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Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty

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Re: Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty

#91

Post by sacnoradhq »

jstarfish wrote: post #80
rqtwteye wrote: post #43

There is this pattern where things are always the opposite of their message: - Dishonesty expert is dishonest - Politicians who constantly talk about freedom want to restrict anything that doesn't fit their world view - Militant anti-gay preachers hire call boys - Diversity teams are the least diverse

We like these fall-from-grace stories but there's a subpattern to this that can't be articulated so easily. Literal "corruption" comes close. See also: every freedom fighter that launches a coup to overthrow a dictator, then becomes a dictator themselves within a decade. Or cops that get caught stealing child porn from the evidence locker, despite not being pedophiles by any definition. Not all these types start this…

I cannot prove it with ready evidence but I suspect there is a tendency during bad economic times for there to be more high-profile corruption cases because of a psycho-social need of frustrated people to vent their displeasure on perceived causal agents.

TL;DR: If you were a public person, watch your actions during bad times.

Re: Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty

#92

Post by eru »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #41
zetazzed wrote: post #34

Individual researchers have huge incentives for fraud, but large universities are the ones who most need to look inward here. HBS could become a beacon for stronger research practices in this area - requiring study preregistration and data collection methods that carefully trace provenance and changes. If HBS has fewer but better quirky marketing psychology studies, their reputation will do well. However for an indiv…

For similar reasons, I left academia. I joined academia for the pursuit of truth, and forth the glory of Knowing. But it turned out that academia doesn’t really do this anymore, it just sells itself as doing these things. Academia is entirely a “reputation” system, as it turns out, from paper publishing to student-evaluations to “public rankings.” As it turns out, the capitalist marketplace must also contend with the…

> But it turned out that academia doesn’t really do this anymore, it just sells itself as doing these things.

What do you mean by 'anymore'. Was there some golden age of bygone glory?

Re: Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty

#93

Post by OkayPhysicist »

WalterBright wrote: post #47
rqtwteye wrote: post #43

There is this pattern where things are always the opposite of their message: - Dishonesty expert is dishonest - Politicians who constantly talk about freedom want to restrict anything that doesn't fit their world view - Militant anti-gay preachers hire call boys - Diversity teams are the least diverse

I've always wondered if ethics class impart any ethics at all. If you're not an ethical person, why would you become one after taking such a class? If you're already an ethical person, taking a class in it is pointless.

Ethics (as a philosophical field) is about applying some level of rigor to the question "What ought I (and others) do and why?". "An ethical person" is a meaningless statement without an underlying framework of ethics, which obviously is a hotly debated topic, otherwise it wouldn't be an entire field of study.

What studying ethics offers the individual is the tools to analyze their moral beliefs and ensure they are at least internally consistent. That "and why?" is probably the most valuable takeaway from studying ethics. Rather than saying "that act was wrong", a student of ethics can explain, down to axiomatic beliefs, why that wrong. If a disagreement between two people boils down to axiomatic beliefs, then you're never going change each others minds. But a difference in interpretation can be argued with the potential for persuasion.

It also gives you a lot of practice justifying your own actions. Useful, but perhaps not exactly altruistic.

Re: Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty

#94

Post by [deleted] »

bwestergard wrote: post #74
IggleSniggle wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For similar reasons, I left academia. I joined academia for the pursuit of truth, and forth the glory of Knowing. But it turned out that academia doesn’t really do this anymore, it just sells itself as doing these things. Academia is entirely a “reputation” system, as it turns out, from paper publishing to student-evaluations to “public rankings.” As it turns out, the capitalist marketplace must also contend with the…

I'd like to hear more about how you've found more honesty in the private sector. "academia doesn’t really do this anymore" I've heard this from more than one current or former academic. Some argue it's due to market logic entering academia. It sounds like you take a different view?

