[HN Gopher] Harvard concluded that a dishonesty expert committed...
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Harvard concluded that a dishonesty expert committed misconduct
Author : Tomte
Score : 235 points
Date : 2024-03-15 04:53 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chronicle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chronicle.com)
| smcin wrote:
| For excellent ongoing coverage of Francesca Gino and other
| misconduct cases in academia, esp. behavioral science (such as
| Dan Ariely), see Pete Judo. Also covers replication failures,
| data hacking, and much more.
|
| [YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeteJudo1 ,
| https://www.petejudo.com/]
|
| Also: DataColada blog [https://datacolada.org/], who made public
| the misconduct reported by Gino's graduate student.
| russdill wrote:
| Paul Sutter's new book seems very timely
| https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538181614/Rescuing-Science-Resto...
| hashemian wrote:
| Thanks for the links. I watched some of his videos where he
| explained how DataColada did their forensic investigation in
| data manipulation.
|
| What amazes me is how simple was the fraud (or at least the
| ones reported by Pete!). They basically just opened an excel
| file, started from the top, changed some random numbers, until
| they reached the effect they aimed for!!! Really? What about
| those that can do more sophisticated data manipulation?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I guess she is the expert.
| cloudbonsai wrote:
| > I guess she is the expert
|
| Absolutely. I recommend everyone to look at her publication
| history on HBS website:
|
| https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=271812&...
|
| Her featured work is a book titled "Why It Pays to Break the
| Rules at Work and Life."
|
| One of her most cited paper is "The Dark Side of Creativity:
| Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest".
| sitkack wrote:
| Maybe she wasn't committing fraud, but original research.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| If enough people read and internalize the fraudulent
| conclusions via pop science journalism etc., maybe the
| effect will become measurable enough to replicate the
| original paper :)
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| https://archive.is/6BrOv
| jose_zap wrote:
| Researchers should tick a checkbox "I swear I did not hack the
| data" before submitting a paper to a peer-reviewed journal to
| prevent this kind of misconduct.
| dtech wrote:
| Isn't this just basically fraud? I'm sure it's already covered
| by the existing things you sign, but surprisingly that doesn't
| stop people who are willing to commit fraud.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I assume that in this particular case, it's a joke referring
| to the subject of the study, which involved similar, if even
| weaker, assurances.
|
| In general, this kind of thing is oddly common. It's all over
| government forms. I just interviewed with a Chinese father
| who wanted me to spend time with his children providing
| exposure to English. He asked me whether I had a criminal
| record.
|
| I don't, but if I did, and I chose to lie about it, random
| Chinese parents would never know the difference. (Though
| entering China might have been a challenge.) Why ask?
| gwd wrote:
| > I don't, but if I did, and I chose to lie about it,
| random Chinese parents would never know the difference.
| (Though entering China might have been a challenge.) Why
| ask?
|
| I think you'd be surprised how many people are really bad
| at lying; or even bad at acting normal when they think they
| have something to hide, particularly when asked such a
| question unexpectedly. Sure, some people with a criminal
| record may be able to lie plausibly when put on the spot,
| but there are a reasonable number who would give themselves
| away even if denying it. No real cost, some benefit, so why
| not ask?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, I sanitized my report of the interview. He actually
| asked if I had a bad history. I was confused and said I
| didn't understand. He clarified that he was asking about
| things like crime.
|
| So the element of getting suddenly put on the spot
| doesn't really apply. That's already about as awkward as
| communication gets.
|
| More importantly, though, I don't think the point is
| correct to begin with. This is fine:
|
| > I think you'd be surprised how many people are really
| bad at lying; or even bad at acting normal when they
| think they have something to hide, particularly when
| asked such a question unexpectedly.
|
| But job applicants with criminal records are only going
| to match this description once or twice. For the rest of
| their lives, it's not going to be an unexpected question,
| and they'll have lots of practice in denying their record
| if that's the way they choose to go. You're just never
| going to catch anyone out this way.
| gwd wrote:
| > But job applicants with criminal records are only going
| to match this description once or twice. For the rest of
| their lives, it's not going to be an unexpected question,
| and they'll have lots of practice in denying their record
| if that's the way they choose to go. You're just never
| going to catch anyone out this way.
|
| You're right, you're only going to catch people out if
| you're the only one asking this kind of question... but
| right now that's more or less true of the people in your
| story. First-mover advantage. :-)
| woah wrote:
| Why do forms require signatures if it's easy to forge
| (especially if you are submitting it electronically), and
| evidence of the agreement is gathered from other sources if
| it comes up in court?
|
| Because it boils down what could have started as a nebulous
| mix of halfway-unethical actions into a single fraudulent
| act that can be pointed to and punished later, and will
| provide a lot of people with the impetus to back out of the
| fraud once they see themselves about to commit an
| unambiguously illegal act.
| triceratops wrote:
| Can't they run a background check? It's common to check a
| tenant out when renting a property.
| evandijk70 wrote:
| They already do for a lot of publications. Check the 'reporting
| summary' in this random article
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07171-z#rightslin...
| mattkrause wrote:
| They do, but those "Reporting Summaries" are useless
| makework, IMO.
|
| First, you fill them out _after_ the data has been collected,
| analyzed, and written up. It 's perhaps helpful as a reminder
| to include a few tidbits in the text (e.g., the ethics
| approval #), but literally _no one_ is going to fill this
| form out, realize the sample size is way too small,
| and....abandon the manuscript.
|
| Second, you don't actually want people to comply with the
| instructions. For example, it asks for "A description of any
| assumptions or corrections, such as tests of normality". A
| decent number of statisticians argue that you _shouldn 't_ be
| using normality tests to choose between parametric and non-
| parametric stats. On top of that, nobody actually writes out
| assumptions behind OLS in their paper either.
|
| I am deeply skeptical that this cookie-cutter stuff actually
| helps in any meaningful way. It feels like rigor-theatre
| instead.
| red_admiral wrote:
| And the checkbox should be at the top of the submission form :)
| zaphirplane wrote:
| It's Pre-ticked
| seagullz wrote:
| And a question at the bottom asking "do you feel the urge to
| wash your hands with soap?"
| 2cynykyl wrote:
| You just doxxed yourself as Dan Ariely :-)
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Background for the joke:
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/dan-
| ariel...
| kmeisthax wrote:
| This sounds RFC 3514 compliant.
| DominikPeters wrote:
| Direct link to committee report:
| https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24481375/gino-hbs-inv...
| gwd wrote:
| Reportedly, a lot of people who choose to study psychology are
| motivated originally to figure out what's going on in their own
| heads (which they have a sense is not quite normal) [1]. I wonder
| if there's a similar dynamic with "honesty / ethics": people who
| lack a native impulse to be honest / ethical and are curious
| about people who do.
|
| [1] See e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39703638 from
| yesterday
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Alternative, and more likely imo, hypothesis is that attaining
| and maintaining the social (and probably $$$) capital of being
| a "Harvard Expert" leads to desperation and breaking the rules.
