[HN Gopher] A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on F...
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A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data
Author : danso
Score : 149 points
Date : 2021-08-21 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.buzzfeednews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.buzzfeednews.com)
| unreal37 wrote:
| What'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.
| DominikPeters wrote:
| Not replicable is very different from "the data were made up
| using a random number generator".
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > And in this case, the original authors all come out and say
| "it seems this conclusion was wrong".
|
| Well, not really. They published a paper with that conclusion.
| But they were happy to lie about it elsewhere. Compare the
| discussion at
| https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/08/19/a-scandal-...
| :
|
| > Ariely is the author of the 2012 book, "The Honest Truth
| About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone--Especially
| Ourselves." A quick google search finds him featured in a
| recent Freakonomics radio show called, "Is Everybody Cheating
| These Days?", and a 2020 NPR segment in which he says, "One of
| the frightening conclusions we have is that what separates
| honest people from not-honest people is not necessarily
| character, it's opportunity . . . the surprising thing for a
| rational economist would be: why don't we cheat more?"
|
| > But . . . wait a minute! The NPR segment, dated 17 Feb 2020,
| states:
|
| >> That's why Ariely describes honesty as something of a state
| of mind. He thinks the IRS should have people sign a pledge
| committing to be honest when they start working on their taxes,
| not when they're done. Setting the stage for honesty is more
| effective than asking someone after the fact whether or not
| they lied.
|
| > And that last sentence links directly to the 2012 paper--
| indeed, it links to a copy of the paper sitting at Ariely's
| website. But the new paper with the failed replications,
| "Signing at the beginning versus at the end does not decrease
| dishonesty," by Kristal Whillans, Bazerman, Gino, Shu, Mazar,
| and Ariely, is dated 31 Mar 2020, and it was sent to the
| journal in mid-2019
|
| > Ariely, as a coauthor of this article, had to have known _for
| at least half a year_ before the NPR story that this finding
| didn't replicate. But in that NPR interview he wasn't able to
| spare even a moment to share this information with the
| credulous reporter? This seems bad, even aside from any fraud.
|
| (emphasis original)
| DominikPeters wrote:
| I've seen a tweet by an NPR journalist saying the interview
| happened in 2017 and was rebroadcast in 2020. Sorry no link.
| koboll wrote:
| "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.
| rozab wrote:
| This evidence is clearly irrefutable. It's fascinating how a
| well respected scientist could make such elementary mistakes
| when fabricating data.
| a-nikolaev wrote:
| It's easier to gain reputation if you are fine with cutting
| corners here and there, or even make up things as long as no
| one can see that. And once you are at Harvard (or Duke for
| that matter), most people wouldn't even question your
| credibility.
|
| EDIT: And to the point of not being able to fake that data
| well. Yeah, again, if we are in the business of getting
| credit points quickly, faking the data quickly makes sense
| too. No one would take a close look, right?
| unreal37 wrote:
| I don't think that's "clear" at all. Even the blog link doesn't
| come to that conclusion.
| sodality2 wrote:
| I think "We ran 1 million simulations to determine how often
| this level of similarity could emerge just by chance. Under
| the most generous assumptions imaginable, it didn't happen
| once." is pretty damning.
| superjan wrote:
| Oh, somebody made it up. It's just not proven that he was
| the one who made it up. It could be someone at the
| insurance company, or some student paid to type it in. Less
| likely perhaps, but not impossible.
| darksaints wrote:
| I've read two of Dan Arielly's books and while occasionally
| entertaining and occasionally insightful, I could never stop
| feeling like he was a bullshit artist. His books read as if he
| read a paper about people liking counterintuitive headlines with
| sciency-sounding explanations, and he p-hacked his entire career
| to take advantage of it and become the next Malcolm Gladwell. I
| kinda expected to see this sort of rebuttal sooner, considering
| how much of a thorn he was in economists' sides, but not at all
| surprised to see that it eventually happened.
| azinman2 wrote:
| > Looking at the data only when they were aggregated, anonymized,
| and sent to him, he said, freed him from the work of securing
| ethics approval from the university to perform research on human
| subjects.
|
| Note he was kicked out of MIT for doing work not approved by the
| IRB if I recall correctly.
| peterthehacker wrote:
| > 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.
