Frauds in the Duke, Boston, and Stanford Economics Departments
The econ profession must hold Yiming Cao, Dan Ariely, and Chris Becker to account. One discovered and well-publicized research misconduct incident at a time.
This article walks through 3 unrelated cases of fraud happening right now at 3 unrelated economics departments. It is an open question whether any of the corrupt “scholars” involved will suffer any punishment whatsoever. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to shine a light on these fraudsters during the job market season in the hopes that someone on a hiring committee somewhere will notice.
I know for a fact that dozens — if not hundreds, or thousands — of prominent economists and business school professors on hiring committees are reading this article. Please share this article via email with your hiring committee by clicking this button:
Example #1: Yiming Cao @ Boston University
The job market for fresh econ PhDs is a bloodbath: the vast majority of candidates spend 5+ years forgoing millions of dollars in wages, promotions, and experience in their prime working years only to graduate into a Hunger Games scenario where they viciously compete for 4-4 teaching loads at unranked/unknown schools. Ever heard of Towson University? Me neither. They received 300+ applications this year for a single AP position. The tenure track is coveted. Few candidates are lucky enough to land teaching jobs at all — most are cast aside to industry, or even worse, government. Fewer still land elite AP jobs at a top 100 ranked school; such a gig would pay more, be more prestigious, have a lower teaching load (3-0 course load is standard, I think), and a higher research budget. Plenty of time to focus on research! Plenty of resources, too — some APs even manage to hire full-time Research Directors:
This particular AP has a research budget that is literally 100x most of her competitors. How can low-ranked economists compete? Even if they had the same paper-writing ability ceteris paribus, the research funds tip the scales so dramatically such that the non-anointed LRM will never be able to catch up to HRM. That’s the whole point of elite economics departments: they are designed to build a moat around the top of the profession so that the elite can extract massive rents from the useful idiots. Academic economics, as it is currently set up, is not a level playing field. Titles breed titles, prestige breeds prestige, and lavish research budgets beget top publications. It is all about prestige. The system is rigged so that power and prestige accumulate, slowly but surely, towards the cabal at the top of the pyramid. Economics is like the mafia.
One special PhD Candidate was about to become a “made guy” in this mafia:
Lauded as a job market star, everyone fully expects Cao to land a top tenure track job. Why the high expectations? Because Cao had a paper conditionally accepted at the American Economic Review (AER), the #1 econ journal in the world. This paper virtually guaranteed Cao’s future — he could now coast to tenure at many great schools on the strength of this AER alone if he wanted. That is… until a Yale Law School professor casually pointed out a fatal flaw in this paper:
Upon realizing he just nuked this paper from orbit, Dr. Zhang profusely apologized, distanced himself, and preached a very conservative “wait-and-see” approach:
Taisu Zhang is taking the high road because he does not want to be seen as the person responsible for whatever happens to the authors and the paper in the end.
— Anonymous Ecnomist
I appreciate it that Taisu is taking the high road. The question is whether the authors are worthy of such a benign treatment.
— Anonymous Ecnomist
Zhang’s being too measured. The authors don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.
— Anonymous Ecnomist
Zhang is just being polite and prudent by covering his own tracks. In reality, there is no time to “wait and see”! The Academic Job Market is a scramble, and it is happening now. If we wait one more month Cao will already have already landed a top tenure track job. This story needs to be aired out in the open ASAP so that hiring committees will have no plausible deniability to not have seen it.
Not that most of them haven’t already seen it, anyway. These 30+ pages about Cao on EJMR were the top viewed EJMR thread in November 2021. The dirty little secret of #EconTwitter is that the Venn diagram of #EconTwitter megaposters and EJMR megaposters is basically a perfect circle.
lot of people on the hiring committee are not on ejmr or twitter. in which the YC will still make it to a T20 with his fake AER.
— Anonymous
For full details, read those 30+ pages. I will briefly summarize. Basically, the authors of this paper go out of their way to make the reader think that the 1826 canal closure was a permanent and dramatic shock. In reality, the canal was fully open between 1827 and the 1840s. The authors even cite a book multiple times by a Chinese historian, and that book is very clear about the canal closing only for a year. They either did not read it or decided this was not a problem. They needed statistically significant results, so they chose to ignore the truth.
