Monday, August 23, 2021
Not replication, just dumb
Is this another Replication Crisis? Not exactly.
From Buzzfeed, seen at UD.
Renowned psychologist Dan Ariely literally wrote the book on dishonesty. Now some are questioning whether the scientist himself is being dishonest. According to the 2012 paper, when people signed an honesty declaration at the beginning of a form, rather than the end, they were less likely to lie. A seemingly cheap and effective method to fight fraud, it was adopted by at least one insurance company, tested by government agencies around the world, and taught to corporate executives. It made a splash among academics, who cited it in their own research more than 400 times. That leaves Ariely, who confirmed that he alone was in touch with the insurance company that ran the test with its customers and provided him with the data. But he insisted that he was innocent, implying it was the company that was responsible. “I can see why it is tempting to think that I had something to do with creating the data in a fraudulent way,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I can see why it would be tempting to jump to that conclusion, but I didn’t.” According to correspondence reviewed by BuzzFeed News, Ariely has said that the company he partnered with was the Hartford...Sounds like Ariely is naive and unrealistic, not dishonest. The academic side of “social” “science” has been disconnected from reality since 1910 or so. Insurers and marketers have been running real experiments with a real profit motive, so their own findings about behavior and motivation are accurate. Insurers have learned how to judge honesty from BILLIONS of real experiments. Scenario: When Ariely asked Hartford to run this little study, Hartford ACCURATELY JUDGED that Ariely was both influential and naive. They figured that his “results” might lead competing companies to adopt a counterproductive way of judging honesty, thus giving Hartford a competitive advantage. And their little meta-experiment worked. "At least one other insurer" did adopt the dumb trick. This brings us back to the Trinity House theme. Trinity House WAS the insurer, so its own funding of science was motivated toward realism and honesty through a direct feedback loop. If better foghorns or better radio communication helped to keep a ship from crashing, the ship would reach harbor safely and Trinity House would receive a fee for keeping the ship safe. = = = = = Semi-relevant sidenote: Trinity House was developed to catch and eliminate Wreckers, criminals who built false beacons to lead ships onto the rocks so the criminals could loot the wreck. The interesting interactive radio show 'Calling All Detectives' had one episode about a modern Wrecker.
Labels: Trinity House
¶ 10:33 PM
