I think reading the authors' responses is illuminating here. Mazar's response is basically "oh god, I'm ashamed this happened. I played no role in the data col

I think reading the authors' responses is illuminating here. Mazar's response is basically "oh god, I'm ashamed this happened. I played no role in the data collection, and I don't know who did. But thank you for all the hard work you've done in exposing this fraud, and I should have done better at questioning the data." Gino's response (for context, she has been implicated in other fabricated data studies) is basically "I'm ashamed. I didn't collect the data, and I trusted the people who did collect it. But thank you for all the hard work you've done in exposing this fraud, I should have done better, and this is what I'm doing in the future to do better." Ariely's response is "I'm the only one of the authors who had the data. Also, it wasn't me." Bazerman's response is "Thank you for exposing this fraud. Let me explain how the study came to be, and the history of my own doubts about the quality of this study [which includes two episodes which seem to be red flags]. I should have pushed harder on those doubts [he was in the minority who wanted to retract the paper after nonreplication in the follow up]." Ariely's response to me feels like raising a preemptive defense against being thrown under the bus. Neither Mazar nor Gino implicate anybody (only disclaim responsibility themselves), whereas Bazerman suggests that it would have had to have been Ariely or Mazar. (There's an interesting bit where Bazerman has an unspecified issue with the [now known to be faked] data prepublication, where one coauthor has unconvincing responses but a later coauthor was able to provide plausible explanations, complete with reference to the underlying data file--but both coauthors are unnamed). Given that, I just don't find the other possibilities all that plausible (and in the case of the middle possibility, it's not exactly exonerative anyways).