Did two honesty researchers fabricate their data?

两个诚实研究人员是否捏造了他们的数据?

Planet Money

商务

2023-07-28

25 分钟
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Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino are two of the biggest stars in behavioral science. Both have conducted blockbuster research into how to make people more honest, research we've highlighted on Planet Money. The two worked together on a paper about how to "nudge" people to be more honest on things like forms or tax returns. Their trick: move the location where people attest that they have filled in a form honestly from the bottom of the form to the top. But recently, questions have arisen about whether the data Ariely and Gino relied on in their famous paper about honesty were fabricated — whether their research into honesty was itself built on lies. The blog Data Colada went looking for clues in the cells of the studies' Excel spreadsheets, the shapes of their data distributions, and even the fonts that were used. The Hartford, an insurance company that collaborated with Ariely on one implicated study, told NPR this week in a statement that it could confirm that the data it had provided for that study had been altered had been altered after they gave it to Ariely, but prior to the research's publication: "It is clear the data was manipulated inappropriately and supplemented by synthesized or fabricated data." Ariely denies that he was responsible for the falsified data. "Getting the data file was the extent of my involvement with the data," he told NPR. Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy

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  • This is planet money from NPR.

  • About a decade and a half ago, this one idea started showing up.

  • The nudge.

  • The idea of the nudge came from behavioral economics.

  • Basically said if you really understood how people think their psychology, you could make a huge difference in the world just by doing these little tweaks, just by nudging people in the right direction.

  • Like if you want people to use less electricity, use social pressure.

  • You can send them a letter saying, hey, you're using way more electricity than.

  • Your neighbors or organ donation.

  • How do we get people to sign up to be organ donors?

  • Turns out the secret has to do with the form at the DMV.

  • This is one of the most famous behavioral economists around, Dan Ariely.

  • He's giving a TED talk that's gotten more than 10 million views.

  • And yeah, he's right.

  • Some european countries require people to opt out of being organ donors instead of opting in when they're getting their driver licenses and making people opt out.

  • That gets a lot more people on the organ donor list.

  • Ariely here in a different TED talk, he's given about a dozen.

  • So what have you learned from this about cheating?

  • Is talking about some of his own research focused on how you can get people to be more honest with simple reminders.

  • A lot of people can cheat.

  • They cheat just by a little bit.