> Hacker News is getting a bit ridiculous with the utter disdain shown for sciences and academia. Just to be clear, nobody actually said the social sciences ar

> Hacker News is getting a bit ridiculous with the utter disdain shown for sciences and academia. Just to be clear, nobody actually said the social sciences are roughly equivalent to Enron. I used Enron as a hyperbolic example to emphasize that there are reasons for poor behavior other than lack of education. I was not implying that academic fraud is at the same level as Enron fraud, and after rereading what I wrote I’m comfortable with how I worded it. > But every energy company had the same incentives as Enron. Not every energy company published fraudulent financial statements. Accountants and corporate executives have substantial disincentives against publishing fraudulent financial statements, like going to jail. Academics mostly do not have similar disincentives against abusing statistics. There have been a few high profile embarrassments, but for the most part even people who are widely known to have p-hacked their way to dozens of questionable publications are still sitting comfortably in their tenured professorships.