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Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

datacolada.org

41–50 of 273 posts

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context matters. Otherwise we’re just being clowns.

This. Significant portions of the Epstein files are random noise. Though even for a popularish author it'd be strange to be in enough 1990-2018 news snippets to reach that many EF hits. In any case "is in the Epstein files" should in general be replaced with "is in the Epstein files, including this email to/from them I found"

The most interesting section from the large paragraph on Wikipedia: “One of the documents is an image of an email from Ariely to Epstein, in which he requests the name and email of a "redhead" that Epstein had previously introduced to him”

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the details here but I am a psychologist. The "electric shock" normally used in psych studies is tiny, it's like the equivalent of one of those little toy prank buzzers. You couldn't possibly hurt someone with it, this is really a non-issue. Related side note: Electroconvulsive therapy uses much larger electric shocks but, administered safely by a clinic, is extremely safe, has relatively minor side effe…

> Electroconvulsive therapy uses much larger electric shocks but, administered safely by a clinic, is extremely safe, has relatively minor side effects Blame "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for its inaccurate portrayal. YMMV. I’ve encountered people who have had ECT forced on them whilst inadequately sedated. They have been older/elderly but it would be a mistake assuming it’s always without causing harm.

That does sound rough. The initial shock, without sedation, could cause mild to moderate pain and would certainly be a scary experience.

Even then, though, it's a far cry from being the antiquated mental lobotomy that many people wrongly assume it to be.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#43
post #7
post #3

I'm glad the authors seem to have acknowledged the problem and not doing much about it :-)

Per the post, the original authors have requested that the original paper be retracted. That’s well above the bar of “not doing much”.

Actually the post is ambiguous: did the authors want the original article retracted, or the replication by Hyndman and Bisin? I hope the former!

"Finally, it should be noted that when we shared these posts with Ariely and Wertenbroch a few weeks ago, they reached out to Psychological Science to request that the article be retracted. As of this writing, that process is ongoing."

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#44
The reason why people(or ai agents) have not been able to systematically destroy bad research in fields where fraud is so rampant is because they data are not published or easily accessible without emailing the author and asking them.

I sincerely hope that any self respectful journal that publishes papers should have a minimum bar: submit the data on a public link with no paywall or blockers and feature the link prominently on your paper.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#45

Dan Ariely remaining at Duke, after it has become clear that much if not most of his work is fraudulent, is at least as big a black mark for Duke as Jason Arday was for Cambridge. Not to mention the Epstein ties.

It's arguably worse. Jason Arday was doing qualitative work in education. Nobody pays any attention to anything UK educationalists write. Dan Ariely was a genuine superstar and writer of popular bestsellers (with academic content).

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#46
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of Francesca Gino for data fabrication. She was also a best seller of sorts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Gino

It should - one of the papers that Data Colada reported on about Gino was co-authored with Dan Ariely: https://datacolada.org/98

She had sued Data Colada, I believe about that post. Seems like it got dismissed: https://www.science.org/content/article/honesty-researcher-s...

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it’s worth, I wasn’t even thinking about the physical danger when I was… shocked… that you only need a one hour online course. It’s that they’re interacting with people in a somewhat clinical way as an implicit authority. The shock would obviously cause discomfort and therefore stress (or why even do it).

Do you think a potential bad actor would change their behavior if they took, say, a 12 hour course instead? I am of course biased, but I have often been exasperated by the various "trainings", IRB processes, ethics classes, etc, that are required to run even basic psychology studies such as surveys. Meanwhile, down the hall, the medical department is opening the skulls of mice, implanting electrodes, giving them supe…

> Do you think a potential bad actor would change their behavior

What is the appropriate way to help a righteous but underpaid lab assistant find the guts to call out a process as unethical and insist that the boss’s claim that the IRB has approved it is bogus?

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#48
post #44

The reason why people(or ai agents) have not been able to systematically destroy bad research in fields where fraud is so rampant is because they data are not published or easily accessible without emailing the author and asking them. I sincerely hope that any self respectful journal that publishes papers should have a minimum bar: submit the data on a public link with no paywall or blockers and feature the link prom…

There is a lot of bad ML research for the same reason.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#49
post #43
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the post, the original authors have requested that the original paper be retracted. That’s well above the bar of “not doing much”.

Actually the post is ambiguous: did the authors want the original article retracted, or the replication by Hyndman and Bisin? I hope the former! "Finally, it should be noted that when we shared these posts with Ariely and Wertenbroch a few weeks ago, they reached out to Psychological Science to request that the article be retracted. As of this writing, that process is ongoing."

The post is unambiguous if you make it to the very end, where there are particular statements from each of the people involved.

Look for:

> Klaus Wertenbroch […] indicated that he has asked the editor to retract the paper.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#50

No paper should ever be referenced until it has been replicated by an independent group. The replication crisis in science is real, and it won't take long for no one to believe anything anymore.

In the physical sciences, any sufficiently important paper is independently verified. Sounds like cost/effort of these multi year studies is not faesible to replicate, but then again, I know nothing about social science so w/e
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