The real decline of the canal started in 1842, and took decades to gradually complete. Framing it as a sudden shock in 1826 is extremely dishonest — to the point where this constitutes fake or fraudulent science. This is worse than p-hacking. This is making up fake history.
Look, this is not an issue about "robustness." He knowingly mis-reported the key timing of the event that he studies, because using the correct timeline means that his results make no sense. In my opinion, this is indeed a fraud, plain and simple.
— Anonymous Economist
YC is a cheater and must be punished
— Anonymous Economist
Participants at more than 1 seminar/conference raised the 1826 vs. late 1840’s issues. The authors knew about the concerns, but ignored them, because it had succeeded in fooling Esther Duflo and whoever she assigned as the referee at the AER — silly baizuos got played like a fiddle. There is now egg on the AER’s face because this fake paper somehow got through peer review and needed a historian (Zhang) to point it out on Twitter. It is irrefutable proof that AER editors are either 1) incompetent, 2) lazy, or 3) corrupt. The answer is some mix of all three.
Demand side here. YC’s advisor said in the letter that the AER paper is a big deal because it is the first to show the effects of a “truly permanent labor market shock.”In reality, the authors conveniently hide the fact that the shock lasted less than a year. What a slap in the face……
— Anonymous Economist
I think it's obvious that once the authors use the right date their identification and enitre paper will be killed by the pretrends.
— Anonymous Economist
Many real scholars from China are worried this will crowd their hard work out. It almost certainly will. From now on, less benefit of doubt will be given to Chinese researchers outside of the US circle, thanks to people like Kung and Chen.
— Anonymous Economist
James Kung's student and grand-student. They learned from the best. Kung polluted the entire field with his fraudulent papers and fraudulent students.
— Anopnymous Economist
As a Chinese, I can tell you this is intentional. The incentive is just too high to not do it. I have no sympathy for such behavior. A retraction plus professional punishment should be in order.
— Anonymous Economist
Getting an AER by distorting historical facts is a very bad beginning. More and more Chinese students will do the same in the near future. It is very unfair to other honest scholars and destroy this profession.
— Anonymous Economist
Supporters of Cao are now actively campaigning in bad faith to equivocate and muddy waters surrounding this paper. They will argue things like “robustness ’ or “alternative specifications” or “placebo tests”… their whole goal isn’t to find the truth, it is to give Cao’s paper a thin patina of plausible deniability. Do not let them paint it in this light. This paper is intentional, malevolent and deceptive fraud… not a harmless mistake.
It's funny. What they did was so blatantly dishonest that anyone who is defending their work must either be the authors or an embarrassed member of the editorial team handling the paper.
— Anonymous Economist
What is "nuanced" here? The article said the closure of the canal started in 1826, and intensified since then. This is unambiguously wrong, since the canal fully reopened in 1827, and fully operated for at least two more decades. Both authors were informed about the issue long ago, but they chose not to correct the article. I don't see what is the nuance in this case.
— Anonymous Economist
After equivocating, Cao supporters will then lash out and go on the offensive. They will slander me personally as unable to read a sophisticated AER paper (yes I can, it isn’t that hard), unable to understand econometrics (yes I do), and unable to understand the nuances of Chinese history (you can learn the entire history of this canal in 5 minutes on Wikipedia).
None of these criticisms matter at the end of the day. I am simply taking the role of the journalist here. It is easy, devastating, and fatal for me to point out this fraud. I do not have to provide new research of my own — it is easier to blow up trains than make them run on time. Now that I have pointed it out, you can’t unsee it. My credentials, or lack thereof, are meaningless. I have the truth on my side.
After muddying the waters, then after trashing me personally, next they will resort to calling for manners and etiquette. He is just a poor kid on the Job Market! Don’t expose him. This is how the world works! It’s always been this way! Have some civility! Be nice! Don’t ruin his job market!
Sorry Cao, but it is time to grow up. You are a full-blown adult who is engaging in egregious research misconduct at the highest levels of your chosen profession. If you are willing to misrepresent key historical facts to get a wrong paper published in the most elite journal in the world, then you should take accountability when it gets exposed. Welcome to the big leagues.
After equivocating, lashing out, and minimizing the problem, Finally Cao supporters will say, oh it is not a big deal! Nobody cares about economic history anyways. It is a victimless crime. Let it slide. This is how the game is played.
