5 ms·

Dan Ariely has a long history of controversies and studies with falsified data. He wrote 3 popular books and gained a lot of fame before others started uncoveri

Dan Ariely has a long history of controversies and studies with falsified data. He wrote 3 popular books and gained a lot of fame before others started uncovering the problems in his studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely It’s amazing that problems with his studies are still being uncovered. Equally amazing that Duke still maintains a relationship with him after so many problems have been identified with his research.

Drupon 2mo ago
[flagged]
p-e-w 2mo ago
> In 2006, when he was a professor at the MIT Media Lab, Ariely conducted experiments including administering electric shocks with a research assistant who had no human–subject training. […] Ariely confirmed this and said that he wasn't aware that the research assistant did not have the needed one-hour online human–subject training. A one-hour online training is all that’s needed to be considered ready to conduct experiments involving things like electric shocks on human subjects? Forget about this guy, the entire field needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt from scratch.
- paytonjjones 2mo ago
  I don't know the details here but I am a psychologist. The "electric shock" normally used in psych studies is tiny, it's like the equivalent of one of those little toy prank buzzers. You couldn't possibly hurt someone with it, this is really a non-issue. Related side note: Electroconvulsive therapy uses much larger electric shocks but, administered safely by a clinic, is extremely safe, has relatively minor side effects compared to e.g. SSRIs, and is very effective for severe depression. It's a huge shame that it's undeserved reputation prevents it from being more popular. Blame "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for its inaccurate portrayal.
  - Waterluvian 2mo ago
    For what it’s worth, I wasn’t even thinking about the physical danger when I was… shocked… that you only need a one hour online course. It’s that they’re interacting with people in a somewhat clinical way as an implicit authority. The shock would obviously cause discomfort and therefore stress (or why even do it).
    - paytonjjones 2mo ago
      Do you think a potential bad actor would change their behavior if they took, say, a 12 hour course instead? I am of course biased, but I have often been exasperated by the various "trainings", IRB processes, ethics classes, etc, that are required to run even basic psychology studies such as surveys. Meanwhile, down the hall, the medical department is opening the skulls of mice, implanting electrodes, giving them supercancer, and then euthanizing them en masse. Often with less approval burden. The hard truth is that it's tricky to decide what's ethical in science; we mostly allow or disallow things because they've been done that way for years, and all the added "process" is nothing but paper pushing and ass covering to quiet concerned outsiders.
      - Waterluvian 2mo ago
        It’s not about bad actors. It’s about putting untrained people in a position where subjects might be vulnerable and come to depend on them being the trusted expert in the room.
      - fn-mote 2mo ago
        > Do you think a potential bad actor would change their behavior What is the appropriate way to help a righteous but underpaid lab assistant find the guts to call out a process as unethical and insist that the boss’s claim that the IRB has approved it is bogus?
        bluGill 2mo ago
        The most important thing is they know how to report issues and have assurance that reports will not hurt them. If you can show other reports were acted on and the reporter not harmed that helps. It also helps to always have more than one person who could call so they compete with each other to be first because they don't want to be the one seen as an accompanist to fraud.
- dpc050505 2mo ago
  Look up violet wands, you can shock humans with 0 training when it's a consensual hobby.
  - p-e-w 2mo ago
    You can buy them without training, but that doesn’t mean you should be allowed to use them in a research setting on strangers without training.
    - epihelix 2mo ago
      This scientific experiment escalated quickly...
- han-tyumi 2mo ago
  I would not make such a harsh judgment just because electric shocks are involved. During my master’s I took a class at the Media Lab called Human 2.0 on prostheses, orthoses, exoskeletons, and human augmentation. Unsurprisingly, all student final projects involved some form of human experimentation. To run our final project’s experiments, we had to complete a few online modules on bioethics, first aid, and safe practices, as well as submit a proposal to the IRB. From what I saw across projects, the board applied appropriate scrutiny and made helpful contributions. It classified our experiment as low risk, and a lot of care went into participant selection and adherence to the approved protocol, but they did not require any health professional to be present during the sessions. Other projects, however, did require such support and even had some MIT Medical involvement. Incidentally, my project also involved administering electrical shocks to subjects, albeit very mild ones (tACS to induce directed visual artifacts).