| wjnc wrote:
| It's not damning per se. That depends on the sampling (or
| otherwise it would be a tiny, tiny insurer). I've done studies
| where I sampled an insurance population to get equal group size
| on a few key parameters because we then did follow up
| questionnaires and I needed to account for non response. No
| point in random sampling then because all I probably would get
| was data on the largest groups in the population. As it turned
| out people loved the subject of our questionnaire (effect of
| preventive measures by home owners on incidence of a whole
| range of common claims) and we got about a 70% response rate
| (that's crazy high for cold questionnaires to customers) so the
| study ended up quite overpowered.
|
| Not knowing the sampling, not documenting, not having the
| emails or at least a zip containing the work (over 4
| authors)... that's a different ballpark.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Sorry, but you seem to be suggesting that non-response bias
| would be responsible for the uniform distribution seen in the
| Update mileage digits as well as the uniform miles driven
| distribution?
| peterthehacker wrote:
| The sample size is in the article:
|
| > Nearly 13,500 drivers were randomly sent one of two policy
| review forms to sign...
|
| The distribution referenced is of mileage, which you'd expect
| to have some kind of right-skewed, continuous distribution.
| [deleted]
| pram wrote:
| Immediately came to mind: https://youtu.be/bST8Xp8dtY0
| IceDane wrote:
| In my view, there are two possibilities:
|
| 1) The data is fabricated and some of the researchers were in on
| it.
|
| 2) The data is fabricated, and the researchers are extremely
| sloppy, irresponsible and should be ashamed of their poor work
| ethic.
|
| How can you not have done any kind of analysis on this data, even
| if only for curiosity's sake? No plots of the distributions?
| Nothing? Come on, it's stuff that take 3 mins to whip up in
| python.
|
| In this age of misinformation, we don't tolerate people spouting
| lies even if they claim to think it is the truth. I don't see how
| this is any different. They didn't even attempt to do basic
| verification.
| Borrible wrote:
| Nothing is true, everything is Excel...
| krolchat wrote:
| >buzzfeed news
|
| What a quality source, I will absolutely believe in it's honesty
| sodality2 wrote:
| Buzzfeed investigative journalism is top-tier [1]. There is a
| clear difference between this type of article and the rest of
| the cesspool.
|
| [1]: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/investigations
| simonw wrote:
| Weirdly, Buzzfeed news have been a trustworthy source of high
| quality investigative reporting for quite a few years at this
| point.
|
| I think that's partly because they took advantage of the
| shrinking market for traditional print newspapers and snapped
| up some seriously high quality talent that had been laid off
| from other news organizations.
| warning26 wrote:
| _Ironic._
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Don'tcha think?
| falcor84 wrote:
| A little too ironic
| ridaj wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28210642
| ad8e wrote:
| Another instance of suspicious behavior from Ariely: he has an
| experiment which shows that most people cheat a little, and very
| few cheat a lot. The experimental method involves prying off the
| teeth of shredders with a screwdriver. However, others could not
| replicate this method.
|
| http://fraudbytes.blogspot.com/2021/08/top-honesty-researche...
|
| Someone has claimed that getting a shredder from Home Depot is
| suspicious [1], but I found it perfectly innocuous. Googling for
| "home depot shredder" brings up several options.
|
| [1] Aaron Charlton's response at
| https://twitter.com/sTeamTraen/status/1428275153155264520
| ryelee wrote:
| Adding on to this: Ariely at one point in time bandied around
| this unfounded claim about how roughly half (!) of dentists
| willfully misinterpret medical images in order to fill cavities
| that don't exist, quoting Delta Dental. But:
|
| > "But according to Dr. Ariely, he was basing his statement on
| a conversation he said he had with someone at Delta Dental,"
| said Pyle. "But he cannot cite Delta Dental in making that
| claim because we don't collect any data like that which would
| come to such a conclusion."
|
| > So what happened?
|
| > Ariely said he got that 50 percent figure from a Delta source
| who told him about "some internal analysis they have done and
| they told me the results. But they didn't give me the raw data.
| It's just something they told me."
|
| > Ariely did not provide the name of the Delta medical officer,
| whom Ariely said was not interested in talking with me."
|
| [1] https://www.wbur.org/npr/131079116/should-you-be-
| suspicious-....
| jessaustin wrote:
| Subtitling his book _" How We Lie to Everyone"_ could have been a
| sort of tell...
| efitz wrote:
| Science 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 science". These statements indicate a fundamental
| misunderstanding of what science is and how it works (or fails)
| in the modern world.