To them, I would say: this is why nobody takes your sub-field seriously. This is why you are a joke. The whole field of Chinese economic history is overrun with deception and fraud. Imagine a medical doctor faked research in The Lancet, and then The Lancet editors tried to sweep that medical fraud under the rug? It would be a huge scandal! Why should we hold economic historians to a lower standard? Well, we shouldn’t. But the reason that we do, in practice, is because your jobs don’t matter. You contribute nothing to society. Nobody cares if someone lies about the minutiae of Chinese economic history to publish a paper, so nobody does anything about it. Congrats, you have wriggled your way out of this mess by virtue of being too insignificant and meaningless for anyone to take the time to squash.
You are insignificant, Cao, to the point where mainstream Western media has ignored this — I sent this story to them, they poked around, and decided that it was indeed truly fraudulent but also that their readers wouldn’t care. Nobody cares about fake Chinese canals from 200 years ago. Maybe Chinese media will care.
Do you know who does care? Karlstack readers. Most of my subscribers are economics professors, and they are generally self-selected to care deeply about the state of integrity in their profession. The AER editorial team has ignored me, so I am blasting it to the world on Substack. This proves the power of independent media: good journalism can still make a difference in a niche.
The authors are have not responded to Zhang asking for clarification in this tweet.
Their silence is deafening. Please respond.
Both the journal and the authors are trying to “ride this one out” because everyone involved knows that once this initial shitstorm is over, nobody will care about this ever again. Nobody actually *reads* these papers, they just see them as bullet points on a CV. Oh, you have an AER publication on your CV from 2021? Great! Welcome Aboard!
The AER paer is emphasized heavily in his letters, given that his JMP is actually mediocre. And according to his letter writer, a major contribution of the AER paper is that "it is the first paper to look at a truly PERMANENT labor market shock," which turns out to be completely untrue since the shock only lasted for less than a year, a fact that Cao conveniently left out in his paper. Had he discussed it honestly, the paper would have no chance of being published at all. If he is not punished for this dishonesty, it would be unfair to other honest JMCs who lose flyouts and offers to him.
— Anonymoous Economist
Shuo Chen has a very poor track record regarding research integrity and should not be given the benefit of the doubt.
— Anonymous Ecnomist
Actionable advice:
Don’t give Cao a job in academia. Simple. Let him spend the next 40 years running SQL queries at an insurance company as a “data scientist.” That is the worst fate I could possible imagine, and that is what he deserves. You have JIRA tickets waiting for you, Cao! Chop chop!
Go one step further. Don’t award his PhD degree. Just don’t give it to him. Give him a masters degree and tell him he should be grateful for that, then boot him out.
Retract this paper from the AER.
Barring a retraction, Zhang should write a comment to the AER, much like when Brett Matsumoto wrote a comment when similar fraud was discovered via EJMR gossip:
This is how science™ is supposed to work. You catch a mistake, you fix it, and you submit the superior version to peer review. Zhang is the one who pointed this out, so he should formally write it up and submit it. Why not write the comment, Zhang? It is a free publication.
Can someone reach out to Zhang and ask him to directly contact AER editors? If this paper is published there’s no hope for the profession anymore. Any journalists want to pick this up?
— Anonymous Economist
Example #2: Chris Becker @ Stanford
Chris Becker, a Job Market candidate from Stanford University, is noteworthy because of how terrible his Job Market Paper is.
It is so bad that it borders on academic misconduct. This guy spent 6 years at Stanford Economics department — surrounded by the highest IQ, best-connected, most helpful economists on the planet — and this turd of a paper is the best he can squeeze out? What a grotesque waste of talent/opportunity. The saddest thing in life is wasted opportunity. He could have done great things with a Stanford PhD; he could have advanced science; he could’ve improved lives; instead, he pissed away his potential to be a shameless political shill… and not even a particularly clever one, at that. His paper sucks. His lies are crude and low-IQ; as if they are designed to deceive a small child. It is such a weak paper it is almost like he WANTS to be caught. It falls apart the second you look under the hood.
To be fair, he’s got a crap advisor. So, his jmp is not entirely his fault, whatever it’s quality is.
— Anonymous Economist
How do I know he is purely an activist, rather than a scholar? Because he spent the past several years on Twitter yelling about how economics as a discipline should explicitly be wielded as a tool against your enemies. He is very brazen when he says this. He will be the first to tell you that he doesn’t care one iota about seeking the truth. Economics is a cudgel.