| gwd wrote:
| Sure, that might have been the "trigger"; but that's missing
| the key thing that needs to be explained. If this were
| dishonesty by someone doing chemistry, it's unlikely that
| this would have hit the front page of HN. As they say, "Dog
| bites man isn't a story; man bites dog is."
|
| But a priori, you'd expect someone studying honesty* to
| personally care about honesty, and thus to be _less_ likely
| to give in to these sorts of pressures. That 's the thing
| that needs to be explained; the "man bites dog" aspect.
|
| * EDIT s/honestly/honesty/g;
| Kamq wrote:
| > But a priori, you'd expect someone studying honestly to
| personally care about honestly, and thus to be less likely
| to give in to these sorts of pressures.
|
| I'm not so sure you can automatically assume this. You can
| definitely assume that the subject interests them.
|
| But it's also possible that someone studying
| honesty/dishonesty might start seeing the subject in
| academic/technical terms instead of moral terms. Which may
| give them much less of a disincentive to be dishonest than
| the average person.
|
| Which is to say that repeated studying and analysis of
| instances where people are dishonest may break down the gut
| reaction people have to being dishonest.
| gwd wrote:
| I didn't say one _should_ assume it, just that many
| people _do_. "Chemistry researcher committed fraud" is
| simply not the same as "Dishonesty expert committed
| fraud".
|
| You give an alternate explanation, but it's still an
| explanation; one which wouldn't be needed (and indeed
| wouldn't apply) to a chemistry researcher.
|
| A variation on your explanation might be: Dishonesty
| researchers discover _just how easy_ it is for dishonest
| people to cheat the system, and how little consequence
| there is, and so is more tempted to be dishonest.
| verisimi wrote:
| > But a priori, you'd expect someone studying honestly to
| personally care about honestly
|
| But then, why study honesty if you already know what it is?
|
| For me, this sort of thing - an honesty expert - is in the
| same realm as 'ethics panels'.
|
| These folk are there to abuse edge case arguments (think
| "trolley problem") in order to provide moral cover for
| corporations to act dishonestly, unethically. And they will
| provide documentation in support. CEOs will just do what
| they wanted, but call it "moral" tm.
| JackeJR wrote:
| The researcher was studying dishonesty... So I gather that
| she was more interested in dishonesty?
| yellowstuff wrote:
| Probably the most important reason this story got big is
| because it involved Dan Ariely, a popular author and
| perhaps the most famous active researcher in the world.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Strong disagree. Literally every story I've read about
| this starts by talking about Francesca Gino.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| lawyer broke law or accountant tax cheat or doctor kidney
| thief or lock smith cat burglar
|
| People using their skills dishonestly is the theme of the
| story
| globalnode wrote:
| computer professional caught hacking!
| almostnormal wrote:
| > As they say, "Dog bites man isn't a story; man bites dog
| is."
|
| The headline is just making fun of theory and practice. If
| some is a murder expert, is that some one who understands
| murder or someone highly qualified to kill people?
|
| Therefore, the title is about a "dishonesty expert"
| matching the practice, not about a "honesty expert", which
| could be replaced by any other field.
| philwelch wrote:
| Reminds me of the grad student in criminology who
| allegedly committed a brutal multiple murder in Moscow,
| Idaho. He got caught, so I guess he wasn't as smart as he
| thought he was.
| pixl97 wrote:
| > not about a "honesty expert", which could be replaced
| by any other field.
|
| Surely not marketing and sales!
| willcipriano wrote:
| A thief has the most locks on his door.
| solfox wrote:
| I think it's simpler than that: there's a heck of a lot of
| dishonesty in academia: but the dishonest dishonesty researcher
| grabs the headline.
| bartwr wrote:
| Yes, my experience with academics is that there are a lot of
| very dishonest people. They are political bullies who also
| lie in their research.
|
| Chances of being caught are close to zero (I have contacted
| many times authors of papers who's work I was unable to
| replicate - most of the time zero reply, sometimes "yeah it
| was a honest mistake, oops"), super high competition (only a
| few tenured positions in all world's high visibility
| institutions per year), full control over student's future
| and being able to force them to do fraud (and later blame on
| them).
|
| Obviously, not all, blah blah - but many academic scientists
| are the last people that should be doing science.
| whack wrote:
| Interesting hypothesis but my money is on the opposite
| direction of causality. When you're surrounded by dishonesty on
| a daily basis, you get de-sensitized to it. You start to see it
| as "normal" or as "everyone does it". And then you start to
| think _" Oh, what's the harm if I just fudge a little bit here
| and there. It's not like I'm profiting off of this. Unlike all
| these other millionaires who do far worse"_
|
| Sure, it's easy for us to think _" I would never do anything
| like that, no matter what others around me are doing"_. But as
| someone who has lived in multiple countries, trust me - the
| vast majority of the things we do are simply a reflection of
| what we see other people doing.
| simpletone wrote:
| > Reportedly, a lot of people who choose to study psychology
| are motivated originally to figure out what's going on in their
| own heads
|
| People who go into psychology are more interested in what's
| going on in other people's heads and more importantly
| manipulating other people. It's more about controlling others
| than controlling oneself. It's why psychology was founded in
| the first place.
|
| > people who lack a native impulse to be honest / ethical and
| are curious about people who do.
|
| Ethics isn't about studying people. It's about studying
| principles. IE what does ethics mean. What makes an act ethical
| vs non-ethical. So on. You can delve into the ethics of gods,
| god, AI or even animals. Are ethical principles universal or
| not. So on and so forth.
| staunton wrote:
| > manipulating other people. [...] It's why psychology was
| founded in the first place.
|
| What are you referring to here? Which specific founder(s)
| wanted to (or did) manipulate people?
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think it's more likely that psychology offers a lot of
| potentially marketable propositions, such as lie detection,
| effective lying, covert behavioral control, secret information
| about the movements of financial markets, etc. Therefore, a lot
| of snake oil is sold, and people's careers advance
| proportionally to the amount of snake oil they can sell.
|
| The job has often been to come up with a marketable theory; to
| design experiments and write papers to imply that that theory
| is true without quite proving it; and to avoid the possibility,
| _through any means,_ that someone will weaken or disprove the
| theory.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Within academia, this is known as "research is me-search".
