I came here for a procrastination joke comment and didn't find it, but I suppose someone will get around to it eventually.
Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
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Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 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 compared to e.g. SSRIs, and is very effective for severe depression.
The evidence base for these claims appears to be missing.
https://theconversation.com/no-evidence-that-ect-works-for-d...
It's liked by some practitioners, not by others, but actual studies in this area are low quality, didn't follow up with longer term checks, and are generally inadequate.
"The failure to find any meaningful long-term benefits compared to placebo groups are particularly distressing."
Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
#83Short of blindly outsourcing the work to an LLM and checking to see if its hallucinated problems are actually problems[0], how can more laymen (without the ability to run replication studies, and without degrees in statistics) learn to more easily identify questionable/potentially fraudulent research like this?
This is a question that has been really bothering me for a while. I have a short list of things I’ve learnt to check, but it’s all stuff I’ve picked up in a very ad hoc way (reading and listening to these kinds of critical analyses, mostly). For example, until now, I wouldn’t think about implausibly large Cohen’s d, despite this seeming like an easily generalisable rule that anyone could eyeball. But without being told, and without the reference points given in the article, I wouldn’t have a clue. And I would like to have more of a clue. And I would like other people to have more of a clue. How?
Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
#84I came here for a procrastination joke comment and didn't find it, but I suppose someone will get around to it eventually.
I’ll do it later
Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
#85Dan 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…
Dan Ariely's fraud is pretty widespread.
He sold his research to an insurance company, who should have known better: https://www.lemonade.com/blog/oh-behave/
Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
#86It 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?
> The study seems extremely easy to replicate (no fancy equipment needed, just ask some people to proofread), and yet nobody did until now
They were just putting it off.
Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
#87One thing I didn't know before reading this: an unusually large effect size can itself be a red flag. You don't have to understand all the statistics to at least notice when a result looks almost too good to be true.
Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
#88Having skimmed this article and the replication study itself (which references some studies that complicate our common understanding of the positive effects of deadlines) I’m left wondering what the constructive alternative is to deadlines and/or how deadlines should be maintained or determined.
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Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
#89Dan 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…
Ah yes also the author of “The Honest Truth about Dishonesty”. The most amazing thing is he is still a professor at Duke. Wonder if he focused much on academic dishonesty in his book…