November 28, 2024 • 42 mins
Nate and Maria share their game-theory-optimal travel strategies – the best time to get to the airport, the optimal airport meal, the value of rental car insurance, and more. Also: The biggest travel mistakes they ever made.
Then, Maria breaks down a scandal in academic psychology research – and she and Nate discuss the underlying incentives that have led researchers to make bad decisions.
Do you have a topic or theme you’d like Nate & Maria to discuss in a future episode? Reach out to us at riskybusiness@pushkin.fm with any suggestions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you guys so much for writing in last week
and giving us your feedback about the show. We really
appreciate that, and we're going to ask you to write
in one more time, this time with one any questions
that you have about your lives, decisions that you're making,
things that you might want to know the expected value of,
and Nate and I are going to do our best
(00:42):
to have some segments where we respond to those questions.
So again, our email is Risky Business at Pushkin dot fm,
all one word, and we hope to hear from you,
and we hope to see some of your life dilemmas
and hopefully we'll help you with them. Welcome back to
(01:03):
Risky Business, our show about making better decisions. I'm Maria
Kanakova and I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Today on the show, we know a lot of you
are in their process of traveling to and from places,
so we'll have Nate and Marie's guide to gto travel.
What do we do with people who think a lot
about optimization to make our lives easier when we travel?
And then what glaring and hypocritical mistakes do we make
as you'll also find out about and.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
After that We're going to switch gears and talk about
cheating in academia, in business schools, and specifically with several
researchers who have been accused of cheating in cheating research
research on dishonesty. So that'll be a fun one, especially
for me since I'm working on a book about cheating.
(01:53):
So this is Thanksgiving week. We're taping this on Tuesday.
By the time everyone hears that, it will actually be
Thanksgiving and they will already be at their destination, we hope,
unless some major travelsnaff's happened. But this will still be
very useful because we're in holiday season right, We're going
to have holiday travel all through December as well. Nate,
are you traveling for Thanksgiving this year?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah, going to Kansas City to see my partner's family.
I got a lot of travel, my whole I got
and then we're going to Vegas, then Japan, Korea at
some point probably make it home to Michigan. So I
need these tips, Maria.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
All Right, So we're going to actually do this segment
in a slightly different fun way, I hope fun, and
we're going to ask each other questions. Nate and I
do not know what the questions are We have not
seen each other's questions ahead of time, so this is
going to be kind of a spur of the moment
response to each other. Nate, Shall I start us off
(02:54):
with our questions?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
How you start? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
All right, all right?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Question number one? How early should you get to the airport?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Oh? Boy, Robbie and I my partner, are just having
an argument about this today.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I love it. Those are the best arguments.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
I aim. Traditionally, I aim to be at the airport
an hour before departure time for a domestic flight. It's
departure time, not boarding time. Now, in practice, like the
security system has improved, I have like pre check. Actually
don't have pre check, which is weird. Nate.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, we need to talk about this. Okay, everyone listening.
This is like the number one thing to do in
gto travel, get tsa pre check, get global entry if
you travel abroad. I am shocked that my co host
could be so neglitch of Nate.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Well, there are workarounds. Clear is pretty good. Clear is
basically pre check. No I should I should? Yeah, I'm
committing like the sunk cost. I'm committing lots of cognitive
errors by not doing that.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
You're right, yes, all right, So without pre check, I
would say, and without clear you should probably be getting
to the airport earlier then one hour, right, especially around
the holiday because the lines going.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Maybe the holidays in particular. I mean, look, yeah, if
you arrive at the airport an hour before departure time
for a domestic flight, you should not miss your flight
if you have, unless you're in like the cattle car
line with no clear or no premium or anything like that. Right,
you should be able to make it through on time.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
All right, Well, I actually happen to agree with you
on this. One an hour is what I do as well.
For domestic travel around the holidays, especially if you don't
have tsa pre check like some people, you might want
to consider longer. But if you are in that cattle
line with no pre check, no anything, and you are
cutting it close, come up to the agents and tell
(04:52):
them what time your flight is. They will often let
you skip the line and actually not miss your flight
because they don't want you missing your flight either, because
that fucks up travel for everyone.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Maria, what is your best travel hack?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
My best travel hack is never checking luggage. And when
I say never, I actually mean never I am a female,
as people might have noticed, and I am capable of
going on a month long trip, six week long trip
with just carry ons. I have a carry on suitcase,
(05:28):
a little you know, roller board which is the MAC size,
and I have a backpack which has which is always
my extra travel thing in the backpack fits a lot
as well.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
And I am very.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Very good at recycling outfits, at packing, you know, very
packing very well, so that I can manage without any
carry ons. I think this saves you huge amounts of time,
huge amounts of hassle. I don't have a single friend
or family member who has checked luggage who has not
had it lost at some point. And yeah, so I
(06:00):
think that that's the single best piece of advice I
can offer. Learn to pack light, Do not check your
bags if.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
You are going to an international destination and you have
to your customs when you arrive. There's less cost to
that because I mean, I'm generally agreeing, right, but like
because there by the time you're through customs, magically your
bags might be there at the little carousel. But yeah,
I mean, the the risk of having your bag. I'm
surprised that more strangers don't like steal people's bags. Right.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
It's it's so weird because you have all the security
in the airport and then like you get to the
carousel and like take your pick, tack whatever you want.
So I am actually shocked that, you know, knowing what
we know about human nature, I'm shocked that more bags
don't get stolen. All right, Next question, Nate, what is
your most underrated thing to always pack when you're traveling?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
A podcast? Microphone?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Like, I okay, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I usually bring a little bit of cash because you
never know when you're gonna get bored and there might
be a poker room nearby.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
M h, this is this is very good. That is
that is very good advice. I think you should always
have cash on you, and you should always have more
cash than you think you need.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Don't go over the limits.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Well, the limits are internationally there's a ten thousand dollars limit.
Domestically there's not supposed to be, although I've had a
problem with it one So bestally, if you fly to
like Vegas or New York, people are used to having
a lot of cash in those cities. I don't know
what people are doing with the cash in New York,
but like you know, some some law off the records
(07:36):
something or another. Yeah. I mean if an uninformed security
person asks do you have more than ten thousand dollars,
and you should say I'm allowed to because I'm American
citizens is my currency and what you might call it,
and like, I'm not flying internationally where these rules apply.
Don't like try to bring fifty thousand dollars like the
(07:57):
Bahamas or something. That's a really big mistake.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
That's a horrible mistake. Yep.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
So what's what's the best airport? What's your favorite airport?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
My favorite airport, I would say say is Heathrow because
talk about nice places to hang out, nice places to eat.
