Better late than never

I did not test the data for irregularities, which after this painful lesson, I will start doing regularly.

Of course, you won't know. But which of the following people is the most likely to have said such a thing?

A) A Stat 101 student

B) A data scientist working in industry during the first year of employment

C) A graduate student research assistant

D) An assistant professor in the publish-or-perish game

E) A senior tenured professor with multiple best-selling books and tens of thousands of citations

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If you think the least likely is the most likely, then you'd be right. The answer is (E).

The person who said the sentence (in 2021) is Dan Ariely, currently a Duke professor of economics but probably known to my readers as author of a series of best-sellers in behavioral economics, starting with Predictably Irrational. (You can find the quotation in this PDF.)

Andrew has documented a series of scandals in which several of his seminal studies have been called into question. The latest one involves data obtained from an insurance company by Ariely. He now claims to have no role in collecting, and processing the data.

Neither did the people who uncovered this potential research fraud. Hence, the ability to suss out data problems does not require first-hand involvement in collecting or processing data.

To read about how the fraud was detected, see here.

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Next time you hear about a publication in a "peer-reviewed" scholarly journal, think about this case. It is entirely possible to publish data analysis in a peer-reviewed journal without "testing the data for irregularities". In fact, researchers with hundreds of peer-reviewed publications may have never once tested data for irregularities! Better late than never, right?

 

P.S. (1) If you need something light for the holidays, here is an advice column Andrew, hmm, wrote for the WSJ.

(2) One of Ariely's best-sellers is "The Honest Truth about Dishonesty". He is an expert on honesty.