After all, what is a little intellectual dishonesty among comrades? Especially when compared to ending the eternal struggle of the oppressed proletariate? The ends justify the means. Cutting corners on junky text-mining papers is okay and honourable if it will ultimately help bring about a communist utopia.
When we think of lies, we think of the big stuff. We say, "I could never do something like that." But big lies start with small deceptions.
— Dan Ariely
[Becker] is as unhingеd as they could possibly gets. Just look at his rants on twitter (he closed his acc now, though). He presented at one the seminars I attend and oof, it was a blооdbath.
— Anonymous Economist
well, I guess screaming at random people on twitter 8 hrs/day doesn’t pay off when the job market cometh
— Anonymous Economist
One brave man had the cojones to — in his own words — “nuke this paper from orbit” in a long, amazing Twitter thread:
This Lyman thread is a paper-killer. After Lyman’s heroic thread, the Twitter crowd rightfully began to notice and mock Becker. Rather than address the criticism, or fight back, he locked his account where it remains locked today:
What is so bad about Becker’s JMP paper? Just read it yourself, here is a link. Read it in detail, then look me in the eyes and tell me it is the work of an honest scholar. I dare you.
This is the type of work they're doing in the Stanford Econ PhD program? It makes no sense. It looks more like an undergrad thesis at a state college. His data is just unbelievably bad, for example “North carolina” and "World peace" are keywords labelled as anti-Jim Crow phrases, meanwhile, pro-Jim Crow phrases include such benign strings as "federal beaucratic", "racial equal", "white people", and "constitutional government." His logic fails to pass a basic smell test. His wordcloud doesn’t make sense.
Not to mention this topic has nothing to do with economics. Linguistics, maybe. Political science, perhaps. But economics? Not even close! It isn’t economics.
Perhaps most damning of all is the fact that the only 2 people to come to his defence are the two most compromised, least impartial, most retarded political activists in the entire profession. The two biggest running jokes on #EconTwitter:
Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 @lymanstoneky
Job market papers involve a lot of work, and are a key part of peoples' advance in their career. So I'm always hesitant to nuke from orbit. But this one is at hundreds of RTs and getting wider attention, so here goes. https://t.co/NDZOPvh0IkWhat do they preach? Manners! Politeness! Etiquette! I find these calls to “settle everything behind closed doors with civility” from people like Trevon and Esteban especially hilarious because if a Republican activist juked his text-analysis to make it look like Democrats were evil — Trevon and Esteban would be the loudest and quickest ones to attack that Republican PhD student. I can’t stress enough how little these activist types care about the truth. Their entire worldview can be boiled down to a “Blue Team” vs. “Red Team” lens. Chris Becker is not a scholar. He is a politician. He deserves to have his JMP ruthlessly mocked and is a coward for locking his Twitter account.
Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 @lymanstoneky
Job market papers involve a lot of work, and are a key part of peoples' advance in their career. So I'm always hesitant to nuke from orbit. But this one is at hundreds of RTs and getting wider attention, so here goes. https://t.co/NDZOPvh0IkIt looks like his whole career is going to revolve around lying with text data; check out his research pipeline:
So in all his 3 text-mining papers, he starts with 3 conclusions in mind (Republicans = evil and racist, Charter schools = evil and racist, Massive immigration = good), and then tortures the corpus until he reaches that conclusion. He then pimps out his findings on tankie Twitter for good-boy-points.
I pity any school that hires Becker. His poisonous "segregationist and racist language” agenda is literally poison to the well of public discourse. Chris Becker is a vendor of fake news. An originator of misinformation and agitprop. Not a scholar. Let him go work at the Jain Institute or some other useless leftie think-tank. But please do not let him become a professor. He will poison the minds of your children if he is granted the chance to shape them.
After all, what is a light amount of brainwashing children among comrades? The ends (communist utopia) justify the means (capturing academia and holding it hostage).
I sincerely hope that he doesn’t end up in our profession. Because so much of what we do is done in private (and unverifiable or at least difficult to verify), our profession requires a basic level of trust and intellectual honesty. Given this candidates obvious willingness to mislead and obfuscate, I don’t trust him or his work in the slightest, and neither should you.
— Anonymous Economist
This paper does not seem to be coming from a place of legitimate inquiry. It seems to be a piece designed to call reps rcist, that’s it. In that case, maybe it deserves to be called out.