I don't think anything can beat Heathrow. I mean you can, yeah,
you can.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Do associate with like very very very long lines and
very I hate.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So here's the thing, So what's my most My favorite
airport to travel through is absolutely not Heathrow. Right, he
throws a nightmare in terms of lines. But if I
have to be stuck in an airport, I want to
be stuck in Heathrow because I can get good food, right,
I can. I can go to the fucking caviar bar there.
I can, you know, and there are good bookshops, which
(08:46):
I really admit, Like, I really like that, and it's
just it's nice, right. There are lots of places to
spend time in terms of efficiency. Absolutely not Heathrow. I
don't like traveling through Heathrow. I have heard so I
haven't done a lot of travel through Asia, but I
have heard that some of the best airports in the
world are some of the Asian airports that are like
(09:06):
many countries with you know, tropical rainforests. I look forward
to visiting those one day. All right, Nate, let's let's
do the other way. What's the most overrated airport?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Uh? You know, I think La. I mean La. The
problem is, like all these terminals are changing and turning
around and so like I used to think there's some
terminals in lax that are like quite annoying. Miami Airport
is kind of a total shit show. Fort Lardale might
be a little bit better, but then it takes over
to get an uber. Yeah, those are on the Natelet
(09:40):
you know, Phoenix is kind of a shitty airport.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I'm gonna I'm going to add one that you haven't
to the over rated airport, which is O'Hare because people
always say that O'Hare is so, you know, lovely and efficient,
But I think O'Hare is such a shit show. And
I have never been delayed more often than I have
been in O'Hare.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Yeah, I used to. And again I can you blame
airports for having I mean, they have two airlines that
try to have hubs there, but like, yeah, and like
the facilities have not been like updated O'Hare, No, they
haven't a long time. They do have a Tortesse Fronterra,
which is like this amazing Rick Bayliss restaurant, but like,
but there's never any place to like sit down. And
if you do have like one of those long winter
delays in Chicago, then it's pretty unpleasant.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
It is, it is pretty unpleasant. And also talk about
having to walk far Ohara is one of those airports
where you might be walking for half an hour before
you finally take it to your destination.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Maria, what is your go to airport meal?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
My go to airport meal is I actually bring food
with me? I refuse, so I never eat on planes.
I don't care unless there are some exceptions, like when
I fly to Hong Kong, right where I'm on a
plane for so long that it's not even funny. Or
when I, you know, when I fly to South Africa,
(10:54):
like when I fly somewhere really really really far away.
But otherwise I don't eat on airplanes. And that's actually,
by the way, little tip from kind of the psychology
of sleep and how to help your body adjust to
time zones. I did a lot of research on this
and spend some time with the best sleep researchers at
(11:16):
Harvard for a fellowship. I did it at one point,
and that's one of the best hacks that you can
have in order to transition and to not be jet
lagged is do not eat on the airplane, but do
drink a lot. So I usually will get sushi actually
ahead of time and will bring sushi because I like
to eat something really nice and light and.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Eat it at the air Allow take that through security.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, you can absolutely take sushi through security. That's it's
not a liquid.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
It's liquid sauce. About the soy sauce, you don't.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Have to eat so the soy sauce I've actually never
had a problem with. But if you do have a
problem and they confiscate your soy sauce, there is always
soy sauce.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
And the Panda Express exactly just just.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Go go somewhere in the airport and get soy sauce.
But I recommend eat light, no carbs, do not eat pea.
It's the worst mistake I ever made was at one
point eating a Hamburger in a Boston airport because I
was really really hungry and I was so suck So
do not do that.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, that's that's my that's funny thing.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
But I think airports is like the best setting for
like fast food, right, Like I want like a Wendy's
or some shit, and not some weird off brand Hamburger
restaurant that probably sucks, right, like the one time when
you want logistics of like serving people food quickly. I
mean I agree about like even if you're in business
class or something, it's just very hard to prepare good
(12:49):
airline food for like a mass audience unless you get
to the real high end luxury market Emirates or one
of the Asian airlines or whatnot. Yeah, people have this
like sunk cost fallacy of oh, I'm getting this free
meal because I'm flying business and you actually a lot
of time you're better off just sleeping or doing what
I'll be reading, drinking, et cetera, and like, have your
(13:12):
meal first, you'll have a better meal almost for sure.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah, I'm so glad you agree with me. Yes, it
is crazy to me that there are so many people
who fly first class business class, who have the money
to pay for that ticket, who are like, ooh, free food.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Right, that doesn't change from college.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Right, free food. You want to get the free food.
It's much better for your body. It's much better for you.
It's much tastier if you don't do that, Nate, when
you go into a new city, what's the most underrated
thing to do?
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I mean, I just am a big walker. I walk
around a lot, right. I hate being confined to a hotel. Yeah,
you know, I'll look up. I'll look up, do a
little scouting, do some restaurant. Yeah, work, you know, I'm
trying to find cuisines, like, for example, the Vietnamese food
tends to be better on the West Coast and in
(14:05):
New York and so that's a comparative advantage category for example,
or you know tacos in La or Texas. So yeah,
take an uber or something to like a fun neighborhood,
have some tacos and then walk around.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I'm totally with you, and I actually love traveling with you, Nate,
because you and I both love food and you are
always up for culinary adventures, and that is something that
I really appreciate. Walking and then and then having some
good food. Is I think the best thing to do
in a new city. I don't know how underrated it is,
but it's wonderful.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
What's the best place to kill time in an airport?
Is there any scenario, let's say, and let's exclude any
type of exclusive lounges or anything like that, right, think
about any airport and now let's say, oh, your flight's
been delayed for an hour and a half. Is there
any airport where you're like, Oh, actually, I'm kind of
happy about that because I get to hang out in
place X.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
No, I'm never happy about place that is absolutely not happening.
But if you don't have a good book, I would say,
go to the bookstore, pick up a good book and
get lost in it. That's that's the best thing I
can think of. Otherwise, if you if you're with someone
and your flight is really delayed, get some alcohol and
(15:17):
get some get some food, and just pretend you're not
stuck in the airport, but be careful with that because
you also don't want to be dehydrated and drunk when
you get onto the plane. So that's a that's a
short term solution. No more than one drink.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, I don't. I don't pledge to bye By that.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
That's fine, that's fine. When you rent a car, do
you get insurance?
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I don't have a license, Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
And I didn't have I didn't know how to drive
up until a few years ago and I just learned. So,
but I have heard that rental car insurance is a scam,
so I never parted it.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
I'm I really think that rental cars are pretty often
not worth it. I mean, you know, even down into
like the kind of small to medium size metro areas,
the uber is pretty good and people have just like
Fallacy where love you're like, oh, I have to pay
marginally for these Uber or lyft rides when like Brunnea
(16:17):
car can be pretty expensive. There is insurance. I've had
rental cars that I wasn't dragging myself broken into and
things like that, and like, yeah, yeah, I'm very anti
rental car and it takes a long time to return
the car, and like, oh, I mean there's something if
you're like a national park or something you have to
but like usually should be avoided.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, I'm with you in cities unless you really need it,
no rental cars, totally agree.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
What is the median amount of airline credit you require
to be bumped off your flight?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
A million? I would never.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
I mean I book my travel because I need to
get places and I need to get shit done, and
you are not getting me off my flight. I'm sorry,
I'm not getting bumped to the next day. I hate delays.