- kstenerud 2mo ago
  > Ariely conducted experiments including administering electric shocks Obligatory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6bJHalRnX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6bJHalRnX4
  - teddyh 2mo ago
    “Dr. Venkman, we believe that the purpose of science is to serve mankind. You, however, seem to regard science as some kind of dodge or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable; you are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman. And you have no place in this department or in this university.”
onemoresoop 2mo ago
Reminds me of Francesca Gino for data fabrication. She was also a best seller of sorts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Gino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Gino
- dgacmu 2mo ago
  It should - one of the papers that Data Colada reported on about Gino was co-authored with Dan Ariely: https://datacolada.org/98 https://datacolada.org/98
  - khy 2mo ago
    She had sued Data Colada, I believe about that post. Seems like it got dismissed: https://www.science.org/content/article/honesty-researcher-s-lawsuit-against-data-sleuths-dismissed https://www.science.org/content/article/honesty-researcher-s...
    - rdtsc 2mo ago
      Oh wow. From your link > The fallout from the saga is likely to continue. Simonsohn and several of Gino’s co-authors last year launched a project to assess the reliability of her past papers. So far, this has led to a further retraction in February and a correction in July. Science reported in April that Gino also appeared to have plagiarized passages of text in some of her publications. It’s also hilarious how the judge let her continue the suit against Harvard. Like “hey I plagiarized fine, but you focused on my plagiarism more than others’ that not fair”. Even as more retractions due to plagiarism kept coming…
      - hojofpoj 2mo ago
        I think we've seen recently that it is a dark kind of funny. When your standards for catching fraud are as low as top academia, and expectations might be beyond the probable without it, it creates a conundrum when someone with a prejudice starts to pick targets to actually investigate.
    - 2mo ago
jnwatson 2mo ago
"Ariely is named 636 times in the Epstein files". Yikes.
- NDlurker 2mo ago
  iirc Epstein funded the media lab and had an office there
- Waterluvian 2mo ago
  Context matters. Otherwise we’re just being clowns.
  - KylerAce 2mo ago
    This. Significant portions of the Epstein files are random noise. Though even for a popularish author it'd be strange to be in enough 1990-2018 news snippets to reach that many EF hits. In any case "is in the Epstein files" should in general be replaced with "is in the Epstein files, including this email to/from them I found"
    - dghlsakjg 2mo ago
      The most interesting section from the large paragraph on Wikipedia: “One of the documents is an image of an email from Ariely to Epstein, in which he requests the name and email of a "redhead" that Epstein had previously introduced to him”
      - bluGill 2mo ago
        That still doesn't mean anything. Sure we know Epstein did evil, but not everything he did was evil. One should assume at least a few people he interacted with had no reason to suspect his evil actions.
        jasonfarnon 2mo ago
        I guess that's why the same passage says Ariely maintained the relationship long after the Epstein's pedophile convictions. Not definitive either, but pretty suggestive.
paimapi 2mo ago
> It revealed that Ariely had a longstanding relationship with Epstein, including having visited him at his New York home on several occasions.[45] One of the documents is an image of an email from Ariely to Epstein, in which he requests the name and email of a "redhead" that Epstein had previously introduced to him I mean, I've always consigned 100% of NYT self help slop to the bin of books for people who aren't smart but desperately want to seem like they but this is just a little much now, Dan
trompetenaccoun 2mo ago
