https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/10/29/update-on-the-fake-story-about-the-river-laborers-paying-people-to-whip-them/ Skip to primary content Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science Search [ ] [Search] Main menu * Home * Authors * Blogs We Read * Sponsors Post navigation "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation" Update on the fake story about the river laborers paying people to whip them Posted on October 29, 2022 9:36 AM by Andrew As you might remember from a few months ago, there was a story going around that some economists just looooved to tell. The story had all sorts of attributes that you might expect would make economists happy , including a paradox in which apparently bad behavior (whipping people to get them to work harder) was actually good, a subplot in which a do-gooder from the outside just doesn't understand the real world, and an ethnic slur! What more could you possibly ask for? Well, you could ask that, if the story is being reported as being true, that there was any evidence it actually happened. Below are a few version of the story. From Stephen Cheung in 2018: In 1970, Toronto's John McManus was my guest in Seattle. I chatted to him about what happened when I was a refugee in wartime Guangxi. The journey from Liuzhou to Guiping was by river, and there were men on the banks whose job was to drag the boat with ropes. There was also an overseer armed with a whip. According to my mother, the whipper was hired to do just that by the boatmen! My tale went the rounds, and it was seized by a number of neo-institutional economists. . . . However, this could be a story invented by my mother - the smartest person I have ever known - to entertain a boy of seven! From Michael Munger in 2018: There's a famous example in China, where a group of coolies ... have to pull a barge up the Yangtze River ... There's a trade-off ... how do you make the 30 guys work hard? The insight of the team production problem is we need ... division of labor. ... If I'm pulling, I can't spend my time watching you and you can't spend your time watching me. We'll create a new job, called the monitor. ... We'll give the monitor a whip. Now this looks like slavery. The great thing about this, and this is from an article by an economist named Steven NS Cheung. He found that this guy with a whip--and this is the most incredible thing Russ!--this guy with a whip was hired and paid by the coolies! Interesting how, when a story is described as "incredible," it often is literally not credible. Clement and McCormick (1989): [the] famous Chinese boatpullers fable [where] the monitor uses his vision, intuition, and experience to determine shirking, counseling the loafers with his whip. Super-clever and counterintuitive to describe whipping as "counseling": that's the kind of outside-the-box thinking that will take you far. Supreet Kaur, Michael Kremer, and Sendhil Mullainathan (2015): . . . in a story by Steven Cheung (1983, 8): "On a boat trip up China's Yangtze River in the 19th Century, a titled English woman complained to her host of the cruelty to the oarsmen. One burly coolie stood over the rowers with a whip, making sure there were no laggards. Her host explained that the boat was jointly owned by the oarsmen, and that they hired the man responsible for flogging." This one's notable in that it puts an entire passage in quotes, but it turns out the passage was not in Cheung (1983) at all--not on page 8 or anywhere else in that article--it actually came from a collection from 1998 of old Harvard Business School exam questions. It's an awesome transposition in that it adds the "titled English woman," who is a stand-in for all those soft-headed non-economists out there who aren't willing to think the unthinkable etc., and also it changes various details, for example the people pulling the boat became oarsman, and of course the word "coolie" was introduced. I guess he had to be "burly," what with all the flogging he had to do! In a particularly modern touch, the host was there to "explain" the principles of Econ 101 to the silly lady. And what about the woman being "titled"--that particular elaboration seems gratuitous, no? But it fits in well with economists' view of themselves as tribunes of the people, consumer sovereignty and all that. The story wouldn't work so well if the person who "complained" was herself poor and maybe some had experience with physical pain herself. On the plus side, Kaur et al. issued a correction: While the incorrect quote also appears in other earlier sources, it does not appear in Cheung's original article. . . . The inaccurate quote was included simply as a way to illustrate the idea that joint production might necessitate the need for monitoring. . . . However, the quote is in no way central to the core point of the paper, or even for the discussion in section VI of the paper. . . . this incorrect quote can be omitted from the paper without any impact on the substance of the paper. I think they're right--the paper would've been just