I mean, let me rephrase. If there's a flight in
like twenty minutes, sure you can bump me, but usually
that's not the case. Right, Whenever they're offering a lot
(17:12):
of money, that means that you're going to be bumped
you know, that evening or the next day or something
horrible like that, And to me, it's just not worth it, Like,
there's my time is more valuable.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
You don't think people are a little bit irrational about that.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I think that some people will irrationally accept any amount
of money because they're like, ooh money, awesome, that's great.
But when like I said, when I book my travel,
like I don't like traveling, and like I like being places,
but I don't like the process of travel, and I
usually do it with you know, without that much margin
of error, in the sense that I need to be
(17:50):
somewhere by a specific time and that's where I'm going,
And even if it's vacation, like I want to start
my vacation. I don't want to spend another day in
whatever city I'm in. If you give me, like there
is an amount of money, like if you give me
thousands of dollars, Like if you give me five K,
I'll probably be okay with being bumped on a flight
(18:11):
if I'm going on vacation, right, if you give me
an amount of money that pays for my vacation, like sure,
and you give it to me in cash, But oftentimes
that's often not the case. Either it's like travel credit
or some bullshit where you're not actually getting the money.
And by the way, no one's paying you five K
like that that is an outlandish amount.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Do any airport to have poker rooms? I'm looking this up.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I guess not right, I have no idea, but that's hilarious.
While you're looking up poker rooms business class versus first class.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Versus first class.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I mean, these days, I think it's basically the same thing.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
There are so many funny distinct I mean, you have
to know the airline and the route, right, if you
really care about this stuff, then, like I mean, I like,
there's only there's only so many things an airline can
ultimately provide you with, right even until you get to, like,
like I said, the very top tier first classes. Like
(19:08):
you know, if you have a bid you can recline.
I mean, I know, I guess you have like the
private suites, but you're getting mediocre free food. You're getting
as much freebooze as you want, but you maybe don't
want that much, and you're getting a seat that you
can fully recline in. Then I don't know. Beyond that,
I tend to think that like there's diminishing returns on
the amends that you get.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
But yeah, totally agree with you.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
I did, what's take a shower in a plane? I
got bumped up, bumped up on Emirates flying back from Dangkok,
and that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
All right, do you have any more questions for me?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Worst travel decision you've ever made?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Worst travel decision I've ever made. I think I kind
of already answered this, and that was checking bags on
my way to Georgia. But other than checking bags, I
think that you have to be really, really careful with
your layovers, and sometimes you make really shitty decisions without
realizing it because there's an airport that's known for a delay,
(20:05):
or the airline will let you book a flight where
the layovers just way too tight, and if you don't
know the airport, you're fucked. Like I once had Delta
allow me to book an international flight and it was
not direct, it was through Atlanta, and I think my
connection was thirty minutes long something like that. I have
no idea why they let me do that. And if
(20:26):
you've been to the Atlanta airport, like Atlanta has multiple terminals,
like you have to take a little tram in between them,
like that, shit ate fast and I missed an international
connection and I didn't do anything wrong, like Delta let
me book this, but it was just way not enough time.
And I think that paying attention to that is actually
(20:47):
really important, and sometimes you don't because you just assume
that an airline is not going to let you book
a connection that's too tight to miss but they just
assume that it's going to be the best case scenario, right,
like everything's on time, Like you arrive on time, but
the moment your flight's twenty minutes late, like you're fucked.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah, I mean you have to know the I mean
because they actually have tables of how long minimum connection
time is at different airports, and just like like I
will take a short connection in Detroit because the airport'
is not that big and to get from went into
the other little skytrain thing takes ten minutes. Right Atlanta Atlanta,
you gotta I mean, Atlanta's an overrated airport too. People
are like, oh Atlanta, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
I haven't talked about Atlanta. Yes, Atlanta is very much
an overfrated airport.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Yeah, I mean it has a little bit more capacity
than Yeah. Look, my worst decision. I'm not gonna blame
myself for this, but let's say somebody in the traveling
party made the following calculation. Right, we were flying back
home from Rio to New York via sal Paolo, and
(21:52):
the person who made this booking didn't realize that there
are more than an airport in Salt Paolo. It's one
of the biggest materias in the world. And so we
flew into this little commuter domestic airport, and of course
our flights and the big flew me. I don't know
what the fuck it's called, the big international airport that's
about forty five minutes by uh uber or taxi if
(22:14):
you're taking the right route. So we did't uber. We
explained to the guy that we're kind of in a hurry,
and then lo and behold, we're kind of out on
this like country road and we were getting further and
further away from the airport, and I guess ostensibly he
was taking some very circuitous route that was going to
(22:36):
take an hour and a half, which wasn't gonna work.
And so, you know, we don't speak English. We're in
we don't speak Spanish. Excuse me, we're thinking Portuguese. I
do speak a tiny bit of Spanish, but not Portuguese
at all. And you know, we kind of think we
might be getting like kidnapped, and I'm not quite sure what,
and so we start like getting hysterical at the guy
and then and then eventually he kind of is like, Okay,
(22:59):
these guys are gonna fucking I don't know what, but
he felt like he had to stop this premise of
like taking us in this very long route at best
being kidnapped at worse. And then I don't know what
was wrong with the guy, right, and then we're trying
to tell him which gate to go to or which terminal,
and he like wouldn't listen to us, and so like
we're just so fluster when we finally to the airport
that like, I leave my passport had fallen out of
(23:20):
my wallet, and U in this guy's fucking uber right,
and he comes rushing in and actually gives us the
passport right, So it seemed to travel nightmare.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
So I wasn't sure what's star rating? So you try
to kidnap us, but do so on.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
The one hand, he tried to kidnap us, but on
the other hand, he gave us back our past, So
I gave.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Him three stars. Okay, that averages out.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
That is a that is a horror story. Oh my god. Yeah,
I'm uh.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I get very nervous, especially by myself when when things
like that start happening. I love that you can share
your location these days, and I highly recommend it, whether
you're male or female. You know, if if something's going wrong,
Just share your location and to make sure that the
driver knows it, and use Google Translate Nate for Portuguese to.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Tell them how to say it. Say, you know, my.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Big bodyguard friend knows exactly where I am at this moment,
but I've got.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
It all worked out.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
And on that note, we hope you've enjoyed our gto guide.