|
| The modern scientific method is still, in my opinion, the most
| powerful way we have of learning how things work, but it is not
| without flaws. This is just another cautionary tale.
| andi999 wrote:
| It is more nuanced. A lot of science is settled and e. g. moved
| over to technology. All semiconductor devices rely on what was
| groundbreaking science (as well as simple electricity on even
| earlier groundbreaking science). The latest when it became
| technology that part is settled (because it is then reproduced
| million of times).
|
| Problem is some fields which do not systematically reproduce
| findings, or that it is even discouraged to reproduce results
| are not in a good shape and encourage (not deliberately) p
| value hacking at the one end and fraud at the other.
| portpecos wrote:
| "A major cause of low reproducibility is the publication bias
| and the selection bias..."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#Causes
| cm2187 wrote:
| Though applying the word "science" to refer to psychology is a
| very liberal use of the term.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> people saying "the science is settled" or "trust the
| science"_
|
| These two are not of the same level of severity.
|
| The first statement should usually raise eyebrows, as science
| is almost never "settled". The first and second laws of
| thermodynamics are pretty solid. For most other things we can
| entertain some skepticism.
|
| But the second statement raises the question: trust relative to
| what? If your options are to trust something that appears to
| follow the scientific method vs. something that does not appear
| to follow the scientific method, then it's completely fair to
| favor the first. Sometimes you'll be wrong, and that's fine,
| but that doesn't mean that science is inherently undeserving of
| trust.
| User23 wrote:
| > The first statement should usually raise eyebrows, as
| science is almost never "settled". The first and second laws
| of thermodynamics are pretty solid. For most other things we
| can entertain some skepticism.
|
| One of my good friends is a particle physicist and he assures
| me that he and his peers very much hope the science isn't
| settled, despite agreeing pretty well with experiment,
| because the Standard Model is a hideous kludge.
|
| The heuristic I use is judging based on my estimate of the
| statement's Shannon entropy. And most of the time the "follow
| the science" crowd's statements contain absolutely no
| entropy. I've already heard it verbatim from CNN or some
| other usually low expertise source. Furthermore, it's
| annoying to have people lecture me about PCR tests when they
| don't even know what a restriction endonuclease is. Note that
| high entropy doesn't mean correct, but to me it does mean
| more interesting. Now there are plenty of people out there
| who demonstrably do not want me to have access to high
| entropy sources, because they believe them to be wrong.
| They're certainly entitled to their beliefs, but I dislike
| the idea of someone else deciding what I'm allowed to read.
|
| On the subject of Shannon entropy, I've observed that on
| technical subjects that readers here have expertise in, like
| programming, the high entropy comments tend to get upvoted.
| On the other hand any topic where the crowd here believes
| "the science is settled" you see the exact opposite effect:
| high entropy comments are consistently massively disapproved
| of, while clever restatements of the conventional wisdom with
| minimal entropy get voted to the top.
| bequanna wrote:
| What this all fails to consider are the undisclosed
| incentives and motivations of those "doing the science".
|
| It is shockingly easy to lie with statistics, massage
| experimental results, or just straight up fabricate the whole
| damn thing to further your career, get a grant, ego or
| whatever.
|
| What percentage of published research papers are able to be
| reproduced? Very few.
|
| Many "non-intellectuals" inherently know all of the above
| about human nature, but suffer ridicule when they don't
| "trust the science". It doesn't take a blue check mark next
| to your name to realize that people are fallible and will lie
| to get ahead.
| ummwhat wrote:
| Ironically, you picked the one "law" in physics which is
| technically a statistical statement rather than a law per se.
| peterthehacker wrote:
| While you're right in a broad sense your points are irrelevant
| here. This is about fraudulent data (apparently created with a
| random number generator) being used. This is not and should not
| be something we expect from scientists. If this story was
| solely about the replication crisis in behavioral economics,
| then your comment would be relevant.
| pigeonhole123 wrote:
| There are other ways in which a study can be worthless than
| simply making up the data.
| Revenant-15 wrote:
| 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 method that,
| over the long-term, strives towards some sense of "real" truth
| as opposed to some contrarian anti-science, anti-intellectual
| bull. Yes, be critical. No, don't reject science just because
| it suits you or because it might be uncomfortable.
|
| The best thing about science? It's falsifiable. If climate
| change suddenly turns out to be wrong tomorrow, I don't have to
| cling to "oh, but yesterday the consensus was that it was
| real". It's "oh, these smart people are discovering new things
| that are giving us a new/deeper understanding of something we
| didn't quite understand correctly, time to update my
| understanding of the world".
