The “Nudge” of the Obama Era Was Always Neoliberal Nonsense
Remember the policy “nudges” of the Barack Obama years, which purported to fix all manner of social ills by pushing people to behave differently? Surprise, surprise: its intellectual edifice, behavioral science, has been exposed as a fraud.
Barack Obama speaking during a town hall event at Oscar Smith High School August 21, 2008 in Chesapeake, Virginia. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
The latest academic scandal, widely reported but rendered with literary flair in the New Yorker by Gideon Lewis-Kraus, reads like darkly parodic fiction. Lewis-Kraus’s must-read article, “They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work A Lie?,” explores the fall of celebrity behavioral scientists Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino, who’ve been convincingly accused of fabricating data on numerous studies.
If you love gossip about academic hucksters, you’re going to enjoy this kerfuffle. But its implications are much larger. According to media reports based on the work of Data Colada, a blog run by several renegade behavioral scientists concerned about the widespread grift in the field, many of the better-known studies rely on faulty, exaggerated, or fake data.
The behavioral science fraud goes far beyond Ariely, Gino, and the catchy topic of dishonesty. The legitimacy of the field is in free fall. Many are even ready to acknowledge it was neoliberal nonsense all along.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.