In 2012, a major paper came out that showed how a simple "nudge," signing a no-cheat pledge, reduced the frequency of cheating. Over the years, people failed to replicate this result, so the initial authors did a big replication study and failed as well. That's where things become interesting.

An independent group uncovered .... cheating in the field study of the original paper. The data was fabricated. By whom, they cannot say. The author of that part of the paper is a major guy in psychology, Dan Ariely. He puts the blame on the corporation that supplied the data.

Here is the sleuthing that uncovered the false data. It's really neat.

Fraud in data about dishonesty

Here is the reaction of one of the original authors of the lab study. The problem wasn't in her work, but in the field study provided by Ariely. I'm really impressed by her candor. I'm also sure that anyone who distrusts "science" will trot this out whenever they adopt an anti-science perspective. Oh well. This is the virtue of open data. And Ariely provided all of his data for review as well, which supports the idea he was duped but didn't catch the problem himself.

Lisa Shu's reaction to her paper being retracted

quote:

I'm also sure that anyone who distrusts "science" will trot this out whenever they adopt an anti-science perspective.

Yep. But this is also a great story of how it's supposed to work. The sleuthing is really neat.