And let's take a break and talk about some cheating. So, Nate,
have you been following this story about academic cheating that
first broke in the public sphere last year twenty twenty three,
(24:49):
about Francesca Gino and Dan Arielli Harvard Business School and
Duke Business School and how there are potentially fabricated and
manipulated results in some of their work on dishonesty.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Yeah, as a I don't know, as someone who likes
to tweak the S class when it flexs things up,
I've been following this, but probably not as closely as
as you have.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
This came out because a team of researchers that call
themselves Data Colata were able to do some statistical analysis
very in depth. These are brilliant guys, and they were
able to kind of publish this series of reports that
showed uh, oh, this work on being unethical is actually
(25:38):
unethical in and of itself, and this prompted, you know,
big reckoning. Francesca Gino was placed on leave and she
ended up suing both Harvard and Data Colada. Her lawsuit
against Data Colada has since been dismissed, but Danareeli, as
far as I know, is still on faculty at Duke.
(25:59):
And by the way, this is not the first time
he has been accused. There have been multiple accusations of
improper research in the past. There has been a crisis
of confidence in social psychology for a long time, and
because of replication issues, not because of fraud and misconduct.
But now you know, we're adding academic misconduct. And there
(26:22):
was a recent piece that just came out last week,
it's going to be in the next print issue of
The Atlantic by Daniel Enber who actually showed that it
turns out that multiple people may have been fabricating data
and that this is an endemic problem, especially among business
(26:46):
school researchers. So what do we think about this date
Other than the obvious irony that like, holy shit, you know,
people who are researching ethics are not ethical.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
There is some irony in comparing it to like the
poker community, which is also a place that seems to
like be quite tolerant of cheating. Yeah. Look, I have
various critiques. I mean, number one, I think the modal
academic paper is agreed because it's hard to have original
findings in a competitive field. There's a lot of pressure
to published, and so like the motive paper is a
(27:19):
paper that applies some and siscal inference is hard and
people don't they have formal training in it, but like
having intuition is harder, right, And so the motolctemic paper
is either coming to some counterintuitive conclusion that seems needed,
but it's actually just an artifact of the research design,
or a politically correct conclusion because those papers tend to
(27:43):
get greenlit more right, you know, the fact that there
is I don't know, is there a fine line between
cheating and just shitty methodology. I think there is, probably,
But I think the peer review system is pretty broken.
And we both know about the replication crisis, whereby various definitions,
when you try to recreate independently is a positive study
(28:05):
result than those recreation rates are are low.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yeah, I think that you're raising a really really important
point though, that I want to just go back to
a little bit before we dive further into kind of
this actual fraud and misconduct, which is this lack of
statistical knowledge sometimes. So I have a pH d in psychology, right,
So I actually I went through this academic training. I
had to take some stats classes, but it's not like
(28:30):
I had to take advanced statistics right like I, you know,
and I knew how little of a sense I had
for a lot of these things. So when it actually
came time to analyze my final data set, which was
you know, thousands and thousands of participants, I wanted to
make sure that I avoided any potential pitfall. So I
(28:51):
did some analysis myself that I could do, right, you know,
some more basic tests, but I knew what I knew
what conclusion. You know, I knew what my research premise was,
and so that can buy us you in different ways.
So what I then did was I hired a statistician
who had no idea what I was researching, who was
not a psychologist. I just gave them all the data
and said, this is what I need you to do, right,
(29:12):
build build me models, run these analyzes, and tell me
what you find. And that's actually how I ended up
taking care of that problem. I was like, if he finds,
if he finds things that actually are done in a
much more complicated way, then I'm doing great. Because one
of the things that has actually been a huge problem
in academia for a very long time, hence part of
the replication crisis, is a concept known as P hacking
(29:37):
and P hacking. So the P value is your significance
value on a paper, right, and it's somewhat arbitrarily. Point
oh five is kind of your threshold, right, So if
you're below point oh five, the finding significant. If you're not,
the finding's not significant. So it can be like marginally
significant if you have like a point zero six. Anyway,
it is a little bit arbitrarian and funny, but people
(30:00):
would do something known as P hacking, which is you
run your analysis, right, you have some sort of hypothesis,
You gather your data, and you find that your P
value is now significant, and you're like, hmm, what if
I excluded this set of participants, or what if I
excluded this set of data. What if I excluded you know,
based on education, or excluded all men, or excluded you know, blah,
(30:23):
blah blah. Usually it's not excluding all men. But they
end up trying to manipulate the statistics a little bit
by saying, oh, well, is.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
It going to be significant? Now? What about now? What
about now?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Until they find a result that is significant and that's
what they publish. But they didn't have any a priori
hypotheses about why you're going to do that to the data.
So I had a lot of times when I was
excluding certain things from the data, but I would say
ahead of time, right, like, I'm going to be excluding X,
Y and Z for these reasons, right because I actually
have a hypothesis that this is going to matter, and
(30:57):
that's not you know, that's not what I'm looking at.
So if you fall into these categories, I'm just not
going to use your data. People have tried to Now
that people are aware that this is a problem, they
are trying to kind of remedy it by saying, Okay,
let's pre register all studies, let's preregister your conclusions, pre
register all of your analyzes to try to avoid P hacking.
(31:19):
But you raise a really interesting point. When P hacking
was prevalent, I had someone at Columbia in the Columbia
psychology department, not my advisor, who was Walter Michelle, who's amazing.
But I had someone when I had an analysis that
didn't quite work, be like, have you tried running it
without X or have you tried doing it in this
type of analysis instead? And I was like no, and
(31:40):
I'm not going to But that is a frequent response.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah, I mean you have to be really I mean
this also applies to journalism when you're writing about things
that have some amount of complexity, right, is it's kind
of just on you. I mean, it's very hard to
detect a story that like omits certain relevant qualifying facts
or arranges the chairs in a way that tells a
(32:07):
certain narrative, and you have to kind to be just
a real stickler for accuracy, right, And you also have
to know that like when you I mean I have
lots of I use for like newsletter post right, and
then you have something that seems promising and then maybe
you look at in a second way and then you're like,
this seems like there's not much there, and then you
probably just have to shelve that post right or every
now and then you can find some way to salvage
(32:28):
it for something. But like, yeah, I think some people
don't know it's bad, right, They think, oh, I'm doing
science by like trying new regression formula until I find
one that has a high R squared and like yeah,
and that's not good. And then there's also pressure to like,
you know, if you look at like what the p
values are in published paper, there's a big spike it
exactly point oh five because point oh five is deemed
(32:50):
is good and point oh six is deemed is bad.