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| It's one of these days where I have to double-check I'm not on a
| hn-themed the onion.
|
| "CEO of data privacy company Onerep.com founded dozens of people-
| search firms"
|
| "Harvard concluded that a dishonesty expert committed misconduct"
|
| And depending on the general mood I'm in this is kinda a downer
| sometimes, like apparently only assholes make it in this world
| because you cannot compete with others if you have a conscience
| and they don't. Sorry for this tangent but it's just one of these
| days somehow.
|
| The McDonald's outage at least was good for a quick laugh when I
| read the "unexpected world's health day" comment.
| vsnf wrote:
| > you cannot compete with others if you have a conscience and
| they don't.
|
| This is self evidently true, though. A conscience is a
| constraint on behavior. People without this constraint can
| accomplish more things. Of course, they may end up suffering
| for their actions, but it's a surefire way to short-term
| success, and not unlikely to lead to long-term success as well.
| trashtester wrote:
| > This is self evidently true, though.
|
| I absolutely disagree.
|
| Conscience, empathy, shame and similar emotions/instincts
| that encourage pro-social behavior would only have developed
| if it lead to higher reproductive fitness for those who had
| them compared to those who didn't.
|
| For instance, only a very small percentage of people are
| psychopaths. If we look at the average life outcome for
| psychopaths, we discover that while some of them may be
| super-successful, we also find a lot of them as social
| outcasts or in prison. And if they live in areas like law
| enforcements, they're also more likely to get killed.
|
| I would say the reason should be obvious. People without
| these guardrails on behavior may get away with anti-social
| behavior for a time, but eventually people figure them out.
| This leads to all sorts of active and passive punishment,
| ranging from difficulty making friends or holding on to a job
| all the way to life in prison or execution.
|
| SOME people may negate the downsides by acting in a super-
| rational way. But this only works for people who are both
| highly intelligent and who also have very good impulse
| control.
|
| But for most people, having at least moderate levels of pro-
| social instincts/emotions will be just as beneficial for
| themselves as for the people around them.
| hackerlight wrote:
| Genetic fitness != financial success. Moreover, ancestral
| environment != modern environment. Not saying you're wrong,
| but it's not a straightforward application of evolutionary
| thinking.
| trashtester wrote:
| I was interpreting "this world" a bit more widely than
| just the work environment in high level Academia.
|
| There are certainly environments where anti-social
| behavior can be optimal. But there are also a LOT of
| environments where pro-social environments are rewarded.
| Includig, but not restricted to, within families.
|
| Anyway, you're right that we're not living in our
| ancestral environment. But I don't think we're in a world
| that actually rewards anti-social behavior less (EDIT)
| than much of our evolutionary history.
|
| Rather, I think cynical outlooks like that of the OP
| actually appears for reasons such as:
|
| 1) People who are themselves anti-social who either
| actually think that everyone else are the same, or at
| least try to normalize such tendencies.
|
| 2) People who, during early development, had a very naive
| world view and then when faced with reality, became so
| disillusioned that they went to the other extreme.
|
| I think the vast majority of people on earth today still
| live in environments where some amount of compassion,
| conscience and empathy are useful traits (for
| themselves).
|
| However, in a lot of cases, it can also be useful to have
| the ability to turn such emotions on or off depending on
| the context. Once we start to think of some other group
| of people (or individuals) as either a mortal enemy or a
| kind of prey, a lot of us can reach such an off-switch
| when dealing with them.
| everforward wrote:
| > Conscience, empathy, shame and similar emotions/instincts
| that encourage pro-social behavior would only have
| developed if it lead to higher reproductive fitness for
| those who had them compared to those who didn't.
|
| It's a classic prisoners dilemma. In aggregate, the best
| option is cooperation. For an individual, the best option
| is betrayal in a society where everyone else follows the
| rules.
|
| Betrayers can't become dominant because the worst option
| for both the individual and society is everyone being a
| betrayer. It ruins social cohesion, so there's no synergies
| to reap rewards from.
| trashtester wrote:
| > For an individual, the best option is betrayal ...
|
| Well, this applies to prisoner's dilemma games if you
| know exactly how many times you will "play" the game with
| a given other player, including the case where you will
| only play one time.
|
| But for repeated prisoner's dilemma games, where you
| don't know what games is the last against a given player,
| a tit-for-tat strategy massively dominates an always-
| defect strategy.
|
| Humans have evolved in environments where repeated
| prisoner's dilemma situation is common, and have evolved
| emotions such as empathy and consciousness for
| interactions with cooperative agents.
|
| We ALSO have evolved (to a lesser or greater degree) the
| ability to turn such emotions off when dealing with
| people who attempt the always-defect strategy (such as
| psycopaths).
|
| In fact, psychpathic behavior only becomes viable in
| populations that have been using tit-for-tat for so long
| that they've "forgotten" how to punish defectors (ie
| almost all agents switched to always-cooperate).
|
| But once you introduce a few always-defect agents into
| the population, the tit-for-tat agents will soon dominate
| again.
|
| At least for the brain wireing for interacting with
| members of our own "tribe". When dealing with people
| outside our "tribe", it's much more likely that we will
| only play them once, and in such cases, always-defect may
| indeed dominate.
|
| However, there is also a tribe-level game, where the
| tribe can act as agents. And in tribe-vs-tribe games,
| depending on circumstances, both tit-for-tat and always-
| defect can be optimal strategies. Always-defect can,
| ultimately, lead to genocide, while tit-for-tat can lead
| to alliances, trade and intermarriage.
|
| People who think that always-defect is always the optimal
| mode of behavior tend to be people who either don't
| consider it for their close relations, or who have very
| few close relations. For instance, someone who lives
| alone in the city and is either unemployed or tend to
| have purely transactional work relations.
|
| What such people tend to forget, is that there is an
| artificial presence in the city, called the police, that
| can impose a level of safety that can remove the need for
| high trust, pro-socal relationships. In a society with
| police, all you have to do is to know what behavior lands
| you in prison, and otherwise you can be a selfish
| bastard.
|
| As soon as you remove the police, loners like that are
| free game for "predators", and only those who have a
| "tribe" have any kind of protection. Such a "tribe" can
| be a clan in an Afghan mountain area or it can be a gang
| in a high-crime city. While a gang member may have little
| to no empathy or conscience when dealing with outsiders,
| maintaining good relations with other clan members can be
| critical (Depending on what specific gang it is.)
| everforward wrote:
| I suppose I should have clarified that always defecting
| is optimal if you're optimizing purely selfishly for
| material goods. It won't make anyone feel fulfilled and
| loved.
|
| > But for repeated prisoner's dilemma games, where you
| don't know what games is the last against a given player,
| a tit-for-tat strategy massively dominates an always-
| defect strategy.
|
| If we're considering repeated prisoner's dilemma games,
| you also have to consider the gain/loss of power between
| the various players. The classic prisoner's dilemma
| consists of two equally impotent players. Over a series
| of games, a player could aggregate enough power to change
| the nature of the game. They could aggregate enough
| power/resources to alter the parameters of the game, like
| using those resources to offer a substantial reward for
| cooperating with them or confessing. Inversely, they
| could use that power to enforce penalties on other
| players for betraying them.
|
| The question then becomes whether an always-defect player
| can accumulate enough resources to change the rules of
| the game before the other players switch to tit-for-tat.
|
| The answer in the real world appears to be "mostly yes".
| Uber appears to have chosen "always defect", but they got
| enough power through their defections that we've become
| effectively powerless to penalize them for defecting.