— Anonymous Economist
Bonus Uhlig Petition
Speaking of Chris Becker, he signed this petition against Harald Uhlig — go CTRL + F search for “Becker”. Better yet, save this petition to your desktop, and cross-reference the names of your candidates before you hire anyone. If they signed this petition, then you should find some benign reason to not offer them interviews (“Oh, just a bad fit”). Do not hire the woke.
Those students didn't think twice before trying to end someone's career because of Twitter comment they didn't like based on political views. They should be kept out of the profession.
— Anonymous Economist
I want to stress that this is not a list of left-leaning profs, it is a list of profs that bully their way to cancel opponents and despise academic freedom. There is a big difference. Retaliation is virtuous when levied against these bullies because we are at war. People make fun of the culture wars, but culture matters and the war must be won. From a game theory standpoint, a tit-for-tat strategy is the only way these people will ever learn. Punish them. Stop hiring them. Enough being walked all over. Ruthlessly shut them out of the profession. These people are cancer.
I don't like the idea of retaliating against juniors for political activity, but it might be necessary purely for self-defense. Imagine all the woke troubles they would cause in your department...
— Anonymous Economist
Every Last One of the COWARDS who singed the anti-UH petition must be Cancelled. An ancient principle - if you unjustly try to get someone punished you should suffer the same punishment. These cowards had no scruples destroying a man's life. They make all of us unsafe and tarnish the integrity of the field and our ability to engage in free inquiry. And, no, I'm not *just* an Internet troll, I'm a tenured MRM and know some of these cowards personally.
— Anonymous Economist
Sorry, but these people are completely incompatible with the spirit of free intellectual inquiry essential for our field, they should go become activists or something
— Anonymous Economist
Any academic who signed the petition has views that are antithetical to academic freedom. They are a cancer on the profession and need to excised.
— Anonymous Economist
I can 100 percent tell you no one on that list will make it to step foot in our dept. Junior or not, the actions of the signatories on that list are 100% egregious and anathema to the academic mission. These people are literally the last ones that should be considered for academia.
— Anonymous Economist
Not to mention that their petition has aged like milk. How do those HU tweets look after all this time? Now that Obama has spoken against "defunding the police," Dems, are about to get clobbered in the Midterms, we see record levels of murder, and Lori Lightfoot is begging for federal troops? Let's read the controversial tweets one more time:
Defund the police agenda has been debunked. Even Obama spoke against it. Obama didn't speak up in June when cities burned and stored were looted, though, he waited until it was popular to speak up. This tells you Harald was more courageous and more prescient than Obama. Harald saw injustice, and he spoke up even when it was unpopular. Wolfers, Yellen, Becker, and Kruggles owe him an apology. There was nothing in his anti-defund-the-police tweets that is uncontroversial, yet they drove the mob against him for no reason other than resentment. They tried to end his career.
Do not hire the woke. Cast out anyone who signed this petition.
I will be cross checking all campus invitations and reference letters for new hires against this list for the rest of my career.
— Anonymous Economist
I know for a fact one of them might come in for an interview. I'm voting based on his explanation for signing this.
— Anonymous Economist
No pass. They're adults and they sought out the list to sign for themselves. There are consequences for joining the red guard.
— Anonymous Economist
industry bro here, will definitely check this list before hiring.
— Anonymous Economist
I’m reviewing a paper by someone on the list. Unfortunately, I am suddenly very busy and might need six more months to complete the review.
— Anonymous Economist
I've already set up a program that cross checks the list with all my university emailsIf any of them are ever invited to a job talk here, or if im ever asked to referee their papers, i will get a notification.
— Anonymous Economist
Yes, I keep my own copy as well. A good list of people who will be happy to ruin you when fashionable or expedient.
— Anonymous Economist
I too am committed to cross-checking against this list, there have to be consequences or the stifling of free intellectual inquiry by the mob of anti-intellectual frauds will never end.
— Anonymous Economist
Need a petition to fire all those who signed this petition. Their attack on [Uhlig] due to his political views is outrageous and unacceptable.
— Anonymous Economist
Some people I used to respect. Now, on a list of useful isiots.
— Anonymous Economist
I am pretty shocked a few of them on the list. Makes me want to avoid them, who knows what you will say around them that they will take the wrong way and try to ruin your career.
