AM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #24

koboll wrote: post #10

"Now some are questioning whether the scientist himself is being dishonest" kinda undersells it. The debunking offers numerous pieces of stone cold proof that the paper is straight-up academic fraud: https://datacolada.org/98 And since the post says "the fourth author has made it clear to us that he was the only author in touch with the insurance company", it seems clear that Ariely personally fabricated the data.

I don't think that's "clear" at all. Even the blog link doesn't come to that conclusion.

Post by Sebb767 » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

fastaguy88 wrote: post #52

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…

This seems like a generalization that needs to limited in scope. I think the science is settled about Newton’s laws, Maxwell’s equations, Avogadro’s number, and DNA as the genetic material in bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. For pretty much anything taught in a 100 level science course, the science is largely settled. There are controversies in science, and those controversies make for good popular science press, b…

Post by wjnc » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 6:14 AM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #61

wjnc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?