|
| If your point of view is dependent on your not understanding
| something, then it doesn't matter. You'll cling to your
| beliefs, which become a part of your identity, no matter what
| evidence is presented.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| 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.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| Just because one can imagine an impossible experiment does
| not prove that a "science" is not falsifiable. There are
| lots of predictions that climate science makes that are
| falsifiable. And one can imagine that at some point in the
| future, we will be able to do experiments on appropriately
| paired sets of planets.
|
| The phase "unfalsifiable" is often used to suggest that
| something is not scientific. My recollection is that Popper
| thought that evolution was not a scientific theory for the
| same reason. But unfalsifiable depends a lot on the kinds
| of experiments that are possible, or might become possible
| in the future.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Not sure why you are getting downvoted. It is a fundamental
| challenge of climate science. You can backtest a model all
| you want, but anyone familiar with confronting backtested
| models to reality knows that this gives you very little
| comfort. Climate science fundamentally deals with untested
| mathematical models.
|
| It is not the only domain of science that has this problem.
| Medecine is a big one. You can experiment to some extent
| but for obvious ethical reasons, there are lots of stuff
| you can't experiment on, and as a result we keep getting
| contradictory studies on issues that should be purely
| factual.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| Trust comes in degrees, so I think the question is how much to
| trust. Of the scientists I've worked with for long enough to
| estimate their character, I outright distrust only ~ 10%.
| That's consistent with [0], which reports that 8% of surveyed
| researchers admitted to falsifying data, but [1] reports 2%
| falsification and [2] reports only 0.5%. So if a finding is
| only reported by one group, whom you don't know personally, I
| would be only 50-70% confident in it. Once a finding is
| reported by at least two genuinely independent groups (no
| strong social or professional connections between the groups)
| it's appropriate to accept the facts reported but not
| necessarily the interpretation. As independent confirmations
| accumulate, idle skepticism becomes less credible. Active
| skepticism--doing experiments or collecting data to test the
| status quo--is always helpful though and should be welcomed.
|
| [0]
| https://www.proquest.com/openview/e1af57060d9d8f628417ce3b7d...
| [1]
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/435737a
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| This seems like a generalization that needs to limited in
| scope. I think the science is settled about Newton's laws,
| Maxwell's equations, Avogadro's number, and DNA as the genetic
| material in bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. For pretty much
| anything taught in a 100 level science course, the science is
| largely settled.
|
| There are controversies in science, and those controversies
| make for good popular science press, but there is a lot of
| science that is settled.
| jahnu wrote:
| While I agree abuse occurs I think this view is overly strict
| in the other direction. The phrase "the science is settled" is
| perfectly valid to use in many contexts and is useful shorthand
| for something like "if you want to deny this scientific
| consensus you would need to have amazing evidence, therefore
| it's more productive and expedient to move on and discuss
| something else". This can be different depending on context but
| the point is the same.
|
| As an example; the science is settled, human activities are
| responsible for the most of what we observe as climate change.
|
| This does not forbid anyone from coming along and proving the
| settled science wrong but it does prove useful for indicating
| our very high confidence.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > I'm sick and tired of people saying "the science is settled"
| or "trust the science".
|
| Or "I follow the science". Nope, that's not how this works.
| Science doesn't tell people what to do. It isn't a book of
| instructions or a fixed set of truths. It's a process to learn
| how things work. What you do with those learnings is a squishy
| human meatspace thing involving values, politics, social norms,
| traditions, emotions, etc.
|
| Anybody who says they "follow the science" is not doing any
| such thing.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| > 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 skepticism". In that case
| what you are doing is an appeal to authority, which is
| completely unscientific, and necessary for building consensus.
|
| So when we hear "trust the science", it's really a political
| statement more than anything, and it intends to replace a
| person in a robe, or a person in a uniform with a person in a
| lab coat.
|
| Certainly it would be better to have an informed and well
| educated citizenry. But for people who live in the real world
| and do not want to have their society steered by people who
| have incompatible views with a modern society, saying "trust
| the science" is a shorthand for "we don't think you have what
| it takes to contribute to a conversation in a meaningful way."
| jollybean wrote:
| "Certainly it would be better to have an informed and well
| educated citizenry. "
|
| Of course it would, but there's no way for people to 'stay
| informed' on the multitude of various things.
