fewer recessions, more regressions / tweets reflect the opinion of you & your institution
Washington, DC
Joined August 2023
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quant retweeted
If anything this result from post 2 is even more damning than from the first post. Ariely *literally* altered the data between submission and acceptance to get a result required by the referees and editor for publication. Absolutely shameful.
The “sign at the top” paper was a big deal, with about 400 citations before it was retracted. This paper is Dan’s 4th most cited paper, over 2200 cites.
Worth noting that the ONLY reason he was caught here is because his senior coauthor made him share the data with Hyndman back when Dan was a PhD student. If that had not been the case, we would never know. It’s hard not to believe that the rest of his papers are fraudulent, and he was just better at covering his tracks with those.
Of course, Dan is apparently “not able” to produce any records of the original study, and he “doesn’t remember” any details. For his fourth biggest paper, one of the great successes he had as a grad student, getting published in the top journal in psych. You know, the kind of thing you tend to forget.
And don’t forget, this is not the end of the story. Ariely already has two other expressions of concern, including for his number one paper (the Ten Commandments study, Mazar Amir and Ariely 2008 @JofMarketing), where none of the authors can apparently produce the original data or vouch for when and how it was collected (also crazy!). When the current paper gets retracted, that’s two retractions due to outright fraud, two EoCs, numerous documented lies, and an almost guaranteed steady drip, year in and year out, of more evidence of fraud.
I don’t know how long @DukeU, @DukeFuqua, and its dean, Mary Frances Luce, can keep ignoring this. Ariely is dragging their reputation through the mud. The mud is just going to get deeper. Is this really what they want to be known for? Why should any donor give them money, when they can’t even uphold the very basic standards of truth and science?
Also, what is happening with Dan’s other coauthors? Wertenbrach has acted with great integrity. Why are they not organizing a large-scale investigation of their joint work, like Gino’s coauthors have? Could they also be implicated in the fraud? I certainly hope that’s not the case. Eventually the chickens will come home to roost. Better get ahead of the story now, I would think.
You can literally see how Dan Ariely* manually changed points in his 2002 paper to produce the results he wanted.
This is truly remarkable levels of data fraud from one of the world's most famous social scientists.
*I'm guessing Ariely will land on the Gino dog-ate-my-homework defense and say that a mysterious RA who was not a coauthor and thus had very little incentive to selectively manipulate the data did it. I doubt it.
quant retweeted
One of the key takeaways in Science: A New Golden Age is meta-science — the science of science itself.
We need to rigorously evaluate how we fund and conduct research, run real experiments on mechanisms like fast-track grants, measure what actually works, and course-correct when it doesn’t.
Government has rarely done this. That’s changing: we’re standing up meta-science units at places like NIH and NSF so continuous improvement becomes the default.
quant retweeted
This is because you didn't log the scale & this isn't fixed by letting the curve bend.
The actual reason is that without logging, there will just be *huge heteroscedacity*, since AIC, GDP, & consumption grow exponentially!
Here is the chart with this accounted for via log-log:
quant retweeted
When will @Substack finally enable inline LaTeX equations? This is by far the worst limitation for technical writers and I'm seriously considering switching to another platform because of it. Substack has been told about the problem repeatedly but they still won't address it.
quant retweeted
the only inflation index i care about is whey protein and MacBook prices
quant retweeted
My family moved to the US when I was 8, but by the time I turned 20, my dad was still on an H1B (waiting to get processed for a green card).
Once I turned 21, I would age out as his dependent, despite the fact that I basically grew up in the US.
I thought I'd have to become a code monkey after college, and even that only if I was lucky enough to win the H1B lottery.
Otherwise, back to India.
I had become a huge fan of @paulg's essays in college. I was actually depressed that my desire to start a startup or do something entrepreneurial was basically hopeless.
Working on the promising podcast I was doing as a side project? A beyond impossible pipe dream.
Even after 9 years, my dad wasn't able to get a green card - and the lines were only getting longer over time. I figured I'd be an old man before I could quit some FANG job and build my own thing.