| Theranos is a counter-example where they were eventually
| punished, though they made the mistake of playing the
| prisoner's dilemma against already powerful players.
|
| Without getting too political, Trump has a history of
| defecting on business relationships and the man was
| elected president.
|
| > At least for the brain wireing for interacting with
| members of our own "tribe". When dealing with people
| outside our "tribe", it's much more likely that we will
| only play them once, and in such cases, always-defect may
| indeed dominate.
|
| Within the tribe, the power levels tend to be flatter,
| though, making it easier for an always defect player to
| seize enough power to not have to play the game anymore.
| I.e. if the player can become moderately wealthy, the
| resources they offer their tribe would likely outweigh
| their history of defection. Company towns are an example
| of this; virtually all the residents agreed the company
| was awful, and yet they stayed (for a long while).
|
| > As soon as you remove the police, loners like that are
| free game for "predators", and only those who have a
| "tribe" have any kind of protection. Such a "tribe" can
| be a clan in an Afghan mountain area or it can be a gang
| in a high-crime city. While a gang member may have little
| to no empathy or conscience when dealing with outsiders,
| maintaining good relations with other clan members can be
| critical (Depending on what specific gang it is.)
|
| Sure, but that's not the prisoner's dilemma anymore, so
| always-defect is probably not an optimal choice.
|
| A crux of the prisoner's dilemma is that a player can
| benefit by choosing to defect when the other player
| chooses to cooperate. If cooperating results in the best
| individual outcome and the best societal outcome, it's
| not a dilemma anymore. Cooperating is the obvious best
| choice.
|
| This is part of what makes always-defect viable. Most
| situations do not mirror the prisoner's dilemma, and
| cooperating is often the best individual outcome. If you
| look at an always-defect player, they might be
| cooperative in 9/10 or 99/100 situations because only
| 1/10 or 1/100 were prisoner's dilemmas where they could
| benefit by defecting.
|
| I don't think "always defect" is globally optimal, only
| for prisoner's dilemmas. Always-defect globally implies
| doing so even when it is clearly a sub-optimal choice
| (like driving your car into a brick wall just because the
| police said not to). The parameters of the dilemma scope
| it to only situations where defecting confers gain.
| silvestrov wrote:
| > repeated prisoner's dilemma games
|
| I think this is why it is very important with
| communities: so that your interactions with other people
| are mostly with the same people instead of mostly
| strangers.
|
| The other important aspect is that people thinks "we have
| the same values, so we are the same team", as you will
| otherwise always select to deflect due to mistrust of the
| other part.
|
| Police on its own is not enough, they cannot solve most
| crimes without help from citizens. A police officier
| without good informers is not good police ("The Wire",
| see IMDB). So police is only really effective in a high
| trust, pro-socal relationships society.
| randysalami wrote:
| A constraint can lead to more power e.g. the power of
| abstractions in code. On a more grounded note, having a
| constraint (a creed or code that limits you) can be a visible
| signal to others that you're worth following. With these
| bonds strengthened by self-imposed constraint, you can
| accomplish more together than you could alone but unfettered
| by limitation (debatable). This is a theme in many movies and
| stories where the main character's restraint inspires others
| to great deeds and gives them the resolve to do the
| unthinkable (Star Wars). Of course, a person with no
| conscience can always feign this restraint... (Palpatine)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| congratulations - a completely self-centered analysis amidst
| a world of systems of systems
| javajosh wrote:
| _> This is self evidently true, though._
|
| I think you mean "this is intuitively true" because, like so
| many intuitive conclusions, it is wrong. Looking at animal
| behavior, it's intuitively true that organisms will only win
| if they are selfish, and yet selfless behavior has evolved in
| countless species. Another intuitive truth is that when you
| have a powerful species of predator that can kill prey at
| will, that they will decimate the prey population and end up
| dying off from lack of food. Yet most ecosystems can and do
| support both predators and prey in equilibrium. In business,
| it's intuitively true that it would be stupid to make another
| fast-food hamburger business in the presence of McDonalds -
| yet Carl's Junior/Hardees did very well doing just that.
| Counter-examples abound to the intuitive conclusion.
|
| One of the best habits you can form is the habit of
| questioning your intuition.
| orzig wrote:
| Adding a little bit of optimism: there are many decent people
| in all of these fields. They might not as often make the news
| (initially for extraordinary "achievements" then for
| downfalls), but it is entirely possible to "make it in this
| world" (supporting a family, taking the occasional vacation,
| retiring at age 65) while being honest.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _like apparently only assholes make it in this world because
| you cannot compete with others if you have a conscience and
| they don 't. Sorry for this tangent but it's just one of these
| days somehow._
|
| We are surrounded by psychopaths. We have politicians willing
| to sell out to foreign countries for what isn't even massive
| wealth. We have government workers "working from home" on side
| gigs on government contracts[1]. And these are examples of
| "nice" ones that don't involve wars. It's crazy.
|
| [0] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-senator-robert-
| menen...
|
| [1]https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/auditor-general-
| fired...
| vundercind wrote:
| This and other factors are why n-gate's HN article descriptions
| were so good. Most of the time they were basically more
| accurate and honest than the actual articles or most posts on
| this site, while also being concise. Cynical? Yeah, but...
| accurate.
| ninju wrote:
| For further details on the "data privacy company Onerep.com"
| discovery
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39709089
| 20after4 wrote:
| > like apparently only assholes make it in this world because
| you cannot compete with others if you have a conscience and
| they don't.
|
| I think this is the key fact of life that it took me far too
| long to realize. They say that "cheaters never win and winners
| never cheat" but it's actually pretty much the opposite of
| that.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| This is true in some fields and not at all in others.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| The article states that this researcher falsified data. While I
| rather abhor dishonesty, especially being a former academic
| myself, one must keep in mind the following: 90% of academia is
| rotten in the sense that the research being done is being done
| because the academic path requires _some_ kind of research. This
| in turn is the case because research groups and departments want
| to keep themselves alive, and the only way to stay alive is gain
| funding. Finally, and worst of all, gaining funding has been
| almost entirely divorced from the usefulness that research has to
| people.
|
| On the counterpoint, I do support basic research and curiosity,
| which I fundamentally believe has value to societies, but the
| research being done is hardly out of curiosity. Instead, these
| perverse incentives have led to an environment where basic
| curiosity is paradoxically discouraged.
|
| The end result is that large portions of academia are filled with
| useless machines doing useless work. As a result, we're getting
| these pathological cases. And we can think about this fraud on
| one more level: don't think that it will necessarily hurt
| academia....a fraud is necessary every once in a while so that
| everyone else shines just a little brighter.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Finally, and worst of all, gaining funding has been almost
| entirely divorced from the usefulness that research has to
| people._
|
| By "usefulness to people" do you mean, essentially, "good for
| society"? Because I have a hard time believing that funding
| entities are simply flushing money down the toilet. They must
| find the research useful to their ends.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Yes, I mean good for society. They are not flushing money
| down the toilet: who do you think makes funding decisions?