And we'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
I think that there are a lot of people who
aren't like as you, who aren't fabricating data right, who
aren't actually manipulating data manipulating data sets, but who are
doing these like more subtle things that seem okay and
you know see, seem like they'll get your get your
research over the line, which actually dovetails really nicely. Which
(33:27):
with one of the other reasons why I think we're
getting these sources of scandals, these sources of crises, you know,
replication crisis before and now this just realization that a
lot of studies that are published by researchers, especially in
business schools, where peer review is even more broken than
it is in other places. I think one of the
(33:48):
reasons is the misaligned incentives. Right, the incentives for tenure,
the incentives for promotion are quantity over quality a lot
of the times, right they the publish or parish mantra
is not bullshit. And I was very lucky when I
was in when I was in grad school that I
(34:09):
knew I had zero desire to go into academia, So
my incentives were pure, right Like, I just wanted to
do the research because I was really interested in it,
and I knew that I was never going to be
on the academic job market, so I didn't care if
it was publishable, right Like, I didn't actually care what
the significance was. I didn't care what would end up happening.
I got very lucky that I had cool, significant findings,
(34:31):
but I never ended up publishing them. But there are
so many people for whom the incentives are right from
the very very beginning, you have to publish, published, publish
in order to get that first appointment, in order to
get a promotion, in order to get tenure, and quantity
is rewarded. I remember having a conversation with my advisor,
Walter Michelle, who for people who don't know, was kind
(34:53):
of one of the most prominent social psychologists of the
twentieth century who did kind of the Marshmallow studies, but
he did a lot of other work as well, and
incredibly an incredibly prominent researcher who has since passed away.
And I remember having this conversation with him about academia,
(35:14):
and he said, and I think that this was very true,
that he never would have gotten his first job, he
never would have gotten tenure, he never would have had
his career progression in the modern market because when he
was hired for the first time, he had two publications
and they happened to be incredibly important publications with very
deep theory, and so back in that schools were like, oh,
this is really really interesting. But he said that he
(35:36):
wouldn't go into academia these days because you can't do
theory work right. You can't do research that's longitudinal, that
takes years and years and years. And so I feel
like the field of psychology, and not just psychology, I
think this is true in academic work in general has
become diminished because you can't do important studies right. You
can't do a lot of this important work anymore because
(35:58):
it's not going to produce results for years, and some
of it is kind of very theoretical when you're trying
to develop these big ideas and big theories, and instead,
you know, you are incentivized to focus on one specific
type of neuron that does one very specific thing in
the brain and we you know, and we're just going
to publish a lot about that. And I think that
(36:20):
those are very misaligned incentives if you want good research,
if you want ethical research, and if you want research
that's actually going to be meaningful and make a difference
in the world.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
There's another irony too, which is that because academic prose
kind of is willfully obfuscatory, is aditive, it off skates
and it's just never said that.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Word out loud night, but it's that's the right word.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah. It's harder to detect flaws because the writing is
so bad that often it conceals really sloppy thinking, and
the opposite.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Can be true.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
So people like Dan Arieli are really good writers, and
so you actually miss the logical leaps that they're taking
where wait a doesn't actually lead to be But because
you're such a good writer and you made it sound
so nice. I thought that it led to be please continue.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah, Now, I guess it's kind of like a U
shaped curve where like mediocre to good writing, it's easier
to detect problems, and like very persuasive writing which is
aiming to persuade you, or very unclear writing, which is
you know, again, I unless you are writing in a
non native language, then in general we're not doing part
of particle physics here, right. In general, for a type
of B school study, if you can't explain it, well,
(37:38):
you probably don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, I think I think that's very true. And I
think the other one of the other problems that we
see is that you also have an incentive to kind
of have your work, especially for business school, have your
work be out there, right, and have journalists write about that.
Journalists often don't have statistical training, right, then they don't
actually when they're looking at a paper. There are some
(37:59):
journalists who do absolutely who are very rigorous about this,
but most journalists, like they you know, they look at
the abstract, right, they look at a few things, but
it's not like they have the resources to be able
to tell is this a solid study or not? And
so they might report it the way that more misaligned incentives,
the way that the press release puts it right, the
(38:20):
way that the PR Department actually puts it the.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Way that And that's a problem even more so in
this era where you know, journalists are concerned or liberal
journists are concerned that, oh, science is under attack from Trump.
Then like there is some degree of expertise laundering that
you go shopping for an academic study that tells you
the thing that you want to hear, and then you
(38:46):
get quotes from the same group of four people. A
lot of problems, Maria.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
There are a lot of problems, And I think this
is a topic that we'll be returning to. It's something
that I'm writing about in my next book, which is
about cheating, and I think that is just something that
everyone needs to be aware of. And one other thing,
you know, once this is something that I actually wrote
on my substack last week. You know, once misinformation, once
(39:12):
kind of incorrect results get out there, it's really difficult.
You can't just take it back because the way that
our brains work, they don't work that way, right, Like
you just misremember it, not on purpose, but like there's
so much stuff that I remember from you know, my
grad school days, where I'm like, oh, right, like if
you do X, then Y happens, and like that shit's
been retracted. But I don't necessarily either I wasn't aware
(39:35):
of it or I didn't you know, didn't really register.
But it still informs my thinking. Right, So even if
you know about it, it is incredibly difficult to undo those effects.
So if you're you know, I think if you're a journalist,
you have to be try to be vigilant. You're gonna
make mistakes, like you know, I've made mistakes. Just make
sure that you correct yourself and try to just try
(39:57):
to hold yourself to a high standard. But if you're
an academic researcher, you have to do that as well,
and the incentives aren't there, And when the incentives aren't there,
I think the.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Behavior doesn't really change. Yeah, people very efficient, even if
even if a lot of people are truth seeking, and
academia has that capacity more than some. Right, we know
from studying games that like, if there's a way to
exploit something and it's a profitable exploit, then some unscrupulous
person is going to take advantage of it.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Right, absolutely, absolutely, and if the incentives are so out
of whack as they are in academia, it doesn't take
like a really unscrupulous person. There are degrees of this, right.
There are people who aren't going to fabricate data sets,
but who will potentially get rid of some outlier results
or like swap data points around just a tiny bit, right,
(40:51):
like little things, and they'll be like, oh, well, it's
not as bad as fabricating a data I'm not that bad.
I didn't really do anything wrong, and I know my
results are correct, right, I believe in me, and I
know that this thesis is accurate, so I'm just doing
something good. It's really easy to start justifying bad behavior
when you're incentive to do that, and every single institution
(41:12):
right now incentivizes that. And this is true you know
outside of academia as well. Whenever you're trying to figure
out like what are how are people going to behave?
