OK, this one was funny. I searched the Epstein files for “statistician” and found this receipt from biologist Robert Trivers:
Only $1000 for the statistician??? What a cheapskate! Especially given that he said the statistician “did an outstanding job.”
Given all the statistical problems in evolutionary biology, maybe he should’ve allocated more of his research budget to the statistician.
Some background on Trivers is here.
I dunno. Data entry and research assistance were higher paid than the statistician. Given how much of the work (e.g. Wansink, Gino, Ariely, etc.) goes into manufacturing data, this does seem to reflect their relative contributions to the final product.
Dale:
I have no reason to think that Trivers made up data. It’s just my impression that he fell in love with his theories, leading him to be fooled by strong claims made from weak evidence. I think something similar happened with Steven Levitt and Steven Pinker: they wouldn’t knowingly do bad data analysis, let alone manufacture data, but they were suckers for bad analysis or fake data from others who were making scientific claims that accorded with their views of the world.
Just about all of us are like this to some extent (it’s called “motivated reasoning”) but it becomes a particularly bad look when the person doing the motivated reasoning has established a reputation for cold-blooded rationality.
Dale–
What makes you think Trivers manufactured his data?
Andrew–
The link needs to be fixed– it’s not to anything about Trivers; it seems to be emails with Larry Summers.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I was not making a statement about Trivers – I was trying to be funny (unsuccessfully it seems) about the relative importance of statisticians vis a vis data entry and research assistants.
Gregory:
I removed the bad link; thanks for pointing it out.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, Trivers died in March of this year. Interesting character to say the least.