| Who do you think reads the funding proposals? Scientists.
| Scientists are giving money to each other to keep their
| efforts alive. Scientists don't do things for the good of
| humankind, they do it for fame and pure intellectual
| curiosity.
|
| Of course, there are benefits to those outside of science:
| science furthers the growth of technology, but is that really
| beneficial to us? Yes, we are thrown a bone now and then that
| is useful such as a vaccine here and there, but the the
| benefits that actually make life better probably account for
| 1% of scientific activity these days.
| red_admiral wrote:
| There is definitely a lot of money thrown after whatever the
| current buzzword is - we had blockchain, now we hve AI;
| sustainability is also a big one in some places. That doesn't
| mean that there's not great things one could achieve for
| society in both the AI and sustainability fields, but having
| the correct keywords on your project proposal goes a long way
| even if you quite obviously don't have a clue what those
| words mean.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I've come to think we need to ignore the current science
| system/establishment and start over with something1 better.
|
| 1 To be determined :)
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| For the most part, I absolutely do agree with you. I would
| say something like more traditional knowledge emphasizing the
| relationship with the earth. I would get rid of 90% of
| science, at least.
| j7ake wrote:
| The sad part about the field is that in the end nobody really
| cares what science turned out to be fake... because nobody
| actually cares about the specific results that come out of
| psychology research.
| tucnak wrote:
| Microbiology is similarly rife with fraud
| burnished wrote:
| How so?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| At least you can more easily verify an experimental result
| that takes a million e coli vs one that takes a million
| depressed people.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Just wait until it's all in AI LLMs... fun times ahead.
| sitkack wrote:
| That seems like a worse thing, it says something about the
| field. There are always going to be individuals who do things
| wrong, or wrong things. But ultimately, it really comes down to
| how the group behaves and the goals they seek.
| gustavus wrote:
| Fact of the matter is Psychology is at this point more pseudo
| than science.
|
| The biggest factor impacting the outcome of an experiment in
| psych is what the researcher conducting the study wants to be
| true. The whole subject is broken down in this article:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o...
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I think you're kind of mischaracterizing this article. The
| conclusion drawn isn't really that psychological research is
| wrong per se, but that the statistical and methodological
| tools which we _believed_ suffice to allow us to formulate
| experiments that make decisive epistemological statements
| apparently do not do so. Scott Alexander isn't imputing the
| behavior of most of these scientists or even the endeavor of
| social psychological research. He is simply observing that
| our methods clearly are insufficient to the end of
| attributing results strong epistemological weight.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I think you're kind of mischaracterizing this article.
| The conclusion drawn isn't really that _psychological
| research is wrong per se_
|
| This is a characterization that you have just made, not one
| that the person you are replying to made. They were very
| clear: "The biggest factor impacting the outcome of an
| experiment in psych is what the researcher conducting the
| study wants to be true."
|
| Even to say something is "more pseudo than science" almost
| directly contradicts your characterization, because it
| implies that there is _both science and pseudoscience_.
| slt2021 wrote:
| Psychology is just vibes, dressed up as science
| andoando wrote:
| I certainly don't. I see so many scientific/philosophical
| issues with it, and Im surprised anyone takes it seriously.
| chubot wrote:
| Yup, that's the point this article makes:
|
| _I'm so sorry for psychology's loss, whatever it is_ -
| https://www.experimental-history.com/p/im-so-sorry-for-psych...
|
| _This whole debacle matters a lot socially: careers ruined,
| reputations in tatters, lawsuits flying. But strangely, it
| doesn 't seem to matter much scientifically. That is, our
| understanding of psychology remains unchanged ..._
|
| _That might sound like a dunk on Gino and Ariely, or like a
| claim about how experimental psychology is wonderfully robust.
| It is, unfortunately, neither. It is actually a terrifying fact
| that you can reveal whole swaths of a scientific field to be
| fraudulent and it doesn 't make a difference._
|
| ---
|
| Also interestingly the author apparently studied under Dan
| Gilbert at Harvard, so he's an "insider". I remember >10 years
| ago seeing the "happiness science" from Gilbert go around:
|
| https://blog.ted.com/ten-years-later-dan-gilbert-on-life-aft...
|
| Although I actually think the core insight is a good one, and a
| memorable one -- people are unable to predict what makes them
| happy. They think they will be happy if they buy a new car to
| show off, but if you ask them afterward, that didn't really
| happen.
|
| There was another one of these "TED memes" that turned out to
| be widely mocked / unreplicable:
|
| _When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy_
|
| _As a young social psychologist, she played by the rules and
| won big: an influential study, a viral TED talk, a prestigious
| job at Harvard. Then, suddenly, the rules changed._
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/magazine/when-the-revolut...
| RowdyTomato wrote:
| I understand where you are coming from. However, this overlooks
| a critical stakeholder group directly affected by the outcomes
| of such research: patients.
|
| For instance, controversies surrounding the PACE trial, which
| explored treatments for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS),
| illustrate the profound implications of research integrity.
| Critics have condemned the trial as "biased and profoundly
| flawed," arguing that its deficiencies have led to detrimental
| effects on patients' lives and treatment approaches. This
| controversy underscores the significance of research outcomes.
|
| For more insights into the academic dishonesty surrounding
| ME/CFS and its consequences on patients I recommended this
| article:
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/12/chroni...
|
| This issue highlights why it's crucial for both the scientific
| community and the public to demand rigor and transparency in
| research, especially when the well-being of vulnerable
| populations is at stake.
| fasteo wrote:
| Being an "expert" takes a lot of practice, and it shows.
| fsflover wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712021
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Fake it until you make it!
| noneeeed wrote:
| There was an interesting two-part series on the Freakonomics
| podcast about academic fraud, and it covered this case.
|
| It's all incredibly depressing. I really feel for all the junior
| researchers who end up wasting their time, and often derailing
| their careers because they followed a path based on other
| people's academic fraud.
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/academic-fraud/
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| No one should be putting all their eggs in one scientific
| basket even if the basis ISN'T fraudulent. I see this mistake
| over and over.
| noneeeed wrote:
| I understand where you are coming from, but if you are
| starting out on a PhD and decide to do research that is
| branching off from work done by someone like Gino you could
| spend a long time chasing ghosts and it will be hard for you
| to turn round and say "I think this is actually BS".
|
| Even once you are over that hump you will have quite a few
| years going from one short-term grant to another, with your
| ability to get funding being dependent on your previous work.
| If that has been stymied because you were basing it off dodgy
| research of other people it could take a long time to build
| up the kind of record where you get to diversify and some any
| kind of academic security of freedom.
| mcv wrote:
| A friend of mine proved (for his PhD I think) that the
| thing his entire department was working on was based on
| bullshit. They weren't happy.
|
| That said, putting all your eggs in one basket is often
| necessary to get anywhere with that basket of research.
| andoando wrote:
| What did they disprove? Or at least, what field of study?
| mcv wrote:
| I forgot the details, but he studied both mathematics and
| AI, so something in either of those fields.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Having done a PhD and said 'I think this is BS', it's not
| easy but possible.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Academic research (especially a PhD) is about going deep into
| one particular topic. You are fully dependent upon the giants
| on which you stand.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Yep. "Just stand on the shoulders of TWO giants" is muuuuch
| easier said than done, lol.