Look at the incentive structures, right, look at what type
of behavior is incentivized.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Since I am sort of a journalist, I mean like
having more skepticism about things you read in an academic paper,
just you need the level has to be like two
to three x higher than it is right now.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
I totally agree with that, and yeah, that's it's a
sobering conclusion. And as someone who does you know, who
does have a PhD in psychology and who believes in
the discipline, who thinks that it has a ton to
add like, it breaks my heart because I want, you know,
I want good data, I want good studies. I think
there's so much that we can learn about the human mind.
I just want people to do good work. So please,
(42:00):
please do good work. Let us know what you think
of this. Reach out to us at Risky Business at
pushkin dot FM. Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannikova.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
And byby Nate Silver.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our associate producer
is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too. And if you
want to listen to an ad free version, sign up
for Pushkin Plus for six, ten and nine a month.
You would access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you guys so much for writing in last week
and giving us your feedback about the show. We really
appreciate that, and we're going to ask you to write
in one more time, this time with one any questions
that you have about your lives, decisions that you're making,
things that you might want to know the expected value of,
and Nate and I are going to do our best
(00:42):
to have some segments where we respond to those questions.
So again, our email is Risky Business at Pushkin dot fm,
all one word, and we hope to hear from you,
and we hope to see some of your life dilemmas
and hopefully we'll help you with them. Welcome back to
(01:03):
Risky Business, our show about making better decisions. I'm Maria
Kanakova and I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Today on the show, we know a lot of you
are in their process of traveling to and from places,
so we'll have Nate and Marie's guide to gto travel.
What do we do with people who think a lot
about optimization to make our lives easier when we travel?
And then what glaring and hypocritical mistakes do we make
as you'll also find out about and.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
After that We're going to switch gears and talk about
cheating in academia, in business schools, and specifically with several
researchers who have been accused of cheating in cheating research
research on dishonesty. So that'll be a fun one, especially
for me since I'm working on a book about cheating.
(01:53):
So this is Thanksgiving week. We're taping this on Tuesday.
By the time everyone hears that, it will actually be
Thanksgiving and they will already be at their destination, we hope,
unless some major travelsnaff's happened. But this will still be
very useful because we're in holiday season right, We're going
to have holiday travel all through December as well. Nate,
are you traveling for Thanksgiving this year?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah, going to Kansas City to see my partner's family.
I got a lot of travel, my whole I got
and then we're going to Vegas, then Japan, Korea at
some point probably make it home to Michigan. So I
need these tips, Maria.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
All Right, So we're going to actually do this segment
in a slightly different fun way, I hope fun, and
we're going to ask each other questions. Nate and I
do not know what the questions are We have not
seen each other's questions ahead of time, so this is
going to be kind of a spur of the moment
response to each other. Nate, Shall I start us off
(02:54):
with our questions?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
How you start? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
All right, all right?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Question number one? How early should you get to the airport?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Oh? Boy, Robbie and I my partner, are just having
an argument about this today.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I love it. Those are the best arguments.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
I aim. Traditionally, I aim to be at the airport
an hour before departure time for a domestic flight. It's
departure time, not boarding time. Now, in practice, like the
security system has improved, I have like pre check. Actually
don't have pre check, which is weird. Nate.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, we need to talk about this. Okay, everyone listening.
This is like the number one thing to do in
gto travel, get tsa pre check, get global entry if
you travel abroad. I am shocked that my co host
could be so neglitch of Nate.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Well, there are workarounds. Clear is pretty good. Clear is
basically pre check. No I should I should? Yeah, I'm
committing like the sunk cost. I'm committing lots of cognitive
errors by not doing that.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
You're right, yes, all right, So without pre check, I
would say, and without clear you should probably be getting
to the airport earlier then one hour, right, especially around
the holiday because the lines going.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Maybe the holidays in particular. I mean, look, yeah, if
you arrive at the airport an hour before departure time
for a domestic flight, you should not miss your flight
if you have, unless you're in like the cattle car
line with no clear or no premium or anything like that. Right,
you should be able to make it through on time.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
All right, Well, I actually happen to agree with you
on this. One an hour is what I do as well.
For domestic travel around the holidays, especially if you don't
have tsa pre check like some people, you might want
to consider longer. But if you are in that cattle
line with no pre check, no anything, and you are
cutting it close, come up to the agents and tell
(04:52):
them what time your flight is. They will often let
you skip the line and actually not miss your flight
because they don't want you missing your flight either, because
that fucks up travel for everyone.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Maria, what is your best travel hack?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
My best travel hack is never checking luggage. And when
I say never, I actually mean never I am a female,
as people might have noticed, and I am capable of
going on a month long trip, six week long trip
with just carry ons. I have a carry on suitcase,
(05:28):
a little you know, roller board which is the MAC size,
and I have a backpack which has which is always
my extra travel thing in the backpack fits a lot
as well.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
And I am very.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Very good at recycling outfits, at packing, you know, very
packing very well, so that I can manage without any
carry ons. I think this saves you huge amounts of time,
huge amounts of hassle. I don't have a single friend
or family member who has checked luggage who has not
had it lost at some point. And yeah, so I
(06:00):
think that that's the single best piece of advice I
can offer. Learn to pack light, Do not check your
bags if.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
You are going to an international destination and you have
to your customs when you arrive. There's less cost to
that because I mean, I'm generally agreeing, right, but like
because there by the time you're through customs, magically your
bags might be there at the little carousel. But yeah,
I mean, the the risk of having your bag. I'm
surprised that more strangers don't like steal people's bags. Right.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
It's it's so weird because you have all the security
in the airport and then like you get to the
carousel and like take your pick, tack whatever you want.
So I am actually shocked that, you know, knowing what
we know about human nature, I'm shocked that more bags
don't get stolen. All right, Next question, Nate, what is
your most underrated thing to always pack when you're traveling?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
A podcast? Microphone?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Like, I okay, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I usually bring a little bit of cash because you
never know when you're gonna get bored and there might
be a poker room nearby.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
M h, this is this is very good. That is
that is very good advice. I think you should always
have cash on you, and you should always have more
cash than you think you need.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Don't go over the limits.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Well, the limits are internationally there's a ten thousand dollars limit.
Domestically there's not supposed to be, although I've had a
problem with it one So bestally, if you fly to
like Vegas or New York, people are used to having
a lot of cash in those cities. I don't know
what people are doing with the cash in New York,
but like you know, some some law off the records
(07:36):
something or another. Yeah. I mean if an uninformed security
person asks do you have more than ten thousand dollars,
and you should say I'm allowed to because I'm American
citizens is my currency and what you might call it,
and like, I'm not flying internationally where these rules apply.
Don't like try to bring fifty thousand dollars like the
(07:57):
Bahamas or something. That's a really big mistake.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
That's a horrible mistake. Yep.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
So what's what's the best airport? What's your favorite airport?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
My favorite airport, I would say say is Heathrow because
talk about nice places to hang out, nice places to eat.