— Anonymous Economist
This is a good time to start a personal blacklist. If you receive a referee report request, run a cross-check with the blacklist. When there's a match, congratulations, you no longer have the moral responsibility to review their work seriously. Tit for tat is the best strategy to create an equilibrium with no silly political games in academia.
— Anonymous Economist
Example #3: Dan Ariely @ Duke
The first 2 examples in this article are small potatoes compared to Dan.
Dan Ariely is one of the most famous academics in the world — he is a chaired Professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke, his TED Talks have over 15 million views, and he is a frequent Wall Street Journal advice columnist. Not to mention that he has written three NYT bestselling books, has 200,000+ twitter followers, and in 2018 Ariely was named one of the 50 most influential living psychologists in the world. Ariely is the co-founder of the companies Kayma, BEworks, Timeful, Genie and Shapa, and the Chief Behavioral Economist of Qapital and the Chief Behavioral Officer of Lemonade.
He is also a blatant cheater, liar, and intellectual fraud. His success is a total house of cards, loosely held together by a web of cheating, lies, and cut corners — that is only now starting to unravel.
This is darkly and hilariously ironic because the entire reason he became famous in the first place was by studying cheaters. He has published hundreds of influential academic papers on cheating such as The dishonesty of honest people and The dark side of creativity: original thinkers can be more dishonest and one of his books is even called The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. The sheer cojones it must take to write these papers/books while at the same time being one of the biggest cheaters/liars/frauds in the economics profession is utterly jaw-dropping.
How do I know he is a cheater? The most damning smoking gun happened just a few months ago, when his fraud was uncovered by a datacolada investigation.
This datacolada investigation wasn’t the first time Ariely has been caught fabricating data. In 2010 Ariely was caught red-handed faking data from an insurance company:
In an interview on NPR he claimed he had data from Delta Dental that showed high rates of misdiagnosis from X-Rays. Delta Dental had to intervene and make the correction that they never provided Ariely with this data because they never collected such data.
Citing confidentiality agreements, he (DA) declined to name the insurer that he partnered with. And he said that all his contacts at the insurer had left and that none of them remembered what happened, either.
— Article
More fabricated data. More blatant lies. Hmmm… I am starting to sniff out a pattern. There is a long-established pattern of Ariely cutting corners. Ariely was suspended from MIT after he conducted an experiment using electric shocks without proper approval from the ethics committee. This quote is pretty damning:
“When we asked one of the study investigators why Ariely hadn't requested the necessary permissions, they explained that "Ariely likes to cut corners, and he doesn't think he needs to follow the rules like everyone else. He didn't think he'd get caught."
— MIT insider
Check out this"Expression of Concern" published in July 2021 for one of his papers. Another case where the dog at his data:
"The corresponding author of the article and coauthor of this statement, Dan Ariely, attempted to locate the original data in an effort to resolve the ambiguities but was unsuccessful."
— Dan Ariely
Or how about that time where his shredder experiment was totally fake?
His Z-curve is also atrocious, a big screaming red flag. When Ariely didn't make up the data, he followed very strict p-hacking to get conclusions:
The fake dental data and the datacolada blog alone should be enough proof to trigger a formal investigation into all his papers. He has like 400+ papers. How many of them use fake data? Where there is smoke there is fire. If I find fabricated data in one paper, I update my priors and start believing everything else he did was fabricated.
"I think we should look at all old Dan Ariely studies. Fraudulent people probably commit fraud more than once, and given the level of mathematical competency showed here, we could expect it to be not too hard to uncover."
— Anonymous Economist
Given the fraud in the insurance paper I’m sure if you dig deeply into his papers you would find more examples of fabricated data.There are probably coauthors of his who are wondering about data they received from him where he was the only guy in contact with the supposed partner. But no one has any incentive to speak up in these cases bc they lose a line on their own CVs and look bad in the process.
— Anonymous Economist
DA is the Lance Armstrong of CB. A champion cheater who mastered the game.
— Anonymous Economist
This has been a long time coming — it is time to face your reckoning, Dan. Everyone in the profession has known for years. Check out this thread from 8 years ago:
Duke is looking the other way. Wall Street Journal is looking the other way. Will Duke investigate? Allegedly they already have, and he has been “cleared”. Total sham investigation. I emailed them and they ignored me. Dan has gone back to tweeting as if nothing has happened. He got away with it. No real investigation.
