Data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper
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Re: Data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper
#2It always suprises me how people don't do minimum effort for hiding this stuff.
And no one notices. (or don't care about the obviously suspicious aspect)
Do scientists actually read what they cite?
Re: Data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper
#3It always suprises me how people don't do minimum effort for hiding this stuff. And no one notices. (or don't care about the obviously suspicious aspect) Do scientists actually read what they cite?
If they did a good job hiding it then you wouldn't know about it. For every case like this where they made a obvious mistake, there are cases where they didn't, and nobody noticed. But you only tend to hear about the ones with obvious mistakes.
Re: Data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper
#4It always suprises me how people don't do minimum effort for hiding this stuff. And no one notices. (or don't care about the obviously suspicious aspect) Do scientists actually read what they cite?
> Do scientists actually read what they cite?
I depends on ones probity, but yes the phenomenon is widespread. There are numerous reasons to cite a paper and just read it superficially: padding the references list, pleasing a reviewer by adding a paper he recommended, citing friends, etc. In my own lab they frequently cite a certain theory which if you actually read about it has nothing to do with what they are doing.
Re: Data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper
#5It always suprises me how people don't do minimum effort for hiding this stuff. And no one notices. (or don't care about the obviously suspicious aspect) Do scientists actually read what they cite?
> Do scientists actually read what they cite?
No. What are you kidding me. There's like typically over 50 papers referenced in a typical publication, no way I have the time to read all of them carefully
Re: Data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper
#6It always suprises me how people don't do minimum effort for hiding this stuff. And no one notices. (or don't care about the obviously suspicious aspect) Do scientists actually read what they cite?
> Do scientists actually read what they cite?
Yes, but few actually scrutinize the methodology of the studies. Statistics is really hard. It's easier to assume peer reviewers would have rejected the paper if it was bad.
Re: Data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper
#7 I value and respect your opinion.
https://www.mygroundbiz.us/
Re: Data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper
#8A lot of science today is basically parallel construction.
You start with a sexy story that you know will get you a lot of press, like "promising you will be honest actually makes you behave in an honest way" and then you just make that paper happen, however you can.
Under the publish or perish system, scientists don't have time to actually research the topic, and imagine if it fails to confirm - you just wasted a lot of time and didn't publish anything. Too risky, it's much easier to just fake it till you make it, especially since you know peer reviewers never ever will accuse you of fraud.
Any reviewer accusing a scientist of fraud will just be excluded from the community, since it's very important to uphold the narrative that "scientists are always honest, they never cheat like politicians, which is why we must always trust scientists and never question them".
Re: Data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper
#9It always suprises me how people don't do minimum effort for hiding this stuff. And no one notices. (or don't care about the obviously suspicious aspect) Do scientists actually read what they cite?
Did YOU even check what you cite?
The AUTHORS of the original paper got a dataset from a company. They didn't assume the fraud from the start and published the paper based on it.
Later, when they tried to analyze the issue more in-depth, they couldn't replicate the results. THE ORIGINAL AUTHORS PUBLISHED a paper about a failure to replicate. It was just then that someone looked at the original data and found that it was faked.
Re: Data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper
#10I think the original blog post [0] or Andrew Gelman's discussion of it [1] are both better sources for technical details and some historical context.
In particular, this is not the first such issue for Dan Ariely, as Gelman points out, he has a history of sketchy scientific ethics like doing media tours for studies that he knows failed to replicate.
[0] http://datacolada.org/98 [1] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/08/19/a-scandal-...