I don't think anything can beat Heathrow. I mean you can, yeah,
you can.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Do associate with like very very very long lines and
very I hate.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So here's the thing, So what's my most My favorite
airport to travel through is absolutely not Heathrow. Right, he
throws a nightmare in terms of lines. But if I
have to be stuck in an airport, I want to
be stuck in Heathrow because I can get good food, right,
I can. I can go to the fucking caviar bar there.
I can, you know, and there are good bookshops, which
(08:46):
I really admit, Like, I really like that, and it's
just it's nice, right. There are lots of places to
spend time in terms of efficiency. Absolutely not Heathrow. I
don't like traveling through Heathrow. I have heard so I
haven't done a lot of travel through Asia, but I
have heard that some of the best airports in the
world are some of the Asian airports that are like
(09:06):
many countries with you know, tropical rainforests. I look forward
to visiting those one day. All right, Nate, let's let's
do the other way. What's the most overrated airport?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Uh? You know, I think La. I mean La. The
problem is, like all these terminals are changing and turning
around and so like I used to think there's some
terminals in lax that are like quite annoying. Miami Airport
is kind of a total shit show. Fort Lardale might
be a little bit better, but then it takes over
to get an uber. Yeah, those are on the Natelet
(09:40):
you know, Phoenix is kind of a shitty airport.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I'm gonna I'm going to add one that you haven't
to the over rated airport, which is O'Hare because people
always say that O'Hare is so, you know, lovely and efficient,
But I think O'Hare is such a shit show. And
I have never been delayed more often than I have
been in O'Hare.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Yeah, I used to. And again I can you blame
airports for having I mean, they have two airlines that
try to have hubs there, but like, yeah, and like
the facilities have not been like updated O'Hare, No, they
haven't a long time. They do have a Tortesse Fronterra,
which is like this amazing Rick Bayliss restaurant, but like,
but there's never any place to like sit down. And
if you do have like one of those long winter
delays in Chicago, then it's pretty unpleasant.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
It is, it is pretty unpleasant. And also talk about
having to walk far Ohara is one of those airports
where you might be walking for half an hour before
you finally take it to your destination.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Maria, what is your go to airport meal?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
My go to airport meal is I actually bring food
with me? I refuse, so I never eat on planes.
I don't care unless there are some exceptions, like when
I fly to Hong Kong, right where I'm on a
plane for so long that it's not even funny. Or
when I, you know, when I fly to South Africa,
(10:54):
like when I fly somewhere really really really far away.
But otherwise I don't eat on airplanes. And that's actually,
by the way, little tip from kind of the psychology
of sleep and how to help your body adjust to
time zones. I did a lot of research on this
and spend some time with the best sleep researchers at
(11:16):
Harvard for a fellowship. I did it at one point,
and that's one of the best hacks that you can
have in order to transition and to not be jet
lagged is do not eat on the airplane, but do
drink a lot. So I usually will get sushi actually
ahead of time and will bring sushi because I like
to eat something really nice and light and.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Eat it at the air Allow take that through security.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, you can absolutely take sushi through security. That's it's
not a liquid.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
It's liquid sauce. About the soy sauce, you don't.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Have to eat so the soy sauce I've actually never
had a problem with. But if you do have a
problem and they confiscate your soy sauce, there is always
soy sauce.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
And the Panda Express exactly just just.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Go go somewhere in the airport and get soy sauce.
But I recommend eat light, no carbs, do not eat pea.
It's the worst mistake I ever made was at one
point eating a Hamburger in a Boston airport because I
was really really hungry and I was so suck So
do not do that.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, that's that's my that's funny thing.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
But I think airports is like the best setting for
like fast food, right, Like I want like a Wendy's
or some shit, and not some weird off brand Hamburger
restaurant that probably sucks, right, like the one time when
you want logistics of like serving people food quickly. I
mean I agree about like even if you're in business
class or something, it's just very hard to prepare good
(12:49):
airline food for like a mass audience unless you get
to the real high end luxury market Emirates or one
of the Asian airlines or whatnot. Yeah, people have this
like sunk cost fallacy of oh, I'm getting this free
meal because I'm flying business and you actually a lot
of time you're better off just sleeping or doing what
I'll be reading, drinking, et cetera, and like, have your
(13:12):
meal first, you'll have a better meal almost for sure.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah, I'm so glad you agree with me. Yes, it
is crazy to me that there are so many people
who fly first class business class, who have the money
to pay for that ticket, who are like, ooh, free food.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Right, that doesn't change from college.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Right, free food. You want to get the free food.
It's much better for your body. It's much better for you.
It's much tastier if you don't do that, Nate, when
you go into a new city, what's the most underrated
thing to do?
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I mean, I just am a big walker. I walk
around a lot, right. I hate being confined to a hotel. Yeah,
you know, I'll look up. I'll look up, do a
little scouting, do some restaurant. Yeah, work, you know, I'm
trying to find cuisines, like, for example, the Vietnamese food
tends to be better on the West Coast and in
(14:05):
New York and so that's a comparative advantage category for example,
or you know tacos in La or Texas. So yeah,
take an uber or something to like a fun neighborhood,
have some tacos and then walk around.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I'm totally with you, and I actually love traveling with you, Nate,
because you and I both love food and you are
always up for culinary adventures, and that is something that
I really appreciate. Walking and then and then having some
good food. Is I think the best thing to do
in a new city. I don't know how underrated it is,
but it's wonderful.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
What's the best place to kill time in an airport?
Is there any scenario, let's say, and let's exclude any
type of exclusive lounges or anything like that, right, think
about any airport and now let's say, oh, your flight's
been delayed for an hour and a half. Is there
any airport where you're like, Oh, actually, I'm kind of
happy about that because I get to hang out in
place X.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
No, I'm never happy about place that is absolutely not happening.
But if you don't have a good book, I would say,
go to the bookstore, pick up a good book and
get lost in it. That's that's the best thing I
can think of. Otherwise, if you if you're with someone
and your flight is really delayed, get some alcohol and
(15:17):
get some get some food, and just pretend you're not
stuck in the airport, but be careful with that because
you also don't want to be dehydrated and drunk when
you get onto the plane. So that's a that's a
short term solution. No more than one drink.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, I don't. I don't pledge to bye By that.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
That's fine, that's fine. When you rent a car, do
you get insurance?
