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No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

pnas.org

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Re: No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

#141

Post by asdff »

oxfordmale wrote: post #9

Reading this article, it is good that the UK COVID policy wasn't based on behavioural nudging /sarcasm. The UK COVID policy heavily relied on this and one of the unwanted side effects was scaring a certain section of the population into submission. Although that may have been effective during COVID, it made it a lot harder for that segment of society to return back to normal.

At this point seeing mask usage e.g. outdoors on a hiking trail is a little disturbing, because at this point people are thinking they are fighting the good fight but are now on the other side of the evidence (which says you are pretty safe outdoors or in a big room or while merely interacting briefly in passing with people, as one does with strangers in public). I wonder what the messaging will be given that this supposedly "scientifically minded" mask wearing subset of the population is no longer listening to the science.

I hope this doesn't lead to weakened immunity overall in the population. If you wear a mask every time you go out into the world, that doesn't give you much of a chance to build up acquired immunity to all the other bugs that are out there. There are stories from the early 1900s of native americans coming out of the woods and joining western society. They of course have spent decades in isolation versus just two years, but that's enough for them to end up perennially sick and in poor health when they were actually integrated into western society, and eventually die young of common disease. A lack of acquired immunity is what killed Ishi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishi

Re: No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

#142

Post by anigbrowl »

a_simm wrote: post #37

Wow. As a former social scientist with an axe to grind this hits hard. I like to provide that HN community with some context as to what this means. There are some 300 “research” departments in each of the major social sciences: psychology, sociology, economics and anthropology. If you believe what they say, about half of their mission is teaching and the other half is research. That’s a lot, tens of billions of dolla…

'Social sciences as Sorcery' indeed.

Re: No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

#143

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Their summary csv listing all the studies reviewed is at https://osf.io/ubt9a

And boy am I struggling - I am amazed it's even possible to group all of these studies under the same umbrella unless that is "misc".

Claiming that how people choose to treat their cancer, portion sizes at restaurants, rural Kenyan maternal health and Dutch childrens vegetable choices are even in the same field seems - incredible.

Maybe I am agreeing with the study in a roundabout way. If all of these things are under the heading "nudge" then it is too broad a heading. It's probably impossible to say one way or another that nudging works because you can never unpick all the confounding factors. Did the Dutch children have a popular TV show about vegetables while the Kenya media ran months long articles about unsanitary hospital conditions?

With my cynical hat on Nudge is a way for politicians to try something even when the real fix is intractable. I don't oppose "do something positive" - Injust oppose abusing power, violence for political gain, and all the other reasons why we can agree on a nudge in the right direction but cannot agree on a structural fix in the right direction.

I guess if they worked then they would solve the problems without structural chnage and so would defeat the forces that benefit from the status quo. so yeah. it does not work.

looks like we will have to go back to the old politics and revolt.

Re: No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

#144

Post by Angostura »

I'm just in the process of reading 'Nudge - the final edition' - definitely worth a read - it's thought-provoking, funny, insightful and enjoyable. It would be a shame if it all turned out to be bullshit as the examples given in the book seem straightforward and plausibly effective.

Re: No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

#145

Post by lozenge »

oxfordmale wrote: post #107
lozenge wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't locking down the obvious departure from a "nudge policy"? I've seen the claim a lot but it all goes back to documents like this one which discusses strategies for communicating to increase compliance with lockdowns. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Yes, the UK government received such shocking insights as "Messaging needs to emphasise and explain the duty to protect others", and "…

There are articles like this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/13/why-is... Or from the other side of the political spectrum: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/28/grossly-unet...

The first one is from before the first lockdown. The strategy was completely replaced when lockdown happened. It was unrecognisable from then on.

The second one is about "deploying fear, shame and scapegoating" which the document I linked specifically calls out as a communication strategy with more downsides than any of the others they mentioned. However, Priti Patel just can't resist such activities.

Re: No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

#146

Post by verisimi »

Whether 'nudging' works or not, the concept is unacceptable to me.

First, the term 'nudging' is a misnomer. Let's call it what it is - manipulation. Manipulating the options or defaults to some other set in order to achieve a better outcome for someone...

