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by resource_waste 690 days ago
The reputations of these authors need to be dragged through the mud.

Daniel Kahneman's Wiki page doesnt make him look out to be a fraudster, despite him confidently mentioning studies that never replicated, despite him signing off on fake data from other fraudsters.

2 comments

That's not how science works. If you doubt the result, do your own experiment and publish it. The reputations will take care of themselves.

Obviously signing off on known-fake data is straight up lying, which must remain in a different category than simply doing a study that doesn't replicate.

A lot of psychology is vaguely science flavoured. You have them making a bunch of surveys and the making super broad claims based on this.
I think you’ll find that if you actually read the papers themselves, they don’t make nearly as broad of claims as they’re purported to in media or the public consciousness.
Thinking Fast and Slow was blowing my mind until I started running into more and more studies that I knew didn't replicate. It took on a Freakonomics/Gladwell vibe after that
Apologies for ignorance, can you tell me more about Gladwell issues?
Gladwell is known for citing junk science and twisting reality by adding his own unfounded interpretations to research he's basing his theories on. There's a host of criticisms of his work. [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell#Reception) is a good starting point.
Great, thanks for this link, will dig in more.
This one is tough to know where to start. To hear him cover an issue near and dear to your heart, is infuriating. In fact, I think almost all of his podcasts ideas from the first season were terrible.

Mostly, he gets so into a story it's about the narrative itself. He sounds like a crazy child with a made up theory trying to force it to work.

It's hard to say from memory, but it was multiple episodes where he defended corporations and authority figures from legit criticisms, based on nonsense.

Just to be clear he doesn't literally say "and there, so I proved them innocent", but he might as well and these just weird one sided crusades (about David and defending the Goliath as misunderstood).

He's really not far from saying because people sometimes remember things poorly, Brian Williams definitely didn't lie (in a situation where many people lie).

He basically gave the auto industry a free pass, because it's challenging to prove an exact field issue.