Yup. I clicked through, expecting to read an article with some evidence (however flimsy) that developers were intentionally introducing bugs in their software s

Yup. I clicked through, expecting to read an article with some evidence (however flimsy) that developers were intentionally introducing bugs in their software so that their partner could report the bug and claim a bounty. What I actually read was just weak. The common term for this is the Cobra Effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect but a quick google doesn't bring up any leads on the veracity of his South Africa / rat-farming variant. EDIT: more googling doesn't find any source for this other than Dubner himself. Looks like he might have just made it up.