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| It seems like dishonesty in academia is not punished severely
| enough. Someone who is caught may face professional
| embarrassment, and lose some privileges, but I think there
| should be tougher consequences. Hell, Ranga Dias still seems to
| be employed. These people are wasting government (our) money
| which could have been used by honest scientists to further our
| scientific knowledge of the world. It also further wastes the
| time of other scientists who may try to build off of the
| fraudulent research. To me, they are essentially committing
| fraud in a field where truth-seeking is paramount. I think a
| trial and prison time needs to be a part of the consequence for
| flagrant fraud.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| A hardline approach is not going to win support from the
| people on the front lines in the best position to spot and
| police this. Even the most honest researcher has a published
| result or three that they suspect is incorrect and they will
| not trust you to accurately litigate against only the worst
| players because they are smart cookies and fully understand
| that honesty is a severe liability when there is an authority
| out for blood.
|
| No, the better approach here is to just shift the incentives.
| Start funding replication. Once we see labs and career paths
| that specialize in replication / knowledge consolidation, the
| whole system will shift for the better. Bibliometrics and
| hiring committees will start to pay attention and then
| exploratory researchers will start to pay attention and the
| system will start to work a little bit better.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Why can we charge other professions with fraud but not
| researchers? I'm sure people in other professions might
| worry about being wrongfully prosecuted too, but that
| doesn't stop us. Even doctors get criminal charges when
| they deliberately do something wrong. You can be pretty
| sure that virtually every doctor has made honest mistakes,
| but they don't all prevent dishonest doctors from being
| brought to justice.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| There are objective standards in other professions. The
| thing about research is, by definition, whatever you're
| doing is not part of an established profession yet.
|
| Obviously that doesn't apply in setting like drug
| development where standards do exist, as defined by the
| best currently available treatments. But if someone is
| working on something like psychological studies where
| replicability is the exception rather than the rule, or
| on exotic tech where only one experimental facility might
| exist, or on substances or effects that exist only under
| weird conditions, it's not always that easy (or that
| safe) to accuse them of lying. Even when you're pretty
| sure they are.
| kelipso wrote:
| Agreed. There are plenty of stories in physics where
| researchers reported some effect which was found later to
| be due to an error setting up the experiment. Are they
| supposed to face fraud charges because of this?
| Researchers will just quit and go work in the industry or
| something.
|
| And there are plenty of fields where you have different
| interpretations of the same data (see the entire field of
| economics, also plenty in physics and other fields).
| Should the people who espoused ether theory be sued for
| fraud? It'll be a huge mess because doing research is by
| definition doing something unprecedented.
| persnickety wrote:
| I have a hunch that the not everything you do as a
| researcher is novel. A part of it is, like you mention,
| new by definition.
|
| But there's also the old and established parts, like
| statistics, parts of the experimental setup, methodology,
| reporting data accurately (or at all). This is plenty
| enough to have objective standards for.
|
| A lot of fraud is not in making up experimental results,
| but instead misreporting the data and drawing unsupported
| conclusions.
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| Exactly! There are some obvious things too like: don't
| copy and paste tiny bits of an electrophoresis gel and
| put it into another image to make it look like it was the
| same result. Sylvain Lesne comes to mind here. Last I
| checked, this jackass still has a job, too
| burnished wrote:
| If your contention is fraud then good news - we already
| have the laws and authorities required to pursue it.
| Nothing new required.
| Nevermark wrote:
| (IANAL) Fraud can often be prosecuted as a civil crime,
| in which case there needs to be an aggrieved party with
| credible evidence of damages, no inhibitions about making
| a splash, and the time and money resources to sue.
|
| I suspect educational institutions don't want to be seen
| as organizations that sue their own researchers. Same
| with paper publishers. And same for grant issuers.
|
| Downstream researchers? Do they have the time, the money?
| ability to show direct damages whose recompense would be
| worth all the effort?
|
| Students affected perhaps could, but only if the effect
| was very direct and they had the resources. And desire to
| be known as someone who sues their professor.
|
| The damage is usually so diffuse. There is no one party
| with all the reasons to sue.
|
| I have no idea what the process would be for criminal
| prosecution, but the diffuse impact may be an inhibitory
| factor there too.
| ksenzee wrote:
| > Start funding replication.
|
| I'm not convinced this fixes anything. Even when a result
| is genuine, it's very easy to fail to replicate it. We all
| know this from software development: it's a lot easier to
| say "couldn't reproduce" about a genuine bug than it is to
| track down the precise context in which the bug actually
| manifests. So if you get rewarded for failing to replicate
| a result, all the fraudsters will do that. If you get
| funded only when you actually replicate the result, the
| fraudsters will pretend to replicate the result.
| mannykannot wrote:
| > Even when a result is genuine, it's very easy to fail
| to replicate it.
|
| To the extent that is true, then it is itself evidence
| supporting the proposition that not-yet-replicated
| results should be regarded as provisional.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > So if you get rewarded for failing to replicate a
| result, all the fraudsters will do that. If you get
| funded only when you actually replicate the result, the
| fraudsters will pretend to replicate the result.
|
| So reward either? This seems pretty obvious.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| It's much easier to fail to replicate a result than to
| actually try to replicate it.
| anankaie wrote:
| Yes, but the original author is incentivized to attempt
| to show where the replicators got it wrong, so there will
| still be a push to correct the bad data from the false
| replication failure. With that said, I am convinced it
| will be a panacea.
|
| A bigger issue is that... 3-sigmas is really a weak
| signal in a high cardinality state-space, which is
| basically everything above physics of small numbers of
| elementary particles, and it is the elementary physicists
| that go for higher. This is what is feeding the
| replication crisis: Weak signals from very poorly sampled
| studies.
|
| The meta issue is that we as a society need to start
| accepting that some things will take longer and require
| more investment to achieve results. Do fewer studies per
| unit grant, but do the three-sigma ones only to justify a
| real experiment/study, not as an acceptance criteria for
| "discovery!".
|
| I'm not even going to touch politicalization, since I
| _really_ have no idea what to do about it without a worse
| cure than the disease.
| r00fus wrote:
| > We all know this from software development: it's a lot
| easier to say "couldn't reproduce" about a genuine bug
| than it is to track down the precise context in which the
| bug actually manifests.
|
| If a study claims to prove something, it should be
| repeatedly provable or it's a) fraud or b) not proven
| solidly enough.
