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The FT article says: 'A group of academics who compile the Data Colada blog about the evidence behind behavioural science has started publishing a series of pos

The FT article says: 'A group of academics who compile the Data Colada blog about the evidence behind behavioural science has started publishing a series of posts in which they say they will detail “evidence of fraud in four academic papers” co-authored by Gino'. The first two of these blog posts are: https://datacolada.org/109 https://datacolada.org/109 https://datacolada.org/110 https://datacolada.org/110

Trombone12 3y ago
From the second link: > students approached this “Year in School” question in a number of different ways. For example, a junior might have written “junior”, or “2016” or “class of 2016” or “3” (to signify that they are in their third year). All of these responses are reasonable. > A less reasonable response is “Harvard” [...] Nevertheless, the data file indicates that 20 students did so. Moreover, and adding to the peculiarity, those students’ responses are all within 35 rows (450 through 484) of each other in the posted dataset In addition, of these 20 very suspicious rows, most were strongly confirming the hypothesis of the authors. Likewise the first link shows that, in a spreadsheet containing outcomes sorted by treatment group, someone had manually moved rows from the span of rows containing one kind of treatment to a span containing outcomes from a different treatment. These provably manually reordered rows also contained most of the strong evidence for the predicted effect...
- rossdavidh 3y ago
  It all suggests that, in addition to falsifying data, they had become so blase about falsifying data that they weren't particularly careful about it. Which suggests that they may have been falsifying data for a long time...
  - qup 3y ago
    Alternatively, they had such little practice that they weren't good at it.
    - rossdavidh 3y ago
      Perhaps, but I think a first-timer would be able to avoid those mistakes, especially if they were thinking, "oh boy, this is a really bad and risky thing I am doing here, I better double and triple check". On the other hand, if it's a normal (for you) thing you're doing, which you have to do on most of your papers, then on some days you're going to rush it.
      - qup 3y ago
        Normalized deviance, sure
  - philbo 3y ago
    From the first blog post linked above: > We discovered evidence of fraud in papers spanning over a decade > We believe that many more Gino-authored papers contain fake data. Perhaps dozens.
- hinkley 3y ago
  YOU SWITCHED THE SAMPLES. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my friend, Doctor Kimble…
- msdrigg 3y ago
  Not just most. All but one strongly supported hypothesis
Anthony-G 3y ago
The first blog post would have been a much better submission than the Financial Times article.
xdavidliu 3y ago
from 110: > It is worth reiterating that to the best of our knowledge, none of Gino’s co-authors carried out or assisted with the data collection for the studies in this series. I'm confused; I thought 109 described a paper in which Ariely was the sole person to handle the data. How is this not contradictory?
- maxweylandt 3y ago
  The ariely paper contained several studies by a variety of authors. The first post of this series details issues with one of the studies in that paper, which Gino did (but Ariely wasn't involved in). So 'studies' refers to experiment/bit of research, not paper in this context
- jbullock35 3y ago
  The article in question has five co-authors. It reports four studies. Data Colada post 109 is about Study 1, which Gino handled. An earlier Data Colada post -- https://datacolada.org/98 https://datacolada.org/98 -- is about Study 3 in the same article. It seems that Ariely is the only co-author who might have handled the data for that study.
hawk_ 3y ago
Reading this makes me want some CSI like TV show based on forensics using statistics and excel files!
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  there are several of them on youtube. the most popular being related to sports statistics (e.g. SB nation)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Trombone12 3y ago

From the second link: > students approached this “Year in School” question in a number of different ways. For example, a junior might have written “junior”, or “2016” or “class of 2016” or “3” (to signify that they are in their third year). All of these responses are reasonable. > A less reasonable response is “Harvard” [...] Nevertheless, the data file indicates that 20 students did so. Moreover, and adding to the peculiarity, those students’ responses are all within 35 rows (450 through 484) of each other in the posted dataset In addition, of these 20 very suspicious rows, most were strongly confirming the hypothesis of the authors. Likewise the first link shows that, in a spreadsheet containing outcomes sorted by treatment group, someone had manually moved rows from the span of rows containing one kind of treatment to a span containing outcomes from a different treatment. These provably manually reordered rows also contained most of the strong evidence for the predicted effect...

rossdavidh 3y ago
It all suggests that, in addition to falsifying data, they had become so blase about falsifying data that they weren't particularly careful about it. Which suggests that they may have been falsifying data for a long time...
- qup 3y ago
  Alternatively, they had such little practice that they weren't good at it.
  - rossdavidh 3y ago
    Perhaps, but I think a first-timer would be able to avoid those mistakes, especially if they were thinking, "oh boy, this is a really bad and risky thing I am doing here, I better double and triple check". On the other hand, if it's a normal (for you) thing you're doing, which you have to do on most of your papers, then on some days you're going to rush it.
    - qup 3y ago
      Normalized deviance, sure
- philbo 3y ago
  From the first blog post linked above: > We discovered evidence of fraud in papers spanning over a decade > We believe that many more Gino-authored papers contain fake data. Perhaps dozens.
hinkley 3y ago
YOU SWITCHED THE SAMPLES. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my friend, Doctor Kimble…
msdrigg 3y ago
Not just most. All but one strongly supported hypothesis

Anthony-G 3y ago

The first blog post would have been a much better submission than the Financial Times article.

xdavidliu 3y ago

from 110: > It is worth reiterating that to the best of our knowledge, none of Gino’s co-authors carried out or assisted with the data collection for the studies in this series. I'm confused; I thought 109 described a paper in which Ariely was the sole person to handle the data. How is this not contradictory?

maxweylandt 3y ago
The ariely paper contained several studies by a variety of authors. The first post of this series details issues with one of the studies in that paper, which Gino did (but Ariely wasn't involved in). So 'studies' refers to experiment/bit of research, not paper in this context
jbullock35 3y ago
The article in question has five co-authors. It reports four studies. Data Colada post 109 is about Study 1, which Gino handled. An earlier Data Colada post -- https://datacolada.org/98 https://datacolada.org/98 -- is about Study 3 in the same article. It seems that Ariely is the only co-author who might have handled the data for that study.

hawk_ 3y ago

Reading this makes me want some CSI like TV show based on forensics using statistics and excel files!

red-iron-pine 3y ago
there are several of them on youtube. the most popular being related to sports statistics (e.g. SB nation)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]