We'd find problems with many if not most published studies if we scutinized them the same way. People like him get discovered because they step out of their academic bubble into the light of the world stage. And mind you this is psychology, the entire discipline is only borderline scientific anyway. But even studies in the hard sciences are very often flawed if not outright fabricated. Adjusting data sets to fit the desired result (who'd ever know as long as you do it properly), changing the experiment and measure until they get what they they want, repeated measuring until the "right" data for the paper appeared randomly - those are all things I personally observed in the lab. Not to even get started on the house of cards that is basing ones flawed assumptions on other flawed studies without even the slightest attempt at replicating their results first. It's standard practice to simply presume what's been published (especially by friendly authors) can be regarded as reliable.
- tyrabound 2mo ago
  It is still seared into my mind when a PhD openly stated in a meeting once that she likes to draw the graphs she needs for her papers and then goes looking for the data she needs to support it. I’m sure I can imaging what kind of looking she did based on the fact that she was little more than a slick, fast talking, skin revealing, fast moving, usual suspect con man.
  - officehero 2mo ago
    > draw the graphs she needs for her papers and then goes looking for the data she needs to support it This is a vague statement and it's super important to be precise when blaming someone. I think what you meant is - sketch out the graphs with patterns that support the alternative hypothesis/interesting result and then look for data that make the 'real' patterns look like those in the sketch?
  - suddenlybananas 2mo ago
    That's just coming up with a hypothesis.
- dyauspitr 2mo ago
RachelF 2mo ago
Dan Ariely's fraud is pretty widespread. He sold his research to an insurance company, who should have known better: https://www.lemonade.com/blog/oh-behave/ https://www.lemonade.com/blog/oh-behave/
rdtsc 2mo ago
Ah yes also the author of “The Honest Truth about Dishonesty”. The most amazing thing is he is still a professor at Duke. Wonder if he focused much on academic dishonesty in his book…
- contubernio 2mo ago
  Institutions like Duke benefit enormously from having people like this around. They can claim they have lots of highly cited and well published researchers, a bit of controversy is free publicity, etc. They make money off him and so they defend him. It helps support the myth that they are good educational institutions. US private universities are grift mills.
  - rdtsc 2mo ago
    This happens at any scale. Manager picks a bad candidate to join the team? Well now they are responsible for the decision. Their worth is tied to their bad decision and they will defend the bad choice to the detriment others on the team. So it’s an element of Duke also defending their honor since they invited and supposedly vetted him.
hn_throwaway_99 2mo ago
The fraud that Data Colada presents here is unambiguous. It was also no accident in my opinion that they are specifically mentioning that the 3 Excel files were “Last saved by” “Dan Ariely” I'm sure the statute of limitations has expired for this, but I really wish the Feds would prosecute cases like this as wire fraud instead of leaving insular academic institutions to self-police. This type of fraud is done for personal gain and self-enrichment and causes real, identifiable harms.
- MarceliusK 2mo ago
  I'd be pretty wary of stretching wire fraud law to cover this. Prosecutors deciding whether scientific results are fraudulent sounds like it could create its own set of ugly incentives
  - hn_throwaway_99 2mo ago
    Prosecutors (and juries) already are expected to adjudicate fraud across cases that IMO are much more ambiguous than this. I think it's fair to debate whether it's a good thing that, as I heard it put once, "everything is wire fraud" (i.e. lots of crimes require lying on documents that are sent electronically and thus become federal crimes), but I see zero reason to think that committing academic fraud (which, again, is done for personal gain and causes real, measurable harm to others) is any less of a crime than lots of other things that are prosecuted as wire fraud.
    - Calazon 2mo ago
      Perhaps we need a new/updated law to cover this kind of thing. This sort of academic fraud should absolutely be criminalized, but I'm not sure I'm the biggest fan of the "everything is wire fraud" approach to achieving that.
      - coldtea 2mo ago
        If it gets so bad that a society/academic system needs to criminalize such fraud, they have already lost that race. The only thing that really works is a culture where this rarely if ever happens, because of the peer respect and self-respect of academics.
MarceliusK 2mo ago
At this point the surprising part isn't that another Ariely result has problems, it's that some of these datasets apparently went decades without this kind of basic scrutiny
FranklinMaillot 2mo ago
Beautifully ironic that "Dishonesty and ethics" is listed as one of his research fields.
- BoingBoomTschak 2mo ago
  In person immersion is a great way to research!
- etiennebausson 2mo ago
  He IS a specialist.