|
| I think replication is a key component of a functional
| research.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Figuring out why a result is reproducible by some, but
| not others, is probably where the scientific discovery
| lies, if there is one to be had.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Or derailing their careers because only the very successful
| grad students and postdocs get grants and tenure, and evidently
| a good chunk of those elite spots get taken by people who
| publish dishonest research.
| barfbagginus wrote:
| As an expert in dishonesty - literally a corporate espionage
| contractor - I would be very sad if anyone were to actually
| expect me to not commit misconduct...
|
| Things in the academic world are a little different I see.
| Strange.
| _ZeD_ wrote:
| it reminds me of Fullmetal alchemist's Shou Tucker
| pavlov wrote:
| You become a dishonesty expert by lying for 10,000 hours. There
| are no workarounds, got to do the work.
| wtcactus wrote:
| It's high time we accept that social sciences have nothing
| scientific about them, and are just a mix of political ideology
| and astrology.
|
| I already said this before and I'll repeat it. Media constantly
| portraying social sciences and their findings as actual science,
| is a big culprit of all this disbelief the masses are showing
| towards real science (the physical and natural sciences).
| CJefferson wrote:
| I'm not sure the social sciences are any more scientifically
| corrupt than the "harder" sciences.
| orzig wrote:
| Biology has probably had the most replication scandals of the
| hard sciences, but if you look back 10 years, there have been
| several tangible breakthroughs. CRISPR, mRNA vaccines, Cystic
| Fibrosis treatments, malaria vaccine, and that's just off the
| top of my head.
|
| So let's not throw the baby out with a bathwater on Science.
|
| I would be interested to see what other peoples comparable
| list would be for the social sciences - I don't know enough
| to say that "absence of evidence is evidence of absence"
| realityfactchex wrote:
| Here's the thing: even some of the listed items "off the
| top of your head" as counterexamples are entirely
| fraudulent.
|
| I don't think anybody's trying to throw the baby out with
| the bathwater.
|
| This is entirely serious. But most people have no idea how
| broad and deep the reach of the hard science integrity
| problem goes (at least in biology).
|
| Not only that, but it's HARD for people to know, and there
| are with 100% certainty efforts to keep it that way.
| willcipriano wrote:
| You honestly believe that the social sciences have the same
| rigor as physics?
| sitkack wrote:
| corruption and rigor are different things.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Can't really be corrupt if you have enough rigor.
| dahart wrote:
| Oh, lots of people have been rigorous about their
| corruption. Maybe they only got caught because they're
| not rigorous enough. :P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis
| t_of_scientific_misconduct_...
| willcipriano wrote:
| Physics: "Elements of what became physics were drawn
| primarily from the fields of astronomy, optics, and
| mechanics, which were methodologically united through the
| study of geometry. These mathematical disciplines began
| in antiquity with the Babylonians and with Hellenistic
| writers such as Archimedes and Ptolemy." Established: 200
| BC[0]
|
| Social Sciences: "The history of the social sciences
| began in the Age of Enlightenment after 1650"
| Established: 1650 AD[1]
|
| Physics: 2224 year history
|
| Social Sciences: 374 year history
|
| Physics: 3 incidents of misconduct on Wikipedia article
| (and that includes engineering as well).
|
| Social Sciences: 11 incidents of misconduct on Wikipedia
| article.
|
| Physics: One incident per 741 years.
|
| Social Sciences: One incident per 34 years.
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
|
| [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Yes, _for whatever that 's worth_.
|
| One example: I did a pure-chemistry undergrad degree and a
| psychology-adjacent graduate degree. The "hard science"
| degree involved basically zero applied statistics of any
| kind, any statistics concepts that came up were emergent
| from lower level stuff even in e.g. stat mech courses, and
| I wasn't even aware that "Design of Experiments" was a
| thing. Whereas the "soft science" curricula was heavily
| focused on statistical rigor, DoE, layers upon layers of
| internal controls, and so forth; basically because there
| was no practical way to see an unambiguous effect. It
| certainly seemed "rigorous".
|
| However the soft science stuff just has less predictive
| power despite the rigor. In broad sense it relates to human
| perception, capabilities of technology, model systems,
| semiotics/epistemology (maybe wrong word),
| prediction/confirmation, especially faith.
|
| For example, at a macro scale on Earth, it is very easy to
| accurately predict at human scale how things work. Micro
| scale physical objects require a bit more bootstrapping.
| You can't see most molecules or atoms, so you have to come
| up with a way of inferring measurements through other
| processes which themselves have to be trustworthy. Etc.
|
| At some point of course, one has to select some model as an
| axiom or matter of faith to make any progress. You can't
| model a dropping brick if you can't trust your timer or
| measuring tape, etc. So you stand on giants' shoulders and
| make a predictive model as an extension of the axiomatic
| one.
|
| This starts getting really squishy when you're dealing with
| _entire concepts that have no agreed upon definition
| whether quantitative or qualitative_ and try to make them
| into something onto which statistical rigor can be
| applied!!!!!
|
| So with soft-science literature it is always extremely
| important to mentally substitute the details of a model's
| implementation, for the _shorthand expression used to
| describe it which may overlap with a commonly used word_.
|
| For example, "We found that this drug candidate
| significantly reduced depression in mice" -> "We found that
| this drug candidate significantly _increased the amount of
| time mice swim around before giving up when you chuck them
| into a tank of water_ , etc.
|
| because the rigorous conclusion might not actually be
| practically meaningful if the axioms are practically
| unpredictive.
|
| And even worse, going back to the "no agreed definition"
| thing, the definitions of psychological concepts are only
| defined in terms of these very vague experiments! It's like
| bootstrapping physics if you're a disembodied nothing in a
| simulation.
|
| idk there's much more to say on this but I'm
| procrastinating at work so
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The harder sciences get to lay claim to things like AI and
| cell phones. Anti-depressants and EV's.
|
| Social sciences get to lay claim to CBT?
| dahart wrote:
| So? That list has nothing to do with corruption in the
| sciences.
|
| BTW, social sciences get credit for the modern economy and
| for the known history of humankind, for modern farming, for
| today's government and policy, for mental health and mental
| therapies, for modern advertising, for understanding of
| languages, and for modern corporate management, just to
| name a few.
| 20after4 wrote:
| Your list includes a lot of things I wouldn't be proud to
| claim as accomplishments.
| rhelz wrote:
| The question of whether social sciences are sciences is subtle
| to answer. If we take Francis Bacon's method as more or less
| what a science is, then, in order to be a science, we need to
| be able to do experiments. Experiments are objective (anybody
| can watch it happening), communicable (you can tell anybody how
| to do the experiment), and repeatable (anybody can do it).
|
| An example would be something like chemistry. An experiment
| could be burning hydrogen with oxygen to see if it yielded
| water. There is a very strong sense in which anybody could do
| _this same exact experiment_. It is repeatable by anybody, it
| happens in an objective space we can all observe.
|
| Now, take something like history (perhaps one of the social
| sciences). It's proverbial that history repeats itself, but can
| you do _experiments_ in history? Not really, because you can 't
| do something like rerun WWII, only this time the nazi's didn't
| chase out Einstein.
