You think I’m kidding with the above title, but I’m not. Key quote from the noted social psychologist / business-school professor:
The assumption that the Ten Commandments can serve as a universal moral code is increasingly out of touch with contemporary American society.
I didn’t check out all the links in this article, but my guess is that Ariely’s problem with the 10 Commandments is that God signed the tablets at the bottom, not at the top.
Or maybe he didn’t like that commandment, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,” which, when translated into the language of modern science, might imply, “Thou shalt not fabricate data.” Those damn commandments, always getting in the way!
P.S. You might say, why write about this? Why not just decorously look away. Well, remember what they say about dead horses. The Hill is a reputable publication, and they’re using their space to promote questionable work. I think this kind of thing is bad for science as a whole. It’s just particularly ridiculous when they invite someone with major ethical concerns about his research to be lecturing us on ethics. I do think mockery is appropriate here. It’s nothing personal. I just think of all the people in social science, working so hard and not pushing the ethical boundaries, working openly and honestly and with a sincere willingness to learn . . . and then this is what gets rewarded with publicity. I laugh because otherwise I’d scream.
Xenophobia is all over the news these days. And, it is true that most [employed by Harvard, Stanford, etc.]of those accused of the recent data faking are not birthright American citizens and thus immediately suspect in the eyes of the current administration. However, although it may come as a surprise to most, Dan Ariely, was in fact born in Brooklyn “while his father was studying for an MBA at Columbia University [!!].”
Moral of the story: real data is complicated. And, for those who insist upon agreement of subject and verb, real datum is complicated.
Paul:
A couple years ago Wikipedia said my cousin was from Puerto Rico. Actually he was born in Brooklyn. Someone had made a bad inference from real data.
Paul, since both unlimited illegal immigration and birthright citizenship are not supported by any other country on this planet, then wouldn’t that make us less xenophobic?
Even if we pull even with the rest of mankind on those two topics, our levels of continued legal immigration still keep us at the top of the list of least xenophobic.
Anon:
I guess that illegal immigration is illegal everywhere, so the U.S. would be no exception.
Regarding birthright citizenship, I don’t think you’re correct that it is “not supported by any other country on this planet.” See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli
Illegal immigration is illegal everywhere, but taking steps to stop it is apparently “xenophobic”. That’s the clear implication of Paul’s and most of the left’s rhetoric and policy actions.
I stand corrected on birthright citizenship. If we modify it we’ll be on the level as most of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but not as open as central and south america.
On the bright side, all those “birth right tourists” who arrange to be in the US around their due date will still have Guatemala as an option.
Anon:
It’s a policy question. Given how the Europeans have been doing with their economies lately, they might try adopting some U.S. policies regarding more flexibility in citizenship and business regulation. Or in America we might want to go more in the direction of Europe by changing our constitution to alter the citizenship rules. And, as you point out in your comment, there are ways to change the levels of immigration and business regulation without changing the laws, by just altering the levels of enforcement. Governments potentially have a lot of flexibility, if their stakeholders are willing to go along.
Given the heterogeneity of the people who populate this blog, I would not be surprised to find someone in this audience bringing up the issue of birth right tourism and due dates and, of course, the poisoning of the blood of the nation.
Its interesting – a brief tour of wikipedia would suggest that immigration laws in prominent democracies are a fairly recent invention – the past 100-150 years. So over the rest of human history migration would have had very few restrictions and could be seen as the ‘normal’ state of affairs for humans. It all kinda reminds me of the Eddie Izzard routine about claiming land by having a flag (which the natives of a land tended not to have).
Including when that land is on Mars!
I find it intersting that over an extended period of time, the US with relatively large numbers of undocumented, low-wage migrants coming in, has out-performed on many economic measures, other roughly comparable countries that have more restrictive immigration policies, excepting, of course that period of time where the US enacted more restrictive economic policies.
“It’s a policy question. ”
Exactly Andrew!
or at least it’s a policy question until one side decides to preemptively win the policy debate by smearing the other side as “xenophobes”.
Anon:
Name-calling is a sometimes annoying but valid political tactic. It doesn’t cause anyone to preemptively win any policy debates.
“It doesn’t cause anyone to preemptively win any policy debates.”
Not so. Successfully smearing someone as beyond the pale of normal civilized discourse does work often enough.