|
| The system we live in is fundamentally based on legitimate
| authority. We have no reasonable way to try to debate with
| our doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers. It's literally why
| they exist - to understand, internalize and work with the
| inherent truth in a system.
|
| We trust them, that's the way it works.
|
| So how does a system that is inherently grey, be 'wrong a lot
| of time' but 'right in others' in a manner that is
| consequential (i.e. vaccines, climate change).
|
| That's a tough social problem.
| WalterBright wrote:
| When I hear people say "trust the science" the speaker is
| often a non-scientist who is selectively picking what science
| fits their agenda and ignoring the rest.
|
| It's the same thing when somebody says "trust me, I'm a
| XXXXX", it's time to be very skeptical.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Especially when it's only a single study with a surprising
| result.
|
| Those go viral easily, but are usually wrong.
| iratewizard wrote:
| The replication crisis has been a long standing problem
| in social sciences and medicine. The former's darkest
| stain is its collective need to prove their preconceived
| world view. The latter's seems to be motivated by profit.
|
| I'm sure nobody is surprised that zealotry and greed have
| made some of science as reliable as psychic readings.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The latter's seems to be motivated by profit.
|
| The same problem persists in communist countries that
| don't allow profit.
| hex4def6 wrote:
| I think you can replace profit with "power". Publish or
| perish is true in most academic circles, regardless of
| government.
| adolph wrote:
| A more charitable interpretation of the tendency of error
| in both is that humans and the world are more complex
| than expected. Sure, there are examples of fraud, etc but
| my general intuition is that people are generally well
| intentioned and interested in honesty and that those
| qualities are not immunity from error. So, malice,
| incompetence or a world that defies our finite minds?
| nimish wrote:
| Bingo.
|
| "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the Experts"
| azinman2 wrote:
| The problem is, not all opinions are equal. And the
| internet, including forums like this, have no notion of
| status, authority, or stature -- so it puts all opinions,
| no matter how informed they are, on the same page. And
| while status and authority doesn't mean one is right, it is
| important than on average our information sources are more
| informed than the average person who has no training, no
| relevant knowledge, no domain expertise, and little ability
| to disambiguate between contradictory or even harmful
| information. This tendency has spilled over into the nearly
| infinite sources of media and information that now exist,
| with accelerants that didn't previously exist for bad
| information to travel wide, far, and fast.
|
| So when people say trust the science, what they're saying
| is a bunch of people who do this all day every day are
| collectively hive minding some opinion on how things work.
| If it's wrong, it will be wrong for likely non-obvious
| reasons. And thus that's the best we as humans can hope for
| at any point in time. As a race we are continually learning
| and updating our understanding of the world; just because
| it's not perfect at any one time doesn't mean everyone
| should just throw away all that they know and assume
| everything is wrong and up for grabs.
| Falandafa2021 wrote:
| > So when people say trust the science, what they're
| saying is a bunch of people who do this all day every day
| are collectively hive minding some opinion on how things
| work.
|
| Only the right people who do this every day though...
| Even better only the ones whose reputation and parts of
| their salary depend upon more people believing in their
| science and not questioning them.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > 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.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| What evidence do you see that the effectiveness reducing
| hospitalization risk has decreased?
| enkid wrote:
| The 95% effectiveness was based on the version of COVID
| that was circulating at the time. No one said it would be
| 95% effective against every possible mutation. Claiming the
| results of those studies are wrong instead of a result of a
| changing environment is itself a misunderstanding of
| science.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Claiming that the vaccines were necessary to "end the
| pandemic" without factoring in the possibility of
| variants for which the vaccines were not as effective was
| not scientific thinking.
| enkid wrote:
| Vaccines are still necessary, they just aren't
| sufficient.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Maybe they expected 99%+ to get vaccinated before a
| vaccine-avoiding variant got out.
| portpecos wrote:
| The media didn't say "Vaccines are 95% effective, except
| for mutations". The media said "Vaccines are 95%
| effective."
| cdstyh wrote:
| The media is all lies and propaganda. Stop paying
| attention.
