[From the blog entitled “Oh, I hate it when work is criticized (or, in this case, fails in attempted replications) and then the original researchers don’t even consider the possibility that maybe in their original work they were inadvertently just finding patterns in noise”, posted by Andrew Gelman at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science]

“I promised you a sad story. But, so far, this is just one more story of a hyped claim that didn’t stand up to the rigors of science. And I can’t hold it against the researchers that they hyped it: if the claim had held up, it would’ve been an interesting and perhaps important finding, well worth hyping.”

“No, the sad part comes next. Collins reports:”

“Multi-lab experiments like this are fantastic. There’s little ambiguity about the result. That said, there is a response by Amir, Mazar and Ariely. Lots of fluff about context. No suggestion of “maybe there’s nothing here”.”

“You can read the response and judge for yourself. I think Collins’s report is accurate, and that’s what made me sad. These people care enough about this topic to conduct a study, write it up in a research article and then in a book—but they don’t seem to care enough to seriously entertain the possibility they were mistaken. It saddens me. Really, what’s the point of doing all this work if you’re not going to be open to learning?”

To read the full blog, click here.