fine without the quote--it's just funny that 3 authors and some number of reviewers and journal editors all read the paper, and none of them noticed how ridiculous the story was. And just one more thing. Let's accept that the substance of the paper is unaffected by the whipped-boatmen story. But, the fact that many economists have presented the story as true, even though it's actually the result of a series of wild embellishments from an initially speculative source . . . that's interesting, right? I don't have it in me to write an article on the topic that would pass muster at the Journal of Political Economy (or any journal at all!), but I think there's something there! To put it another way, if the whipped-boatmen story is so consistent with the substantive message of the paper that it was included as an example to demonstrate the theory,(as the authors put it in their rejoinder, "The inaccurate quote was included simply as a way to illustrate the idea that joint production might necessitate the need for monitoring."), and then it turns out the story is false, then maybe this should cast some doubt on said theory? Maybe joint production might not necessitate the need for monitoring as often as they think? At least not in the sense of "counseling the loafers with his whip"? This entry was posted in Economics, Zombies by Andrew. Bookmark the permalink. 3 thoughts on "Update on the fake story about the river laborers paying people to whip them" 1. [d7e3e90d]paul alper on October 29, 2022 11:18 AM at 11:18 am said: A good story with a twist that illustrates how unenlightened and naive the opposition's (i.e., enemy's) opinions are, is always the way to go. If no fantasy story is readily available, there is the ever-present fallback position of gematria to make the point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria ------------------------ A mathematical formula for finding a letter's corresponding number in Mispar Gadol is: f ( x ) = 10 [?] x - 1 9 [?] x ( ( x - 1 mod 9 ) + 1 ) , {\ displaystyle f(x)=10^{\left\lfloor {\frac {x-1}{9}}\right\rfloor }\times ((x-1\mod 9)+1),} where x is the position of the letter in the language letters index (regular order of letters), and the floor and modulo functions are used. ------------------------- Chinese "boatmen" (i.e., boatpeople), the last/next election, or the Oxford Comma, it is all included. Reply | 2. [538c478d]Dale Lehman on October 29, 2022 11:56 AM at 11:56 am said: I think there is a more serious issue here. The idea that joint production may necessitate monitoring is a potentially important economic idea. But it is common for economists to resort to hypothetical or fictional examples - because the real examples are actually hard to find and usually not so clear cut. This has always been one of my primary complaints about textbooks (and not just econ textbooks, but they are especially good (poor) examples). Monitoring can be one "solution" to issues arising from joint production, but monitoring itself is costly. And there is a sociological dimension which can be quite complicated and which may involve difficult to measure costs and behaviors - things that economists don't like to deal with and love to use to disparage other social sciences. It's much easier to make up this hypothetical account that avoids all such messiness. That is actually not a bad thing to do if you want to illustrate a point that is not always easy to understand. However, it has a dark side - examples such as this serve to downplay motives such as empathy and altruism and elevate self-serving incentives. It is a useful tactic for pointing out a real part of behavior - that people may engage in seemingly disturbing behavior due to a real problem (in this case, imperfect information). Many important examples could be used: for instance, use of strong incentives can be counterproductive when monitoring is difficult - so sole use of commissions for compensation of retail employees can backfire if multiple objectives (such as collecting customer feedback) are involved. That same issue arises with basing K-12 teacher compensation on test score results. So, the common economics tactic of appealing to striking examples like this, often fictional ones, can serve to educate people to important principles. My objection is that they (inadvertently in many cases) also serve to selectively "educate" people concerning the relative importance of other factors. Hiring someone to whip fellow employees can easily jeopardize any sense of teamwork. Is that not important? What is the point of highlighting only part of the full picture without evidence that it is an important part or needs to be balanced against other objectives? Reply | 3. [559871d5]Henry Farrell on October 29, 2022 12:29 PM at 12:29 pm said: What you'd need here is a cultural evolution story if there is enough data, which there may not be. Try to use bibliographic citations as a crude marker to figure out the patterns of diffusion - which version of the story leads to which version of the story (if there are enough variants