Drupon 2mo ago

[flagged]

p-e-w 2mo ago

> In 2006, when he was a professor at the MIT Media Lab, Ariely conducted experiments including administering electric shocks with a research assistant who had no human–subject training. […] Ariely confirmed this and said that he wasn't aware that the research assistant did not have the needed one-hour online human–subject training. A one-hour online training is all that’s needed to be considered ready to conduct experiments involving things like electric shocks on human subjects? Forget about this guy, the entire field needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt from scratch.

paytonjjones 2mo ago
I don't know the details here but I am a psychologist. The "electric shock" normally used in psych studies is tiny, it's like the equivalent of one of those little toy prank buzzers. You couldn't possibly hurt someone with it, this is really a non-issue. Related side note: Electroconvulsive therapy uses much larger electric shocks but, administered safely by a clinic, is extremely safe, has relatively minor side effects compared to e.g. SSRIs, and is very effective for severe depression. It's a huge shame that it's undeserved reputation prevents it from being more popular. Blame "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for its inaccurate portrayal.
- Waterluvian 2mo ago
  For what it’s worth, I wasn’t even thinking about the physical danger when I was… shocked… that you only need a one hour online course. It’s that they’re interacting with people in a somewhat clinical way as an implicit authority. The shock would obviously cause discomfort and therefore stress (or why even do it).
  - paytonjjones 2mo ago
    Do you think a potential bad actor would change their behavior if they took, say, a 12 hour course instead? I am of course biased, but I have often been exasperated by the various "trainings", IRB processes, ethics classes, etc, that are required to run even basic psychology studies such as surveys. Meanwhile, down the hall, the medical department is opening the skulls of mice, implanting electrodes, giving them supercancer, and then euthanizing them en masse. Often with less approval burden. The hard truth is that it's tricky to decide what's ethical in science; we mostly allow or disallow things because they've been done that way for years, and all the added "process" is nothing but paper pushing and ass covering to quiet concerned outsiders.
    - Waterluvian 2mo ago
      It’s not about bad actors. It’s about putting untrained people in a position where subjects might be vulnerable and come to depend on them being the trusted expert in the room.
    - fn-mote 2mo ago
      > Do you think a potential bad actor would change their behavior What is the appropriate way to help a righteous but underpaid lab assistant find the guts to call out a process as unethical and insist that the boss’s claim that the IRB has approved it is bogus?
      - bluGill 2mo ago
        The most important thing is they know how to report issues and have assurance that reports will not hurt them. If you can show other reports were acted on and the reporter not harmed that helps. It also helps to always have more than one person who could call so they compete with each other to be first because they don't want to be the one seen as an accompanist to fraud.
dpc050505 2mo ago
Look up violet wands, you can shock humans with 0 training when it's a consensual hobby.
- p-e-w 2mo ago
  You can buy them without training, but that doesn’t mean you should be allowed to use them in a research setting on strangers without training.
  - epihelix 2mo ago
    This scientific experiment escalated quickly...
han-tyumi 2mo ago
I would not make such a harsh judgment just because electric shocks are involved. During my master’s I took a class at the Media Lab called Human 2.0 on prostheses, orthoses, exoskeletons, and human augmentation. Unsurprisingly, all student final projects involved some form of human experimentation. To run our final project’s experiments, we had to complete a few online modules on bioethics, first aid, and safe practices, as well as submit a proposal to the IRB. From what I saw across projects, the board applied appropriate scrutiny and made helpful contributions. It classified our experiment as low risk, and a lot of care went into participant selection and adherence to the approved protocol, but they did not require any health professional to be present during the sessions. Other projects, however, did require such support and even had some MIT Medical involvement. Incidentally, my project also involved administering electrical shocks to subjects, albeit very mild ones (tACS to induce directed visual artifacts).
kstenerud 2mo ago
> Ariely conducted experiments including administering electric shocks Obligatory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6bJHalRnX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6bJHalRnX4
- teddyh 2mo ago
  “Dr. Venkman, we believe that the purpose of science is to serve mankind. You, however, seem to regard science as some kind of dodge or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable; you are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman. And you have no place in this department or in this university.”

