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A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data
21–30 of 98 posts
Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data
#22New info from the Buzzfeed article:
> “I can see why it is tempting to think that I had something to do with creating the data in a fraudulent way,” [Ariely] told BuzzFeed News. “I can see why it would be tempting to jump to that conclusion, but I didn’t.” He added, “If I knew that the data was fraudulent, I would have never posted it.” [..] he said that all his contacts at the insurer had left and that none of them remembered what happened, either. [..] Asked by BuzzFeed News when the experiment was conducted by the insurance company, he first replied, “I don’t remember if it was 2010 or ’11. One of those things.” [..] But Ariely discussed the study’s results in a July 2008 lecture at Google [..] did not have any emails from that time to review.
Another quote from an article in The Economist (https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/08/20/a-study-...):
> Mr Ariely has requested that the study be retracted, as have some of his co-authors. And he is steadfast that his mistake was honest. “I did not fabricate the data,” he insists. “I am willing to do a lie detection test on that.”
Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data
#23Science 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…
I'm more concerned about people who doubt science as a default point of view more than the people who trust the science. If you don't trust science as a process, then you're just putting your faith in random crap that gets through your arbitrary filters. That's how we get stupid stuff like Qanon and Pizzagate. We're always putting our trust in one thing or another. Personally, I'd prefer if we put our trust in a meth…
Climate science isn't falsifiable though. We cannot go back to the year 1600 and rerun the last 400 years without human industrial activity but keeping everything else the same and observe how the climate differs.
Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data
#24"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.
Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data
#25The person doing the fraud realized that ironically, the main reason to be honest is if you are being checked on it.
I would totally have believed this study intuitively as my honesty is dependent on my assessment of the risk of getting caught.
Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data
#26What's weird is that this blog post is really just expanding on the 2020 study by the original authors which says that the original data is unreplicatable. And provides the original data.
The original authors probably should have retracted the 2012 paper in 2020. That was a mistake not to do that. Which leads to this.
This blog article is just science at work. You have a study that says X. Then people try to replicate it, and can't. And in this case, the original authors all come out and say "it seems this conclusion was wrong".
Kudos for figuring out why the data can't be replicated. But it was the second 2020 study that gave them the clues, not the 2012 one.
Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data
#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 makes no sense, so this should’ve been caught right away. Plotting a histogram of the mileage data would’ve been one of the first things Ariely’s team did with this data.
Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data
#28The person doing the fraud realized that ironically, the main reason to be honest is if you are being checked on it. I would totally have believed this study intuitively as my honesty is dependent on my assessment of the risk of getting caught.
This is why learning morals and ethics don't necessarily make a person more moral or ethical: the knowledge can be used to try and "beat the system".
Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data
#29Science 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…
> I’m sick and tired of people saying “the science is settled” or “trust the science”. You’re right, but also, there’s more to it. There is a difference between what people say and what people mean and context is important. When I’ve heard people say “trust the science” it is always directed to people who have demonstrated that they do not understand the scientific method and the meaning of the word “healthy skeptici…
> When I’ve heard people say “trust the science” it is always directed to people who have demonstrated that they do not understand the scientific method
I think "always" is too strong. With regards to COVID vaccines I have heard that line thrown at people who say "this conclusion is too new, it has not stood the test of time" and now lo and behold we are seeing that the early "95% effective" rates are not holding up.
In fact I would say that many of the people who say "trust the science" (politicians, etc) have no scientific background themselves and are not people we would otherwise look to for scientific opinions on anything.
Re: A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I’m sick and tired of people saying “the science is settled” or “trust the science”. You’re right, but also, there’s more to it. There is a difference between what people say and what people mean and context is important. When I’ve heard people say “trust the science” it is always directed to people who have demonstrated that they do not understand the scientific method and the meaning of the word “healthy skeptici…
> When I’ve heard people say “trust the science” it is always directed to people who have demonstrated that they do not understand the scientific method I think "always" is too strong. With regards to COVID vaccines I have heard that line thrown at people who say "this conclusion is too new, it has not stood the test of time" and now lo and behold we are seeing that the early "95% effective" rates are not holding up.…
What evidence do you see that the effectiveness reducing hospitalization risk has decreased?