Honesty Study to be Retracted over Faked Data
JoeMerchant writes:
Dan Ariely Retracts Honesty Study Based On Fake Data:
A landmark study that endorsed a simple way to curb cheating is going to be retracted nearly a decade later after a group of scientists found that it relied on faked data.
According to the 2012 paper, when people signed an honesty declaration at the beginning of a form, rather than the end, they were less likely to lie. A seemingly cheap and effective method to fight fraud, it was adopted by at least one insurance company, tested by government agencies around the world, and taught to corporate executives. It made a splash among academics, who cited it in their own research more than 400 times.
The paper also bolstered the reputations of two of its authors - Max Bazerman, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and Dan Ariely, a psychologist and behavioral economist at Duke University - as leaders in the study of decision-making, irrationality, and unethical behavior. Ariely, a frequent TED Talk speaker and a Wall Street Journal advice columnist, cited the study in lectures and in his New York Times bestseller The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves.
A group of outside sleuths scrutinized the original paper's underlying data and stumbled upon a bigger problem: One of its main experiments was faked beyond any shadow of a doubt," a team of anonymous coward researchers concluded in a post on the blog: Data Colada, on August 17, 2021.
The bigger issue, to me, is why we have not instituted "black box warnings" on all stories which report conclusions based on self reported data?
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