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What should give people pause is how not complicated (I'd hesitate to say easy) it would be to create a python script that would generate fake data such that it

What should give people pause is how not complicated (I'd hesitate to say easy) it would be to create a python script that would generate fake data such that it would be all but impossible to determine whether it's real or not. You just need to model the measuring device and hypothesis you want to support, then sample away. The people who get caught red handed like this are lazy, incompetent and stupid. Makes you wonder what about the ones not getting caught.

scotty79 6mo ago
> The people who get caught red handed like this are lazy, incompetent and stupid. Being a cheat significantly correlates with laziness, incompetence and stupidity so there are probably very few cheats smart and diligent enough to not get caught.
- tpoacher 6mo ago
  Based on my experience of the field, I very much challenge that assumption.
  - coppsilgold 6mo ago
    Indeed, the niches of smart cheats or smart criminals have a lot of room. Because the trajectories to reach that stage without being caught by a legal (good legal work) or moral (good person) attractor are sparse and that makes them somewhat rare. Handwaving correlations between cheating/criminality and most personality/intelligence aspects is an error, not least because there is a selection bias problem (eg. who gets caught).
- isolli 6mo ago
  The sample of cheaters that we know about is biased towards cheaters who get caught.
  - BobaFloutist 6mo ago
    To those, yes, but also to the weirdly high number of cheaters that can't help bragging to everyone that'll listen about their cheating.
- thaumasiotes 6mo ago
  > Being a cheat significantly correlates with laziness, incompetence and stupidity There is no evidence for this.
ansgri 6mo ago
It's likely easier to publish genuine research if you have knowledge and rigor to properly synthesize the data. It's not as common as you'd think, and a good simulator is easily publishable, at least was some years ago in domains I'm familiar with.
ethan_smith 6mo ago
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IanCal 6mo ago
The other explanation is that often these are just mistakes that occur with a team of experts in their field but not data management, without a budget for building a more robust system, manually doing a lot of things with data. It's so easy to copy and paste something into the wrong place, to sort by a field and get things out of order, all kinds of issues like that.
- kqr 6mo ago
  On the other hand, any time a hypothesis appears significant, the first reaction should be to verify that all the data going into the calculation is correct, rather than just assume it is. In my day-to-day industry experience, significant results come far more often from incorrect data than an actual discovery.
tempaccount5050 6mo ago
Reminds me of a job I had doing QA at a pill factory in high school in the 90s. Weight, size, crush tests. After 3 months seeing 99.99% pass rates, I pulled out my statistics book and started generating fake data and just read books. If I could do it at 16...
kqr 6mo ago
The conspiratory reason would be that copy-paste errors give plausible deniability of ill intent.

scotty79 6mo ago

> The people who get caught red handed like this are lazy, incompetent and stupid. Being a cheat significantly correlates with laziness, incompetence and stupidity so there are probably very few cheats smart and diligent enough to not get caught.

tpoacher 6mo ago
Based on my experience of the field, I very much challenge that assumption.
- coppsilgold 6mo ago
  Indeed, the niches of smart cheats or smart criminals have a lot of room. Because the trajectories to reach that stage without being caught by a legal (good legal work) or moral (good person) attractor are sparse and that makes them somewhat rare. Handwaving correlations between cheating/criminality and most personality/intelligence aspects is an error, not least because there is a selection bias problem (eg. who gets caught).
isolli 6mo ago
The sample of cheaters that we know about is biased towards cheaters who get caught.
- BobaFloutist 6mo ago
  To those, yes, but also to the weirdly high number of cheaters that can't help bragging to everyone that'll listen about their cheating.
thaumasiotes 6mo ago
> Being a cheat significantly correlates with laziness, incompetence and stupidity There is no evidence for this.

ansgri 6mo ago

It's likely easier to publish genuine research if you have knowledge and rigor to properly synthesize the data. It's not as common as you'd think, and a good simulator is easily publishable, at least was some years ago in domains I'm familiar with.

ethan_smith 6mo ago

[dead]

IanCal 6mo ago

The other explanation is that often these are just mistakes that occur with a team of experts in their field but not data management, without a budget for building a more robust system, manually doing a lot of things with data. It's so easy to copy and paste something into the wrong place, to sort by a field and get things out of order, all kinds of issues like that.

kqr 6mo ago
On the other hand, any time a hypothesis appears significant, the first reaction should be to verify that all the data going into the calculation is correct, rather than just assume it is. In my day-to-day industry experience, significant results come far more often from incorrect data than an actual discovery.

tempaccount5050 6mo ago

Reminds me of a job I had doing QA at a pill factory in high school in the 90s. Weight, size, crush tests. After 3 months seeing 99.99% pass rates, I pulled out my statistics book and started generating fake data and just read books. If I could do it at 16...

kqr 6mo ago

The conspiratory reason would be that copy-paste errors give plausible deniability of ill intent.