Honesty research and fake data:

A landmark study that endorsed a simple way to curb cheating is going to be retracted nearly a decade later after a group of scientists found that it relied on faked data.

Now there is a lede. Crisp, clear, and a great punchline.

According to the 2012 paper, when people signed an honesty declaration at the beginning of a form, rather than the end, they were less likely to lie. A seemingly cheap and effective method to fight fraud, it was adopted by at least one insurance company, tested by government agencies around the world, and taught to corporate executives. It made a splash among academics, who cited it in their own research more than 400 times.

The paper also bolstered the reputations of two of its authors — Max Bazerman, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and Dan Ariely, a psychologist and behavioral economist at Duke University — as leaders in the study of decision-making, irrationality, and unethical behavior. Ariely, a frequent TED Talk speaker and a Wall Street Journal advice columnist, cited the study in lectures and in his New York Times bestseller The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially Ourselves.

But now some outside researchers have found one of the experiments underlying the data was faked. It’s not clear who faked it.

And this is not the first time questions have been raised about Ariely’s research in particular. In a famous 2008 study, he claimed that prompting people to recall the Ten Commandments before a test cuts down on cheating, but an outside team later failed to replicate the effect.

Why “the Ten Commandments” in particular I wonder. I suppose because it’s the only Official List of Rules that nearly everyone has heard of, but that’s tragic because it’s such an awful list of rules. Several of the items are wasted on how best to grovel to the imaginary deity, and the rest are so obvious they’re pointless. There’s not a word about generosity or mercy or solidarity or any such social goods.