By some miracle, COVID travel restrictions cleared out the lines, and I got my green card literally months before I would have aged out.
If not for this unbelievable coincidence, I would not be hosting the podcast.
In the best case, I would be shifting pixels around in the 3rd sub-sub-menu of some big tech software.
I'm incredibly grateful I made it through.
But it's unconscionable that we put the kids of high skilled immigrants through all this anxiety, and in many cases make them repeat the nerve-racking indentured life trajectory that they had to watch their parents go through.
quant retweeted
I will be breaking my silence soon & going on TBPN to discuss the future of AI, autonomous defense, robotics and biotech and energy infrastructure
@sama, let me know if you want to meet after. We are still in the early innings of American Dynamism. Much to discuss 🤝 🎥
quant retweeted
This pile-on on Nicholas Decker is so weird.
Who knows how his PhD research will turn out but we do know he can read dense material closely, and write well.
If he becomes “just” a Tim Harford translating academic econ faithfully for broad audiences, that’d be a big win 🤷🏻♂️
quant retweeted
I digitized estimates from earlier researchers (Eckberg 1995) to create a 124 year time series of homicide victimization. Pretty striking relationship between violent crime and young population share. Makes me wonder if we'll see big declines in crime during the 21st century if fertility stays low...
So much cool time series data is locked in the figures of old econ papers (sometimes without accompanying data tables).
I had Claude build a tool where you upload a screenshot, calibrate the axes, point and click, and out pops a CSV. To think that people are still charging money for this sort of thing!
quant retweeted
Rescind Davis Bacon - a bad law in 1931, a worse law today. marginalrevolution.com/margi…
quant retweeted
A year ago on Facebook, at the request of a former MSU student, I made this post. I used to say in class that econometrics is not so hard if you just master about 10 tools and apply them again and again. I decided I should put up or shut up.
#metricstotheface
quant retweeted
Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: federalreserve.gov/newsevent…
quant retweeted
This is bad framing. They found an average difference in the effect estimated by the teams of 0.033. If you imagine the foreign-born share doubling from 10% to 20%, an AME of 0.033 shifts a 50% probability the public supports welfare to... 53.3%.
jackonomics.substack.com/p/n…
This is deeply troubling.
Researchers are more likely to choose statistical models whose results align with their ideological priors.
Seventy-one research teams independently analyzed the same dataset on the effect of immigration on public support for social welfare programs.
Teams composed of pro-immigration researchers were more likely to conclude that the effect was positive. Teams composed of anti-immigration researchers were more likely to find a negative effect.
Let me repeat: they analyzed literally the same dataset.
Full paper in the first comment.
quant retweeted
Firstly, let me congratulate you on joining the FCC. I opted for a post to make sure this is visible. Everyone who still has sanity should stand with you, regardless of their views on the Trump administration. The habit of just casting people aside over political disagreements really needs to die.
Next, I think a lot of people are not capable of thinking clearly when politics is involved. For instance, you cannot both condemn the Trump administration for hiring sycophants and condemn competent economists for joining it. Pick a lane. For my part, I don't think replacing professor Williams with another Anthony or Miran would improve things.
Lastly, let me remind my colleagues in the profession of the distinction between normative and positive statements. The normative component of a policy problem is about what objectives you pursue and how to trade off between them when they conflict. But you also have a problem of implementation that is entirely technical, that is all about how can you effectively pursue your objectives **conditional** on those objectives. The first one is in the space of politics whereas the second one is in the space of causes and effects, in the space where expertise matters.
If you can't sit down, adopt someone else's policy preferences and determine what they should do to succeed according to their own views, you lack a concept of advising people that is distinct from manipulating them. A lot of this nonsense shunning has this flavor of intellectual immaturity and lack of sophistication.
So folks know that I'm not hallucinating (this time), here is @BachmannRudi reaction to the news of me going to the FCC. For everyone unsure, I am not a Nazi.