Well, who is that someone? The government?

Who says that their values align with mine? I wouldn't have responded as the government did to the pandemic, but their nudge units went into overdrive nudging people into vaccinations, etc. Is preventing access to bank accounts for protesting government actions (as in Canada) a 'nudge'?

Can I challenge the promoted values? If the state apparatus has its own values and agenda, how do I get to state mine - where is the values/ethics discussion being had, and how do I get my say? I find the promoted values Orwellian, communistic, overly progressive - one for all, but not all for one... is that opinion fair to hold? Or must I be nudged over the cliff?

Aren't we really just talking about soft-sell authoritarianism here? Weren't we just meant to vote for people, not have a perpetual nanny state guiding us?

Re: No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

#147

Post by Nasrudith »

ghaff wrote: post #45
tgv wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A nudge, according to Thaler and Sunstein is any form of choice architecture that alters people's behaviour in a predictable way without restricting options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must require minimal intervention and must be cheap. Thaler and Sunstein wrote the book on nudges, quite literally. So their definition counts, and it's the one from…

In the case of organ donation, Thaler has written that he actually prefers mandated choice--i.e. there is no default but you have to either opt in or opt out--in this case. [1] But I'm not sure why a system where the government creates a default of either opt-in or opt-out (which you can change) wouldn't be a nudge. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/business/economy/27view.h... (The issue being that in countries…

Wouldn't it not be a nudge because it outright changes the unspoken costs? If the public is largely apathetic about what happens to their bodies post death, if the situation would leave them viable having to take an action vs inertia is an added costs. This could make deciding "not worth it" for low rewards, let alone preferring not to think of the possibility of their own demise.

Re: No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

#148

Post by TameAntelope »

a_simm wrote: post #37

Wow. As a former social scientist with an axe to grind this hits hard. I like to provide that HN community with some context as to what this means. There are some 300 “research” departments in each of the major social sciences: psychology, sociology, economics and anthropology. If you believe what they say, about half of their mission is teaching and the other half is research. That’s a lot, tens of billions of dolla…

Isn't this just one specific analysis using a very narrow definition of "nudge", one that doesn't even begin to encompass the work being done at those "300 "research" departments"?

Further, isn't this using the same data from the original meta analysis that did find "of small to medium size" effect[0]?

Why would this, alone, undo decades of research and clear, bright-line conclusions such as the ones cited in my sibling comments? In other words, why is this letter the final word on the topic of "nudge", to you, and not the original meta-analysis? Sounds like you think everyone should pack it up and go home, all because of one letter using an alternative set of definitions and analysis.

Just seems like an overreaction on your part, especially given how vocal and... you-sounding (for lack of a better term) the "anti-nudge" crowd often is.

To take a wider view, a comment like yours is a more malicious form of nerd-sniping[1], especially on HN. Claim to have relevant credentials, voice a contrarian-but-popular-here opinion, and make a wild conclusion to give those reading it a feeling of "inside baseball."

[0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2107346118#sec-3

[1] https://xkcd.com/356/

Re: No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

#149

Post by fatherzine »

a_simm wrote: post #37

Wow. As a former social scientist with an axe to grind this hits hard. I like to provide that HN community with some context as to what this means. There are some 300 “research” departments in each of the major social sciences: psychology, sociology, economics and anthropology. If you believe what they say, about half of their mission is teaching and the other half is research. That’s a lot, tens of billions of dolla…

"credibility of social science"

Re: No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias

#150

Post by b112 »

a_simm wrote: post #37

Wow. As a former social scientist with an axe to grind this hits hard. I like to provide that HN community with some context as to what this means. There are some 300 “research” departments in each of the major social sciences: psychology, sociology, economics and anthropology. If you believe what they say, about half of their mission is teaching and the other half is research. That’s a lot, tens of billions of dolla…

Adding this to the well/known gamesmanship in peer review, debate over tenure and etc. means it’s past time to reform a large chunk of academia.

But we are reforming, right? Merit based learning is over, and so really, what's it matter?

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