to make this interesting). Then look at the patterns - how the details diverge, and ramify - if there is convergent evolution across different lines towards common patterns, then you've got an interesting plausible-but-hardly-provable set of hypotheses about the deep structures that guide just-so stories in economics. Reply | Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Comment * [ ] Name [ ] Email [ ] Website [ ] [Post Comment] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] D[ ] * Art * Bayesian Statistics * Causal Inference * Decision Theory * Economics * Jobs * Literature * Miscellaneous Science * Miscellaneous Statistics * Multilevel Modeling * Papers * Political Science * Public Health * Sociology * Sports * Stan * Statistical computing * Statistical graphics * Teaching * Uncategorized * Zombies 1. Anoneuoid on "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation"October 29, 2022 1:30 PM We found no evidence that the presence of graphs affected participants' evaluations of correlational data as causal. Given that these... 2. Henry Farrell on Update on the fake story about the river laborers paying people to whip themOctober 29, 2022 12:29 PM What you'd need here is a cultural evolution story if there is enough data, which there may not be. Try... 3. Joshua on "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation"October 29, 2022 12:22 PM David - > Really? There's a whole branch of computer science that's dedicated to the belief that correlation does imply... 4. Dale Lehman on Update on the fake story about the river laborers paying people to whip themOctober 29, 2022 11:56 AM I think there is a more serious issue here. The idea that joint production may necessitate monitoring is a potentially... 5. paul alper on Update on the fake story about the river laborers paying people to whip themOctober 29, 2022 11:18 AM A good story with a twist that illustrates how unenlightened and naive the opposition's (i.e., enemy's) opinions are, is always... 6. David in Tokyo on "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation"October 29, 2022 9:18 AM "It seems like "correlation does not imply causation" is a message that is spreading," Really? There's a whole branch of... 7. David in Tokyo on "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation"October 29, 2022 9:12 AM My reading of the original post is that the quoted article is concerned with false conclusions about correlation, but that... 8. chipmunk on "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation"October 28, 2022 10:26 PM Hey! Wansink! The guy with the refilling soup bowl...no, wait...cereal bowl...no soup...no! cereal! Maybe that's it! The soup-cereal correlation is... 9. Martha (Smith) on "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation"October 28, 2022 8:52 PM For readers who have not been following this forum a long time: see https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/19/17879102/ brian-wansink-cornell-food-brand-lab-retractions-jama 10. Dale Lehman on "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation"October 28, 2022 7:22 PM One of those conflating factors should involve the subject matter - what correlation is being described/portrayed. It says a "realistic... 11. Jonathan (another one) on "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation"October 28, 2022 2:51 PM Whether graphics impede or accelerate the conflation of correlation with causation will depend on a lot of factors. First: a... 12. Joshua on "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation"October 28, 2022 2:37 PM > correlation does not imply causation" is a message that is spreading, With the caveats that 1) the degree of... 13. Adede on "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation"October 28, 2022 2:24 PM The study by Wansink probably didn't replicate because it's bunk, but I would suspect that the propensity of graphs to... 14. annoporci on What happens to the Wall Street Journal's reputation when they publish a regular column by someone associated with fraudulent research?October 28, 2022 2:01 PM when I read Ariely's well-known book way back when, I put it down thinking "These are some very small samples!"... 15. Joshua on "Graphs do not lead people to infer causation from correlation"October 28, 2022 1:28 PM Hmmm. Seems to me the test of whether graphs lead to erroneous inference of causation from correlation is to use... 16. Anoneuoid on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 28, 2022 3:11 AM This is the Suetonius account: As he stood there, undecided, he received a sign. A being of marvellous stature and... 17. Sean on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 28, 2022 12:08 AM Anoneuoid: I guess the question is, what does "crossing the Rubicon" mean to you? There is a lot of evidence... 