Since New Orleans has the highest murder rate of US cities, we should see the benefits of this approach soon.
this is such a shitty post, you should really be ashamed of yourself
you don’t seem to have actually bothered to read the OP
Ezra,
I have no doubt that something useful could be said about a law being a broken moral compass. I’m not sure if the right person to do that is someone who was involved in a fraudulent study involving the ten commandments. I guess if the op-ed had been written explicitly from that perspective (“As someone who’s been involved in cheating myself, I have particular insight into the fact that Biblical knowledge does not ensure ethical behavior . . .”), then, sure, I could see the point. But without such an acknowledgment, it just seems wrong to me.
In his op-ed, Ariely writes, “Research conducted over the past decades on moral reminders concludes that active engagement with the moral reminder — such as the Ten Commandments — can decrease dishonesty,” and he cites his own research–without mentioning the problems of fraud and other problems with research methods. It would be too much to demand that The Hill vet its op-eds for accuracy (indeed, it explicitly says, “The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill”), but I do think they could make the executive decision not to run op-eds by people who’ve published fraudulent research on the topics they’re writing about.
I have not read Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law, nor am I offering any take on it. My post is entirely about the oddity of Ariely writing on the topic, given his history with research involving the commandments.
“my guess is that Ariely’s problem with the 10 Commandments is that God signed the tablets at the bottom, not at the top.”
Good one! Maybe that even explains Ariely’s evolution on this, since the sign-at-the-top paper was just a glimmer in his eye in 2008 when the Ten Commandments paper was written. The fraudulent sign-at-the-top paper was published in 2012. The Ten Commandments paper was “The Dishonesty of Honest People: A Theory of Self-Concept Maintenance.”
Experiment One in the Dishonesty paper was described this way: “The idea of the Ten Commandments recall task was that independent of people’s religion, whether people believed in God, or knew any of the commandments, knowing that the Ten Commandments are about moral rules would be enough to increase attention to their own moral standards and increase the likelihood of behavior consistent with these standards.”
These things always work out, or they would still be in the proverbial file drawer. The “Results” section for Experiment One begins “the results of Experiment 1 confirmed our predictions.” The key finding was: “Most important, and in line with our self-concept maintenance idea, reminding participants of standards for morality eliminated cheating completely.”
In 2012 Ariely wrote on his blog that “we once ran a study on cheating where we asked students to try to recall the Ten Commandments before an exam, and found that this moral reminder deterred them from cheating.”
But the message has evolved from there. Now there is a big difference between putting the Ten Commandments on the wall – which doesn’t work and only stupid people do that – and putting the Ten Commandments in a place where participants are forced to read it. The passive intervention does not work, but the active intervention functions like a miracle from, um, God.
In Ariely’s words “the engagement with this set of ethical reminders has to be active and intentional. Of course, such programs are much more complex to carry out than simply hanging the Ten Commandments in different corners of schools — but they have the advantage that they might also work to have an impact.”
As a side note, I found it interesting that the p-value for Experiment One described above was p = .023. Later Ariely started working with Gino and he had to up his game, because in her papers, nothing short of p < .001 was acceptable for the effect of the main intervention.
Let’s assume, contrary to all evidence, that opposition to illegal immigration is really about the illegality and not simple racism. It is contrary to the evidence because I have never heard anyone complain about the thousands of young Europeans who over-stay their visas every year. If you demanded papers from every Irish barkeep in Brooklyn you would have a rude awakening. “Illegal” as it is used in the public discussion does not really mean “someone who did not follow the immigration rules.” It means someone with the “wrong” skin color etc.
But I digress. Lots of things are illegal, and sane societies recognize that zero tolerance creates its own problems. Long before pot was decriminalized, most police forces recognized that strict enforcement creates problems much larger than any pot-smoking could. For example.
The idea that “illegal” immigration creates problems worthy of all the horrible issues that arise with strict enforcement is silly. Let me pose a simple question to all US citizens: do you really want to have to carry ID all the time? Do you want any police officer to have the right to stop you and demand proof of citizenship? (Do you trust police officers to actually know what constitutes proof of citizenship? I was born a US citizen in a foreign country. I worry a lot that some police would not understand what that means.) Do you want to spend your life worrying that anyone you know who was born in another country is in constant peril of being rounded up and subjected to the Kafka-esque procedures of the immigration courts?
If not, then perhaps a little less about “illegals.”
