The real lesson learned from those academic hoaxes: a key part of getting a paper published in a scholarly journal is to be able to follow the conventions of the journal. And some people happen to be good at that, irrespective of the content of the papers being submitted.

I wrote this email to a colleague: Someone pointed me to this paper. It’s really bad. It was published by The Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, “the official journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and the … Continue reading

“It’s not just that the emperor has no clothes, it’s more like the emperor has been standing in the public square for fifteen years screaming, I’m naked! I’m naked! Look at me! And the scientific establishment is like, Wow, what a beautiful outfit.”

Somebody pointed Nick Brown to another paper by notorious eating behavior researcher Brian Wansink. Here’s Brown: I have that one in my collection of PDFs. I see I downloaded it on January 7, 2017, which was 3 days before our … Continue reading

Pizzagate: The problem’s not with the multiple analyses, it’s with the selective reporting of results (and with low-quality measurements and lack of quality control all over, but that’s not the key part of the story)

“I don’t think I’ve ever done an interesting study where the data ‘came out’ the first time I looked at it.” — Brian Wansink The funny thing is, I don’t think this quote is so bad. Nothing comes out right … Continue reading

“Statistical heartburn: An attempt to digest four pizza publications from the Cornell Food and Brand Lab”

Tim van der Zee​, Jordan Anaya​, and Nicholas Brown posted this very detailed criticism of four papers published by food researcher and business school professor Brian Wansink. The papers are all in obscure journals and became notorious only after Wansink … Continue reading

The greatest impediment to research progress is not impediments to research progress, it is scientists reading about impediments to research progress

My short answer is that I think twitter is destructive of clear communication. Now I’ll give the question, and I’ll give my long answer. Here’s the question provided by a reader: Just wondering what you thought of Brian Nosek’s recent … Continue reading

What does CNN have in common with Carmen Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff, and Richard Tol: They all made foolish, embarrassing errors that would never have happened had they been using R Markdown

Rachel Cunliffe shares this delight: Had the CNN team used an integrated statistical analysis and display system such as R Markdown, nobody would’ve needed to type in the numbers by hand, and the above embarrassment never would’ve occurred. And CNN … Continue reading