18. Jonathan (another one) on You can read for free but comments cost money . . . or is it the other way around?October 27, 2022 8:58 PM I think you should cut individualized deals with commenters. It is of course unclear which way the payments should go...... 19. Anoneuoid on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 27, 2022 6:06 PM @ Sean, What is your opinion on this "crossing the rubicon"? From looking into it a bit now I am... 20. Joshua on You can read for free but comments cost money . . . or is it the other way around?October 27, 2022 4:52 PM Thanks for the recommendations. I'll check them out - I like listening to pods when hiking or working out. My... 21. 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John Richters on You can read for free but comments cost money . . . or is it the other way around?October 27, 2022 11:45 AM Andrew: Sounds good to me. In the grand scheme of things any amount of money is (ahem) a small price... 30. Joshua on You can read for free but comments cost money . . . or is it the other way around?October 27, 2022 11:26 AM > Or how much should I be paying for them? For obvious reasons, I prefer the model where you pay... 31. Ben on You can read for free but comments cost money . . . or is it the other way around?October 27, 2022 11:11 AM I searched telegram prices, 1900. Expensive! 32. Ben on Wandering through Sforza castleOctober 27, 2022 11:07 AM > how my lab can best break out What does a lab breaking out mean? If you have undergrad students... 33. name withheld by request on You can read for free but comments cost money . . . or is it the other way around?October 27, 2022 10:09 AM If I had to put my money where my mouth is, my mouth wouldn't be very busy. I'm just sayin'... 34. Anoneuoid on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 27, 2022 9:49 AM It seems sensible to state that experts currently think it is half as likely that the bone is a hippopotamus... 35. Dale Lehman on You can read for free but comments cost money . . . or is it the other way around?October 27, 2022 9:39 AM I'll offer my comments for $5/word; price negotiable depending on who I'm responding to. Let the bidding begin. 36. DavidP on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 27, 2022 9:11 AM I thought the Meir discussion was fine until he switched from talking about likelihoods to talking about probabilities. His broad... 37. David Marcus on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 27, 2022 8:50 AM > How can we say that there's an essentially zero probability that Moses > crossed the Red Sea or that... 38. Yuling Yao on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 27, 2022 7:45 AM "This artifact is a stone ax from a hominid from c. 800,000 BP" reminds me how a judge assign likelihood... 39. Phil on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 8:22 PM Sean, I recall that Andrew wasn't able to add some information to his own Wikipedia page (such as the fact... 40. Sean on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 7:54 PM John N-G: I am sure there are ways to get around Wikipedia's absurd policies, but they take time and effort... 41. Joshua on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 7:26 PM Anoneuoid - > Of course, these days dogmatism (resistance to exploring novel explanations) is making a comeback. > > I... 42. John N-G on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 6:21 PM Re: Wikipedia primary sources: If there's a contemporaneous letter that says Caesar crossed the Rubicon on such and such a... 43. Daniel Lakeland on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 5:38 PM Phil. The difficulty comes when you have higher dimensional outcomes. Instead of say price of electricity in Chicago consider price... 44. Dale Lehman on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 4:22 PM I've done a fair amount of probabilistic modeling myself, including two books on the subject, so I do believe it... 45. Matt Skaggs on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 3:52 PM "If you ask someone for a probability for something like this, you'll just get a made up number that's worse... 46. Jeff on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 3:17 PM Please also enjoy this, courtesy of the gentleman at the corner table. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLNjVvJAiCw 47. Roy on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 2:00 PM When I was an undergrad, there was one anthropologist in the department who was skeptical about many of the archeological... 48. Sean on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 1:59 PM And Phoenix is a very respectable classics / ancient Greek and Roman history journal! So the literature for researchers has... 49. Sean on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 1:54 PM Phil: I'm on the wrong computer, but see (IIRC) https:// rambambashi.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/ original-research-at-wikipedia/ I have personal experience trying and failing to get someone's... 50. Sean on Speculating about assigning probabilities to speculative theories: Lots of problems here.October 26, 2022 1:47 PM If you want a book which goes into the nitty gritty of a mysterious period of ancient history in plain... Proudly powered by WordPress