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Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

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Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#71
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context matters. Otherwise we’re just being clowns.

> The messages revealed that his friendship with Epstein lasted for nine years, including well after Epstein was initially charged with soliciting sex from a minor.[52] Ariely also suggested that Epstein use learnings from his research to help rehabilitate his public image what's clownish is defending anybody who would associate with a billionaire pedophile sex trafficker anybody in the files who helped him rehab his…

>what's clownish is defending anybody who would associate with a billionaire pedophile sex trafficker

>anybody in the files who helped him rehab his image should rightly be consigned to the dustbin of history

It's possible to denounce someone, but still push back on false claims. Otherwise you're just condoning misinformation just because it aligns with your beliefs . eg.

"Did you know Donald Trump literally eats babies?"

"Wtf are you talking about? There's no evidence of that."

"Wow, I can't believe you're defending a convicted felon, sex offender, and authoritarian! Anyone who's trying to rehab his image should be consigned to the dustbin of history."

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#72
post #15
post #6

Dan Ariely has a long history of controversies and studies with falsified data. He wrote 3 popular books and gained a lot of fame before others started uncovering the problems in his studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely It’s amazing that problems with his studies are still being uncovered. Equally amazing that Duke still maintains a relationship with him after so many problems have been identified with hi…

> In 2006, when he was a professor at the MIT Media Lab, Ariely conducted experiments including administering electric shocks with a research assistant who had no human–subject training. […] Ariely confirmed this and said that he wasn't aware that the research assistant did not have the needed one-hour online human–subject training. A one-hour online training is all that’s needed to be considered ready to conduct exp…

I would not make such a harsh judgment just because electric shocks are involved.

During my master’s I took a class at the Media Lab called Human 2.0 on prostheses, orthoses, exoskeletons, and human augmentation. Unsurprisingly, all student final projects involved some form of human experimentation.

To run our final project’s experiments, we had to complete a few online modules on bioethics, first aid, and safe practices, as well as submit a proposal to the IRB. From what I saw across projects, the board applied appropriate scrutiny and made helpful contributions.

It classified our experiment as low risk, and a lot of care went into participant selection and adherence to the approved protocol, but they did not require any health professional to be present during the sessions.

Other projects, however, did require such support and even had some MIT Medical involvement.

Incidentally, my project also involved administering electrical shocks to subjects, albeit very mild ones (tACS to induce directed visual artifacts).

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#74
post #21
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people on this site love nutrition and self-medication fads? People are surprisingly thoughtless.

Because “science” doesn’t know everything, and people don’t want to wait until their options are scientifically-validated. Yoga, breathing exercises, meditation and the like were once considered fads and derided by your ‘science’.

Are you a vendor of orgone accumulators or a staunch believer and customer?

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#75
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”

That still doesn't mean anything. Sure we know Epstein did evil, but not everything he did was evil. One should assume at least a few people he interacted with had no reason to suspect his evil actions.

I guess that's why the same passage says Ariely maintained the relationship long after the Epstein's pedophile convictions. Not definitive either, but pretty suggestive.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#76
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there some way to change incentives to get people to try and replicate? Sure. Pay them to do it.

If the culture shifted such that people were skeptical of original results but excited about replication, replication would be the big news and people would want to do it. How to get there, I don't know.

No, that would never happen. People would just be skeptical of most findings until they see replications (where we are headed in the social sciences, anyway). If people see replications the original discoverer will get all the accolades, not the (several) replications.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#77
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”

That still doesn't mean anything. Sure we know Epstein did evil, but not everything he did was evil. One should assume at least a few people he interacted with had no reason to suspect his evil actions.

Go read the article instead of nitpicking people doing the citations for you.

If you ask a known pedophile for funding and introductions while accepting favors, you can rightly be accused of bad judgment - at best.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#78
post #9

It does seem like its way too easy to do this kind of fraud. The study seems extremely easy to replicate (no fancy equipment needed, just ask some people to proofread), and yet nobody did until now. Is there some way to change incentives to get people to try and replicate? Assign undergrads to replicate random research papers?

"easy to replicate (no fancy equipment needed, just ask some people to proofread)"

? This was a human subject study, that would cost $$ and there would be very little upside to confirmation and only a little notoriety with a failure to replicate (which by the way is not dispositive, people might need multiple failed replications to know who to believe, depending on the size of the replication). Maybe you didn't read the post: this was data fraud discovered by statistical irregularities. That is indeed becoming easy to spot with more widespread statistical literacy, at least for unsophisticated jobs like this from decades ago.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#79
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still doesn't mean anything. Sure we know Epstein did evil, but not everything he did was evil. One should assume at least a few people he interacted with had no reason to suspect his evil actions.

Go read the article instead of nitpicking people doing the citations for you. If you ask a known pedophile for funding and introductions while accepting favors, you can rightly be accused of bad judgment - at best.

Go read it yourself. There isn't enough information to draw concussions. Everything is consistent with contact with a major funder who you can't cut off just because of evil in a part of life you knew nothing about.

You can read the article with a bias and ignore his counter claims. However that is drawing a conclusion not warranted.

Now perhaps someone has read the letters and seen other evidence and can draw conclusions. However at this point I can't say who knew what.

Both people are of course evil, but they may or may not have an evil in common.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#80
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no alternative to deadlines because time is money, and those downstream of you can ill afford to wait on your deliverables. Part of management's job is to determine how much time it should take so a reasonable timetable that stakeholders can agree to can be set, and then hold you accountable for delivering within that time frame. I wish we could revive Tim Bryce's mind with AI, because I'd love to hear what…

You're basically replacing the label "procrastination" with the label "laziness" without understanding anything. Are all people who postpone a task lazy? What constitutes laziness? Can we define laziness? Why are people lazy? Is laziness negative? Are there positive aspects to laziness? Why did we evolve laziness? Are people consistently lazy, or are they only lazy in some areas of their lives? Does scrubbing a toile…

I don't even think procrastination is laziness as you end up having to do the work later.
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