Why is Duke, and the economics profession protecting him? Because this is a big blow to the entire field of Behavioral Science. Ariely is a big name and inspired many to join the field. He is a father to the field. Many people, like Taleb, believe the field is now dead:
Harry Crane @HarryDCrane
Concept of "risk" hasn't yet penetrated economics. @R_Thaler hasn't heard of the Kelly criterion. https://t.co/PuujfA67bg“It’s a dead field.”
— Anonymous Economist
“It's misguided and thankfully dead. See the Ariely results.”
— Anonymous Economist
“behavioral econ/finance in its current state is useless you can make up your stories easily.”
— Anonymous Economist
. His fall is a big hit to behavioral research conducted in business schools by marketing/management scholars, given that this is where most of the flashy, unreplicable findings are coming from... The replication crisis is arriving to marketing and management. One decade late, but it is getting there.
— Anonymous Economist
So I asked Taleb about Ariely:
Noah and Alex think it is not dead yet:
Their analysis can be refuted with a simple physiognomy check:
I find this article (The Death of Behaviorial Economics) by Jason Hrera pretty compelling. Hilarious, I googled the author (Hrera), and his LinkedIn has a very interesting clue:
So he collaborated with Ariely in 2013, and now is disavowing the entire field after the fact. Guilty conscience perhaps? I wonder if there is more to the Hrera story, it might be worth digging into. He doth protest too much.
Is the field of behavioural economics dead? Let’s put it this way. It has been 40 years since the seminal Tversky/Kahneman papers:
and since then, what has Behavioral econ produced? Some cute pop psychology? Some useless “nudges”? When will we start seeing its benefits? Look at what Computer Science has produced in that time. The contrast is laughable. BE is useless.
“I'm sorry but if Dick Thaler is the best that behavioral economics has to offer - and according to the Nobel committee he is - then the field is most certainly moribund if not dead.
— Anonymous Economist
“Expect the worst if you do the behavioral job market
— Anonymous Economist
“BE is the most powerful and at the same time most useless economics. It can explain everything with one word "stupidity". I don't think I, as a behavioral economist, am doing something useful.
— Anonymous Economist
“behavioral economics won't die and the circle jerk will continue.
— Anonymous Economist
“BE is dead. But it permeates pop culture so it will never die. Like a lingering sore in academia.”
— Anonymous Economist
Ariely is the father of a fake, dead, useless field. Consider this Substack article, then, me formally declaring Jihad on Ariely’s papers — or is it a Fatwa? I declare both jihad and fatwa on all Ariely papers, just to play it safe. We will get no justice by Duke sham investigations, I assure you of this, so I will seek vigilante justice. He has 400+ papers and I now begin my journey of tracking down his 400+ datasets. I wonder how many I can get retracted. I wonder how many fake datasets I can uncover. This will be fun. This could plausibly be the next Brian Wansik case — he is a Cornell professor that had 15+ papers retracted. This Ariely story isn’t over by a long shot.
People should be looking at his co-authors, as well. This dield is rife with low-quality, bad-faith researchers .Things will turn really bad when former collaborators start speaking out
— Anonymous Economist
I think we should look at all old Dan Ariely studies. Fraudulent people probably commit fraud more than once, and given the level of mathematical competency showed here, we could expect it to be not too hard to uncover."
— Anonymous Economist
Things will turn really bad when former collaborators start speaking out
— Anonymous Economist
Do you know any shoddy Ariely papers / data that I should investigate?
Please email me tips!
chrisbrunet@protonmail.com
Tying it all together
Pretty much every department, in every university in North America, is full to the brim with fraud like these three examples. Finding them is just a matter of how hard you look, and how careful they were to cover their tracks. There is a never-ending torrent of fraud going on. Nothing ever changes, there is no accountability. Academia is totally captured, and I guarantee you that these 3 examples are the tip of a very large iceberg. Sadly, the mainstream media has no incentive to report on this topic.
Will Cao get a good job? Perhaps. Will Becker? Probably, based on the Stanford brand name alone. Will Dan Ariely continue to enjoy his millions of dollars and WSJ column for decades to come? Definitely. Moral of the story: cheat to get rich and famous. Don’t worry, you won’t be punished, heck, you will even be rewarded! People are allowed to fail upwards at our elite institutions — in fact, failing upwards is the norm rather than the exception. Welcome to the year 2022, where nothing matters and nobody cares.
thanks! that was excellent!