onemoresoop 2mo ago

Reminds me of Francesca Gino for data fabrication. She was also a best seller of sorts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Gino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Gino

dgacmu 2mo ago
It should - one of the papers that Data Colada reported on about Gino was co-authored with Dan Ariely: https://datacolada.org/98 https://datacolada.org/98
- khy 2mo ago
  She had sued Data Colada, I believe about that post. Seems like it got dismissed: https://www.science.org/content/article/honesty-researcher-s-lawsuit-against-data-sleuths-dismissed https://www.science.org/content/article/honesty-researcher-s...
  - rdtsc 2mo ago
    Oh wow. From your link > The fallout from the saga is likely to continue. Simonsohn and several of Gino’s co-authors last year launched a project to assess the reliability of her past papers. So far, this has led to a further retraction in February and a correction in July. Science reported in April that Gino also appeared to have plagiarized passages of text in some of her publications. It’s also hilarious how the judge let her continue the suit against Harvard. Like “hey I plagiarized fine, but you focused on my plagiarism more than others’ that not fair”. Even as more retractions due to plagiarism kept coming…
    - hojofpoj 2mo ago
      I think we've seen recently that it is a dark kind of funny. When your standards for catching fraud are as low as top academia, and expectations might be beyond the probable without it, it creates a conundrum when someone with a prejudice starts to pick targets to actually investigate.
  - 2mo ago

jnwatson 2mo ago

"Ariely is named 636 times in the Epstein files". Yikes.

NDlurker 2mo ago
iirc Epstein funded the media lab and had an office there
Waterluvian 2mo ago
Context matters. Otherwise we’re just being clowns.
- KylerAce 2mo ago
  This. Significant portions of the Epstein files are random noise. Though even for a popularish author it'd be strange to be in enough 1990-2018 news snippets to reach that many EF hits. In any case "is in the Epstein files" should in general be replaced with "is in the Epstein files, including this email to/from them I found"
  - dghlsakjg 2mo ago
    The most interesting section from the large paragraph on Wikipedia: “One of the documents is an image of an email from Ariely to Epstein, in which he requests the name and email of a "redhead" that Epstein had previously introduced to him”
    - bluGill 2mo ago
      That still doesn't mean anything. Sure we know Epstein did evil, but not everything he did was evil. One should assume at least a few people he interacted with had no reason to suspect his evil actions.
      - jasonfarnon 2mo ago
        I guess that's why the same passage says Ariely maintained the relationship long after the Epstein's pedophile convictions. Not definitive either, but pretty suggestive.

paimapi 2mo ago

> It revealed that Ariely had a longstanding relationship with Epstein, including having visited him at his New York home on several occasions.[45] One of the documents is an image of an email from Ariely to Epstein, in which he requests the name and email of a "redhead" that Epstein had previously introduced to him I mean, I've always consigned 100% of NYT self help slop to the bin of books for people who aren't smart but desperately want to seem like they but this is just a little much now, Dan

trompetenaccoun 2mo ago

We'd find problems with many if not most published studies if we scutinized them the same way. People like him get discovered because they step out of their academic bubble into the light of the world stage. And mind you this is psychology, the entire discipline is only borderline scientific anyway. But even studies in the hard sciences are very often flawed if not outright fabricated. Adjusting data sets to fit the desired result (who'd ever know as long as you do it properly), changing the experiment and measure until they get what they they want, repeated measuring until the "right" data for the paper appeared randomly - those are all things I personally observed in the lab. Not to even get started on the house of cards that is basing ones flawed assumptions on other flawed studies without even the slightest attempt at replicating their results first. It's standard practice to simply presume what's been published (especially by friendly authors) can be regarded as reliable.

