[en] Cheating in Science: Harvard "Honesty Scholar" May Have Been Caught in Dishonesty

"... dishonesty can lead to creativity" - an interesting and somewhat amusing read.

The New York Times: "Questions about a widely cited paper are the latest to be raised about methods used in #behavioral research."

https://datacolada.org/111

#ResearchHighlights #honesty #dishonesty #phacking #harking #dredging #gino #harvard #fraud #cheating #academic #datacolada

“It also leads to practices called by such names as ‘#pHacking’ and ‘DataDredging’ that emphasize the search for small p-values over other statistical and scientific reasoning.”

"Do not chase better metrics. Chase better models."

Excellent lighting talk on how spatial sampling affects the quality of data driven models by Luísa Lucchese

https://youtu.be/q9dy2dQuTak

Chasing better #metrics is like #phacking

#GeoAI #gischat #datascience #machinelearning

If you’re interested in #statistics, #Metascience, #openScience, #pHacking, etc., this is quite a good read.

https://joebakcoleman.com/blog/2023/pcurve/

In 2012, Noam Chomsky mentioned a Lisp-language guy, #PatWinston. Winston said that, in the AI^1 field, people were directed away from "original questions." That sent me to #Chomsky's #PowersAndProspects(1996). _Prospects_ reminded me of Alex Carey's _Taking the Risk Out of Democracy_ and I now see #Mayo's #HawthorneStudies as 1927-1932 #PHacking. #GeorgeEltonMayo! in textbooks.
^1 AI, short for SALAMI: Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences #AISalami

> Psychologists who specialize in exercise music have quantified.. [that] listening to songs with high tempos motivates us to run faster, and the swifter we move, the quicker we prefer our music. Likewise, when drivers hear loud, fast music, they unconsciously step a bit harder on the gas pedal. Walking at our own pace creates an unadulterated feedback loop between the rhythm of our bodies and our mental state that we cannot experience as easily.. during any other.. locomotion.
#PHacking?

> OUTRIGHT FAKERY IS CLEARLY more common in.. sciences than we’d like to believe. But it may not be the biggest threat to their credibility... #MichaelKinsley once said of wrongdoing in Washington, so too in the lab: “The scandal is what’s legal.” The kind of manipulation that went into the “When I’m Sixty-Four” paper, for instance, is “nearly universally common,” #Simonsohn says. It is called “p-hacking,” or, more colorfully, “torturing the data until it confesses.”
#PHacking #OnBullshit?

Classic example of statistical bullshitting or #pHacking someone correct me if I am wrong

The authors predict benchmark cases with two methods and quantify accuracy using the metric RMSD. Whichever methods gets the lowest RMSD "wins". The authors calculate statistical significance - here about 1e-6 for the first two datasets - by look at how many "wins" each method got. What they should have done is a paired test and compared the RMSD values to each other.

Source https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.07568

No more #PHacking or vague #HealthClaims for products to obscure the fact that they lack solid evidence from #RCTs for such claims. So says the FTC. We say that's definitely a good call.
https://conscienhealth.org/2023/01/ftc-asks-for-rcts-not-vague-health-claims/

#MoralDisgust #ResearchEthics #JonathanHaidt #Phacking

Psychological scientists talk about their ethical dilemmas that arise form the lack of ethical standards.

My favorite chapter
Chapter 29
Desperate Data Analysis by a Desperate Job Candidate Jonathan Haidt

https://replicationindex.com/2018/04/26/ethical-challenges-for-psychological-scientists/

#Iguana #Zcurve #PublicationBias #SocialPsychology #Phacking #CFA #LatentVariables #ESM #Psychology #MetaScience #Personality #Statistics