[deleted]

Re: Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty

#95

Post by wpietri »

renewiltord wrote: post #49
hammock wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Jonah Lehrer, author of pop science books Imagine and How We Decide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Lehrer

This guy is featured in the So You've Been Publicly Shamed book, and it definitely seemed like he was pilloried pretty hard. It is interesting, though, which journalists get tarred and feathered and which ones are celebrated. Certainly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Novak have massive journalistic ethical errors: the former fabricating news for the US Government a…

Is Miller still a celebrated journalist? I had her down mentally as "noted fraud". Looking at Wikipedia, it looks like she's never done real news again, and has spent her time on what I think of as the "wingnut welfare circuit". And the reactions to her memoir suggest that she's never been welcomed back into the profession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#Memoir

Re: Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty

#96

Post by eru »

bwestergard wrote: post #74
IggleSniggle wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For similar reasons, I left academia. I joined academia for the pursuit of truth, and forth the glory of Knowing. But it turned out that academia doesn’t really do this anymore, it just sells itself as doing these things. Academia is entirely a “reputation” system, as it turns out, from paper publishing to student-evaluations to “public rankings.” As it turns out, the capitalist marketplace must also contend with the…

I'd like to hear more about how you've found more honesty in the private sector. "academia doesn’t really do this anymore" I've heard this from more than one current or former academic. Some argue it's due to market logic entering academia. It sounds like you take a different view?

> I'd like to hear more about how you've found more honesty in the private sector.

vs

> Some argue it's due to market logic entering academia.

People's behaviour is shaped by incentives (amongst other things).

People in academia are rewarded for pumping out quirky studies that find interesting things, regardless of whether they reproduce. So that's what you get.

People in business mostly just want to make money selling some gadget (or providing some service). So they need methods that help reliably produce gadgets that are more cheaper or perform better. Because businesses want reliability, you get your reproducibility as a side effect.

(Of course, businesses also produce the occasional study where they use the study itself as marketing material. I expect those studies to be just as unreliable and full of wishful thinking as anything academia pumps out: the incentives aren't any better.)

Re: Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty

#97

Post by wpietri »

WalterBright wrote: post #47
rqtwteye wrote: post #43

There is this pattern where things are always the opposite of their message: - Dishonesty expert is dishonest - Politicians who constantly talk about freedom want to restrict anything that doesn't fit their world view - Militant anti-gay preachers hire call boys - Diversity teams are the least diverse

I've always wondered if ethics class impart any ethics at all. If you're not an ethical person, why would you become one after taking such a class? If you're already an ethical person, taking a class in it is pointless.

That's overly binary for my tastes. You talk as if there's no nuance to being ethical. Ethics is hard because people are complex and the ultimate effects of actions in the world are hard to predict. An ethics class can't make a sociopath normal, but it can alert normal people to the many important considerations, and the long history of people fucking it up via shallow, too-simple understanding.

Re: Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty

#98

Post by OkayPhysicist »

fasterik wrote: post #89
CoastalCoder wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question from a non-student of philosophy: Why do people use the term "ethical" as though there were a single agreed-upon "right" system of ethics? My understanding is that there are numerous concepts of right and wrong, some of which are very divisive. So i.e. there are people who would be widely detested for being "ethical" in unfashionable frameworks.

It depends on your beliefs about the status of ethics. Moral realists believe that there are independently true facts about ethics. So for a moral realist, if "X is ethical" is true, then people who believe "X is unethical" have a false belief. On the other hand, moral relativists believe that ethics is context- or culture-dependent. So for a moral relativist, "X is ethical" has no universal truth value, but must be…

Except that moral relativism ultimately boils down to a universal axiom of "One ought behave in a manner aligning with the moral framework of their setting", offering an inherent contradiction with the belief that there aren't axiomatic ethical rules.

All ethics assert a universal ethical framework. Moral relativism just offers a really complicated one.

Re: Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty

#99

Post by wpietri »

neilv wrote: post #64

In situations like this, people should demand credible investigations, then wait quietly while that proceeds -- avoiding trial-by-Twitter and summary execution upon accusation.

You're putting the burden on "people" here. I think instead, the right way to look at it is that institutions should provide both prompt reactive investigations and proactive work to keep investigations from being necessary. The reason people get thoroughly upset here rather than waiting quietly is that this stuff gets ignored or covered up all the time.

Re: Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty

#100

Post by spondylosaurus »

JenrHywy wrote: post #78
telotortium wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Diversity teams are the least diverse IME DEI is usually a function rolled into HR (although they often contract with diversity training firms), rather than a separate team, except at large companies. Where there are separate DEI teams, they tend to be the most diverse, at least among the white-collar workforce - the requirements for these jobs tend to be quite nonspecific, because they don't really need to do mu…

They may be more diverse in terms of race and sexuality, but have very little diversity of opinion and worldview.

Little diversity of opinion and worldview how? (Should DEI teams be hiring people who are against diversity, equity, and inclusion?)
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