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| > 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 skepticism".
|
| I've virtually never heard it from somebody who is a
| scientist or even an educated layman. Those people are
| usually talking about specific studies or papers. The people
| who say "trust the science" in my experience might as well be
| saying "trust the television" for all they understand of the
| science.
|
| And I agree they certainly are saying it "to replace a person
| in a robe, or a person in a uniform with a person in a lab
| coat." But I don't think that's a positive thing. They aren't
| scientists, they're NPR listeners regurgitating something
| they've heard.
| indymike wrote:
| > Science 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.
|
| This is probably the most insightful comment on the subject
| I've ever read.
| miketery wrote:
| Great take. What I find most difficult is how humans naturally
| want certainty one way or the other, or an opinion either on
| this side or this side. Side with us or against us. As opposed
| to reality, which has nuances, probabilities, and pros and cons
| depending on the stakeholder / perspective.
| jollybean wrote:
| "Science is a process, a way to find truth. It is not in itself
| truth."
|
| We mostly all know this.
|
| The issue is populism and communications.
|
| When we use 'Science' as a basis of infallible credibility in
| some areas, then it's understandable that some are 'shocked'
| when that infallibility is obviously not true, and then people
| become jaded and lose confidence.
|
| There's no language to differentiate between the murky greyness
| of some things (i.e. memory and recall), and the relatively
| unambiguous results of other bits of research (i.e.
| acetaminophen is safe).
|
| Why should the non-scientific public, even sometimes, have
| confidence in a system that is so often very wrong? How are
| they supposed to know which bits are 'effectively true' and
| which are 'grey'?
|
| From the outside, it looks like Science is being simultaneously
| authoritative (to the point of moralizing) and in other areas
| totally wrong but lacking in self awareness while saying 'Oh,
| that was wrong, bu Science is a process of discovery, it's not
| always right' etc..
|
| Given that Science is constantly 'changing it's mind' it's
| perfectly reasonable for regular people to doubt Climate Change
| science: the 'authorities are often wrong, ergo, they may very
| well be wrong here'.
|
| If Science doesn't have a way of effectively (and by that I
| mean simply and clearly) communicating the degree of confidence
| in something, then we're playing a very dangerous game with
| credibility of the institution.
| jollybean wrote:
| We need some new language over this because some science is
| 'settled' or at least 'strongly indicative'.
|
| I wonder if 'Social Sciences' and 'Psychology' - sine we know
| so little about it and don't necessarily have a foundation from
| which to work on ... if they should be called 'Social
| Philosophy' that happens to use applied scientific methods.
|
| And when the news talks about published papers and scientific
| results, we can agree on a language like simply the term
| 'Unverified' or 'Not Fully Verified' to effectively mean 'Not
| peer reviewed or duplicated'.
|
| That way, when the first Ivermectin trial comes out we can say
| 'Unverified Ivermectin Study' and that 'Verification' is in
| progress etc..
| kenta_nagamine wrote:
| Oops
| [deleted]
| DominikPeters wrote:
| New 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."
| avalys wrote:
| Patrick Winston, professor and former director of MIT CSAIL, told
| a brief story in class back in 2008 or so. He said it was sort of
| a running joke in the graduate admissions committee that people
| were drawn to study and research the areas of AI that
| corresponded to weaknesses of their own.
|
| I.e., people with poor hearing study speech recognition. People
| with face blindness study computer vision. People with poor
| writing skills study natural language processing. And so forth.
|
| "And every so often", he said, turning to face the class with a
| small grin on his face, "we get a grad student who comes before
| the committee and says he's interested in _all aspects of_
| artificial intelligence. "
|
| It was amusing at the time, but had an element of truth to it as
| well. It's not surprising to me that dishonest people would be
| drawn to a career studying honesty.
| lolthishuman wrote:
| This is actually amazing when looked at another perspective. Data
| can only ever be naturally false. The only time it ever has truth
| is because you assigned it truth, either by your experience or a
| delegation to third party. Truth is convergence on consensus and
| ultimately a bias of experience in reality.
|
| This shows that how we use the concept of truth in directing
| society will need to be unpacked in a time where data and fact
| are abundant and not directly experienced. This leads to great
| potential but we must reevaluate our perspectives and weights
| regarding certainty, truth, non truth and so on.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| The 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.
| HPsquared wrote:
| 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".
| perl4ever wrote:
| The longer someone maintains a reputation for honesty and
| ethics, the more they will be trusted and the more they can
| get away with in the end.
|
| Therefore the most advantageous way to try to "beat the
| system" may be to defer any dishonest behavior for an
| indefinitely long time, until a "rainy day".
|
| Makes me think of:
|
| https://xkcd.com/810/
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