Democrats wanted the same thing for “covid passports”. Seems more like theres an underlying agenda to make people carry some kind of ID all the time.
Anon:
No need to politicize this or talk about an “underlying agenda.” I carry my driver’s license on me all the time and it’s no big deal. That said, sure, if I get caught outside without my ID, I wouldn’t want to be jailed or deported. When there’s a scary epidemic going on, it seems reasonable for crowded places to ask for proof of vaccination–again, I wouldn’t want to be jailed or departed for not having that proof, but, sure, they don’t need to let me into their venue.
Just in general, straight-up political arguments will be better for 4chan or twitter or the Marginal Revolution comments section rather than here.
I don’t see it as “political”, these efforts have been going on for 20 years. Both support and resistance are bipartisan, its non-authoritarians who see the clear implications:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act
But, I will stop discussing it.
Graven images is about worshiping other gods, bearing false witness is more like “don’t make up data and pretend it’s real”.
These lazy Op-Ed editors have a rolodex of seven people last updated in 2014, and they choose to make it our problem. Maybe they want to make a cameo on his NBC tv show.
Gotta respect anybody who has a rolodex in this day and age. Keep it real, guys. I’m picturing some balding, ink-stained wretches screaming across their desks in the city room, dripping with sweat and with their shirt tails hanging out. Some ceiling fans too. And coffee cups all over–old school coffee, not that expresso crap.
Could have been a director too? That’s a pretty vivid scene. Are cigarettes contemporaneous with the rolodex?
I’ll put it here since it is the most recent reference to Ariely on this blog and I don’t want to wait for the normal lag before it appears – from today’s Chronicle of Higher Education (https://www.chronicle.com/podcast/college-matters-from-the-chronicle/dan-ariely-emailed-with-epstein-for-years-he-has-mostly-no-regrets) is a lengthy interview with Ariely. About his relationship with Epstein. I believe the interviewer thought he was being tough and investigative, but what struck me was the complete absence of any doubt about Ariely’s credibility. On the contrary, there are numerous references to his status as a premier researcher. So much for reputational damage!
Take a look. When Ariely’s numerous questionable research issues don’t even get mentioned, in a publication aimed at academics no less, I think the evidence is that reputations withstand all sorts of behavior. Couldn’t the question at least be asked: given your own history with research practices (I’d say malpractice, but I guess he hasn’t been found guilty of that), why should anybody believe you now?
Hmm you are right — the interviewer is gently ribbing him in the direction “you say you know so much about dishonesty and yet you got rolled by Epstein” which is kind of missing the forest for the trees.
The whole thing reads very differently knowing Ariely’s reputation to just make stuff up. Like those e-mails in the opener — if I had to bet, I’d say Ariely never received them.
Epstein seems to have cultivated (or maybe it was the other way round) individuals in science with a common characteristic – namely a huge sense of their own importance which seemed to justify (in their eyes) inappropriate behaviour. It may be that Ariely never considered that misrepresenting data was a problem – or more likely thought that if it was good for his career and status that was just fine. There are numerous examples of this stuff on his Wikipedia page.
Lawrence Krauss is another example – strong associations with Epstein – long history of sexual misconduct allegations serious enough for him to be placed on administrative leave from ASU and recommended for dismissal by the departmental dean. He doesn’t consider he did anything wrong. Richard Dawkins is another, though his associations with Epstein seems to be less involved and his misconduct (misogyny mostly) might just be classified as assholeness. Read Dawkin’s recent “Genetic Book of the Dead” to be amusingly updated of his sense of his own importance.
interestingly Krauss has headlined a recent book “The War on Science” which isn’t what you think it might be – it’s mostly a bunch of chapters by malcontents (several of them academics who have been disciplined by their universities, e.g. for inappropriate dealings with female students – Krauss himself, Christian Ott *, Joshua Katz) who write chapters complaining about DEI, wokeness, “cancel-culture”, gender and race issues and so on. The audacity is both funny and also a little scary in relation to Dale’s point of some reputations being impervious to the surfacing of serious misconduct.
*Ott had the spectacular idea of inventing a fake female researcher (Google “Ursula Gamma”) whose name he put on several of his papers to make it appear that he could work productively with female collaborators at a time he was being investigated for harassment of female grad students. Anyway he’s one of the “unparalleled group of prominent scholars” with contributions in the book.