|
| Note, this doesn't mean that History is bogus. Yes, it takes as
| its object of study something which you can't perform
| experiments on, but nevertheless, it does have other methods
| which are apropos to its subject matter, and it is a discipline
| --doing history is scholarship. It yields knowledge--just not
| scientific knowledge in the sense of the Baconian scientific
| method.
|
| Economics is the same--we can't just re-run the Reagan era,
| only this time without trickle-down economics. If somebody is
| studying, say, the causes of the great depression, their
| subject matter isn't something which you can gain knowledge
| about using experiments. Doesn't mean you can't get economic
| knowledge in other ways.
|
| So....what about Psychology? Specifically, somebody who
| studies...deception. Is deception something you gain knowledge
| about by doing experiments? If you take a group of people and
| try to deceive them, and study what happens, is that an
| experiment?
|
| Its not, and for a very interesting reason: the "is-ought"
| distinction. Experiments can tell you the "is"--what is
| happening. But they can't tell you the "oughts"--what _should
| be_ happening. In English, we use two different verb moods to
| mark the distinction, e.g. "Fred is not lying" vs "Fred should
| not be lying."
|
| Now, you can perform experiments and observations to determine
| whether or not Fred is not telling the truth. But lying? Lying
| has an extra ingredient, the _intention_ to deceive. Intentions
| are subjective and not observable in the same way that a
| chemistry experiment is. Very problematic from the standpoint
| of Baconian science.
|
| But what is completely outside the scope of Baconian science is
| determining whether a sentence like "Fred should not be lying"
| is true. If Fred is hiding jews in the basement, should he lie
| to the stormtroopers at his front door? If he had an affair,
| but its over and he wants to stay happily married to his wife,
| _should_ he lie to her if she asked him whether he had an
| affair?
|
| There are no experiments--in the sense of yielding publicly
| observable and repeatable results--which will tell you this.
| Note, this doesn't mean that Psychology is bogus, any more than
| History is Bogus. It's just Psychology has as its subject
| matter, some phenomena which are not amenable to experiment. It
| _used_ to develop methods--like psychoanalysis--which _were_
| more apropos to studying its subject matter.
|
| But these days, it seems to be embarrassed about all that, and
| wants to be a "respectable" science. Instead of Freud
| theorizing about how childhood trauma affects adult moodiness,
| they do things like study whether or not prozac helps
| depression. Studying whether or not a drug can boost serotonin
| levels in the brain can be investigated scientifically, but in
| an important sense, it is changing the subject. We're not
| talking about _humans_ anymore, we are talking about what
| chemicals do to neuron serotonin re-uptake.
|
| So, what if you are an assistant professor, desperately trying
| to get some scientific results so you can get tenure? If you
| try to study something like "deception" scientifically---doing
| experiments on sophomores--you'll run up against the brute fact
| that your subject matter can't be studied scientifically. You
| can call what you are doing "experimenting", but any results
| you get will not be repeatable.
|
| This is a problem if you are trying to get tenure. Psychology
| _could_ have just said "hey, we are more like economics and
| history than we are like chemistry, so lets develop some
| methods appropriate to investigating our subject matter."
|
| But no. What they did instead was just make up results, on what
| looks like a phenomenal scale. And its been going so long that
| we have _generations_ of people who got their Ph.D. from
| somebody who cheated their way through. And _even if_ they
| wanted not to cheat---they are competing with their peers who
| will happily cheat.
|
| The result is sad stories like the OP. It's a vicious circle, a
| race to the bottom. Honesty is punished, deception is rewarded.
| The whole field has seriously lost its way. They need to get
| back to realizing that they are studying a subject matter which
| needs different methods than experimentation to study.
| beryilma wrote:
| Once they start giving TED talks and such, they are not
| researchers anymore. They are highly-educated influencers who
| want to stay in the limelight. And this brings its own set of bad
| incentives, staying "prolific" and eventually dishonesty being
| some of them. In the same field, see what is happening with
| Jordan Peterson.
| homeless_engi wrote:
| In my experience most/all academics crave a certain type of
| attention. It is an occupation where you get promoted in part
| by how famous you are (how many citations your publications
| have, which conferences you attended, etc.).
| javajosh wrote:
| This is great news for Harvard! It implies that it's taking
| academic honesty and rigor seriously, and deserves praise for
| that. Just as police departments deserve praise for
| firing/suspending/charging bad officers, just as state bars
| deserve praise for disbarring bad lawyers, we need to see more of
| this not less. It concerns me that such news is often used as
| evidence of systemic problems when this sort of news signals the
| exact opposite.
|
| We should be more concerned when there are NO instances of
| malpractice reported by institutions. This doesn't mean there
| isn't malpractice, but that the institution has lost the will to
| enforce its own rules. Reacting to this news negatively provides
| a perverse incentive to institutions, and should be quelled.
| curtis3389 wrote:
| This reminds me of Orson Welles' excellent film: F for Fake.
|
| It explores art forgery, art experts, and the author of a book
| about art forgery committing a massive forgery.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| So the author of a bestselling book on why breaking the rules can
| be advantageous... broke the rules?
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Talent-Pays-Break-Rules/dp/0062...
| pknomad wrote:
| Irony aside... doesn't that validate the premise?
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Well not at the moment, her career is pretty well off track
| now.
| saghm wrote:
| They say to write what you know, so they did!
| antegamisou wrote:
| I think this is a great reason why one should trash all these
| self-improvement books by grifters with "expensive" credentials
| (CEO, Ivy League person etc.) and replace them with fiction
| works of 19th Century American/Russian literature.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Discussed concurrently:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712021
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Harvard will come out on top of all this because they can easily
| pivot to being a clown college.
| neurotech1 wrote:
| Archive copy: https://archive.ph/6BrOv
| visarga wrote:
| Plot twist - he was doing his job, it was just a dishonesty
| experiment. /s
| seizethecheese wrote:
| I believe high profile academic fraud to be worse for the world
| than financial fraud, even.
|
| Financial fraud misappropriates one sum of money. Academic fraud
| can misappropriate massive amounts of resources when decision
| makers rely on bullshit ideas
| stmichel wrote:
| Ethicists and especially bio-ethicists are the least ethical
| people on Earth. "Happiness experts" are the most miserable
| people on Earth. etc. etc. etc...
| semiquaver wrote:
| https://archive.ph/6BrOv
| seydor wrote:
| The choice of title has an infuriating amount of wasted potential
| belter wrote:
| The Wikipedia article also has some nuggets:
|
| "In or before 2020, a graduate student named Zoe Ziani developed
| concerns about the validity of results from a highly publicized
| paper by Gino about networking. According to Ziani, she was
| strongly warned by her academic advisers not to criticize Gino,
| and two members of her dissertation committee refused to approve
| her thesis unless she deleted criticism of Gino's paper from it"
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