tyrabound 2mo ago
It is still seared into my mind when a PhD openly stated in a meeting once that she likes to draw the graphs she needs for her papers and then goes looking for the data she needs to support it. I’m sure I can imaging what kind of looking she did based on the fact that she was little more than a slick, fast talking, skin revealing, fast moving, usual suspect con man.
- officehero 2mo ago
  > draw the graphs she needs for her papers and then goes looking for the data she needs to support it This is a vague statement and it's super important to be precise when blaming someone. I think what you meant is - sketch out the graphs with patterns that support the alternative hypothesis/interesting result and then look for data that make the 'real' patterns look like those in the sketch?
- suddenlybananas 2mo ago
  That's just coming up with a hypothesis.
dyauspitr 2mo ago

RachelF 2mo ago

Dan Ariely's fraud is pretty widespread. He sold his research to an insurance company, who should have known better: https://www.lemonade.com/blog/oh-behave/ https://www.lemonade.com/blog/oh-behave/

rdtsc 2mo ago

Ah yes also the author of “The Honest Truth about Dishonesty”. The most amazing thing is he is still a professor at Duke. Wonder if he focused much on academic dishonesty in his book…

contubernio 2mo ago
Institutions like Duke benefit enormously from having people like this around. They can claim they have lots of highly cited and well published researchers, a bit of controversy is free publicity, etc. They make money off him and so they defend him. It helps support the myth that they are good educational institutions. US private universities are grift mills.
- rdtsc 2mo ago
  This happens at any scale. Manager picks a bad candidate to join the team? Well now they are responsible for the decision. Their worth is tied to their bad decision and they will defend the bad choice to the detriment others on the team. So it’s an element of Duke also defending their honor since they invited and supposedly vetted him.

hn_throwaway_99 2mo ago

The fraud that Data Colada presents here is unambiguous. It was also no accident in my opinion that they are specifically mentioning that the 3 Excel files were “Last saved by” “Dan Ariely” I'm sure the statute of limitations has expired for this, but I really wish the Feds would prosecute cases like this as wire fraud instead of leaving insular academic institutions to self-police. This type of fraud is done for personal gain and self-enrichment and causes real, identifiable harms.

MarceliusK 2mo ago
I'd be pretty wary of stretching wire fraud law to cover this. Prosecutors deciding whether scientific results are fraudulent sounds like it could create its own set of ugly incentives
- hn_throwaway_99 2mo ago
  Prosecutors (and juries) already are expected to adjudicate fraud across cases that IMO are much more ambiguous than this. I think it's fair to debate whether it's a good thing that, as I heard it put once, "everything is wire fraud" (i.e. lots of crimes require lying on documents that are sent electronically and thus become federal crimes), but I see zero reason to think that committing academic fraud (which, again, is done for personal gain and causes real, measurable harm to others) is any less of a crime than lots of other things that are prosecuted as wire fraud.
  - Calazon 2mo ago
    Perhaps we need a new/updated law to cover this kind of thing. This sort of academic fraud should absolutely be criminalized, but I'm not sure I'm the biggest fan of the "everything is wire fraud" approach to achieving that.
    - coldtea 2mo ago
      If it gets so bad that a society/academic system needs to criminalize such fraud, they have already lost that race. The only thing that really works is a culture where this rarely if ever happens, because of the peer respect and self-respect of academics.

MarceliusK 2mo ago

At this point the surprising part isn't that another Ariely result has problems, it's that some of these datasets apparently went decades without this kind of basic scrutiny

FranklinMaillot 2mo ago

Beautifully ironic that "Dishonesty and ethics" is listed as one of his research fields.

BoingBoomTschak 2mo ago
In person immersion is a great way to research!
etiennebausson 2mo ago
He IS a specialist.