Goddamn but social psychology needs to fix its shit.
This guy isn't even American so it probably doesn't matter.
1: No, clearly this is a sign that all social sciences are fraudulent and unscientific. </my string theory colleague who has never worked with real-world data ever>
Leaving aside my nationalism, how do you have a Ph.D. dissertation with fake data and have the candidate not know anything? Getting to know that data better than anyone is supposed to be part of the dissertation process.
4: If you don't have any data, you can't fake it.
From the article:
"What about gender differences?" he asked Stapel, requesting to see the data. Stapel told him the data hadn't been entered into a computer yet. Vingerhoets was stumped. Stapel had shown him means and standard deviations and even a statistical index attesting to the reliability of the questionnaire, which would have seemed to require a computer to produce.
Then, in the spring of 2010, a graduate student noticed anomalies in three experiments Stapel had run for him. When asked for the raw data, Stapel initially said he no longer had it.
This is like a different planet for two reasons.
5: that doesn't usually mean checking to make sure it follows Benford's law and so on.
I'm kind of disappointed that Stapel didn't have a more sophisticated method for faking the data, though. Couldn't he have done it automatically?
Anyhow, related.
7,8: yeah, those examples are entirely insane.
Did he use regular M&M's or peanut ones? And did he remove all of the green M&M's so the subject's horniness didn't skew the results?
9: Right, but see 8. It's very strange to me that the graduate student gets the data all cooked from the professor.
9.last "Dirk Smeesters" is such a great name.
I'm kind of disappointed that Stapel didn't have a more sophisticated method for faking the data, though.
I'd think you could do it using the procedures people use for bootstrapping or testing statistical procedures.
Best line: "I miss him, but there are equal amounts of instances when I want to punch him in the face."
I would just take other public datasets and scramble them as necessary to produce the desired result, that way digit distributions and such should be natural.
Unless someone trying to fake data unwittingly discovers that someone else was publishing fake data.
I have some code that takes nosie and fits it to specified statistical parameters. That could totally work with a little tweaking!
I have some code that takes noise and fits it to specified statistical parameters
I believe this describes a significant fraction of our research.
If you take specified statistical parameters and fit them to noise, you should call it 'data mining.'
I have some code that takes noise and fits it to specified statistical parameters
"I call it 'Econometrics'."
And 20 just described the remaining fraction of our research.
Why do the kids today feel the need to bootstrap everything?
24 to the first comment of the article in 23.
... Seriously, this experiment sounds ridiculous to me, even before he threw the questionnaires away and ate all the M&Ms himself ...
Thing is lots of similar experiments have been published. The whole "stereotype threat" thing seems ridiculous to me which I suspect you all will not agree is sufficient reason to discount it.
Most of those experiments sound pretty easy to run (given the ability to get human-subjects permission). There's an entertaining special issue in there: Catchy-Sounding Experiments Actually Performed, with a summary for each one that *didn't* turn out of what later published works are now on shaky foundations.
Best line: "I miss him, but there are equal amounts of instances when I want to punch him in the face."
See, this is why the Dutch will never be a great country & western nation.
What happens when you play a Dutch country song backwards? Your tulips stop wilting, your windmill begins to work, and the hole in your dyke spontaneously closes.