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I don't have a license, Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
And I didn't have I didn't know how to drive
up until a few years ago and I just learned. So,
but I have heard that rental car insurance is a scam,
so I never parted it.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
I'm I really think that rental cars are pretty often
not worth it. I mean, you know, even down into
like the kind of small to medium size metro areas,
the uber is pretty good and people have just like
Fallacy where love you're like, oh, I have to pay
marginally for these Uber or lyft rides when like Brunnea
(16:17):
car can be pretty expensive. There is insurance. I've had
rental cars that I wasn't dragging myself broken into and
things like that, and like, yeah, yeah, I'm very anti
rental car and it takes a long time to return
the car, and like, oh, I mean there's something if
you're like a national park or something you have to
but like usually should be avoided.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, I'm with you in cities unless you really need it,
no rental cars, totally agree.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
What is the median amount of airline credit you require
to be bumped off your flight?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
A million? I would never.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
I mean I book my travel because I need to
get places and I need to get shit done, and
you are not getting me off my flight. I'm sorry,
I'm not getting bumped to the next day. I hate delays.
I mean, let me rephrase. If there's a flight in
like twenty minutes, sure you can bump me, but usually
that's not the case. Right, Whenever they're offering a lot
(17:12):
of money, that means that you're going to be bumped
you know, that evening or the next day or something
horrible like that, And to me, it's just not worth it, Like,
there's my time is more valuable.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
You don't think people are a little bit irrational about that.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I think that some people will irrationally accept any amount
of money because they're like, ooh money, awesome, that's great.
But when like I said, when I book my travel,
like I don't like traveling, and like I like being places,
but I don't like the process of travel, and I
usually do it with you know, without that much margin
of error, in the sense that I need to be
(17:50):
somewhere by a specific time and that's where I'm going,
And even if it's vacation, like I want to start
my vacation. I don't want to spend another day in
whatever city I'm in. If you give me, like there
is an amount of money, like if you give me
thousands of dollars, Like if you give me five K,
I'll probably be okay with being bumped on a flight
(18:11):
if I'm going on vacation, right, if you give me
an amount of money that pays for my vacation, like sure,
and you give it to me in cash, But oftentimes
that's often not the case. Either it's like travel credit
or some bullshit where you're not actually getting the money.
And by the way, no one's paying you five K
like that that is an outlandish amount.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Do any airport to have poker rooms? I'm looking this up.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I guess not right, I have no idea, but that's hilarious.
While you're looking up poker rooms business class versus first class.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Versus first class.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I mean, these days, I think it's basically the same thing.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
There are so many funny distinct I mean, you have
to know the airline and the route, right, if you
really care about this stuff, then, like I mean, I like,
there's only there's only so many things an airline can
ultimately provide you with, right even until you get to, like,
like I said, the very top tier first classes. Like
(19:08):
you know, if you have a bid you can recline.
I mean, I know, I guess you have like the
private suites, but you're getting mediocre free food. You're getting
as much freebooze as you want, but you maybe don't
want that much, and you're getting a seat that you
can fully recline in. Then I don't know. Beyond that,
I tend to think that like there's diminishing returns on
the amends that you get.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
But yeah, totally agree with you.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
I did, what's take a shower in a plane? I
got bumped up, bumped up on Emirates flying back from Dangkok,
and that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
All right, do you have any more questions for me?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Worst travel decision you've ever made?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Worst travel decision I've ever made. I think I kind
of already answered this, and that was checking bags on
my way to Georgia. But other than checking bags, I
think that you have to be really, really careful with
your layovers, and sometimes you make really shitty decisions without
realizing it because there's an airport that's known for a delay,
(20:05):
or the airline will let you book a flight where
the layovers just way too tight, and if you don't
know the airport, you're fucked. Like I once had Delta
allow me to book an international flight and it was
not direct, it was through Atlanta, and I think my
connection was thirty minutes long something like that. I have
no idea why they let me do that. And if
(20:26):
you've been to the Atlanta airport, like Atlanta has multiple terminals,
like you have to take a little tram in between them,
like that, shit ate fast and I missed an international
connection and I didn't do anything wrong, like Delta let
me book this, but it was just way not enough time.
And I think that paying attention to that is actually
(20:47):
really important, and sometimes you don't because you just assume
that an airline is not going to let you book
a connection that's too tight to miss but they just
assume that it's going to be the best case scenario, right,
like everything's on time, Like you arrive on time, but
the moment your flight's twenty minutes late, like you're fucked.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah, I mean you have to know the I mean
because they actually have tables of how long minimum connection
time is at different airports, and just like like I
will take a short connection in Detroit because the airport'
is not that big and to get from went into
the other little skytrain thing takes ten minutes. Right Atlanta Atlanta,
you gotta I mean, Atlanta's an overrated airport too. People
are like, oh Atlanta, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
I haven't talked about Atlanta. Yes, Atlanta is very much
an overfrated airport.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Yeah, I mean it has a little bit more capacity
than Yeah. Look, my worst decision. I'm not gonna blame
myself for this, but let's say somebody in the traveling
party made the following calculation. Right, we were flying back
home from Rio to New York via sal Paolo, and
(21:52):
the person who made this booking didn't realize that there
are more than an airport in Salt Paolo. It's one
of the biggest materias in the world. And so we
flew into this little commuter domestic airport, and of course
our flights and the big flew me. I don't know
what the fuck it's called, the big international airport that's
about forty five minutes by uh uber or taxi if
(22:14):
you're taking the right route. So we did't uber. We
explained to the guy that we're kind of in a hurry,
and then lo and behold, we're kind of out on
this like country road and we were getting further and
further away from the airport, and I guess ostensibly he
was taking some very circuitous route that was going to
(22:36):
take an hour and a half, which wasn't gonna work.
And so, you know, we don't speak English. We're in
we don't speak Spanish. Excuse me, we're thinking Portuguese. I
do speak a tiny bit of Spanish, but not Portuguese
at all. And you know, we kind of think we
might be getting like kidnapped, and I'm not quite sure what,
and so we start like getting hysterical at the guy
and then and then eventually he kind of is like, Okay,
(22:59):
these guys are gonna fucking I don't know what, but
he felt like he had to stop this premise of
like taking us in this very long route at best
being kidnapped at worse. And then I don't know what
was wrong with the guy, right, and then we're trying
to tell him which gate to go to or which terminal,
and he like wouldn't listen to us, and so like
we're just so fluster when we finally to the airport
that like, I leave my passport had fallen out of
(23:20):
my wallet, and U in this guy's fucking uber right,
and he comes rushing in and actually gives us the
passport right, So it seemed to travel nightmare.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
So I wasn't sure what's star rating? So you try
to kidnap us, but do so on.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
The one hand, he tried to kidnap us, but on
the other hand, he gave us back our past, So
I gave.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Him three stars. Okay, that averages out.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
That is a that is a horror story. Oh my god. Yeah,
I'm uh.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I get very nervous, especially by myself when when things
like that start happening. I love that you can share
your location these days, and I highly recommend it, whether
you're male or female. You know, if if something's going wrong,
Just share your location and to make sure that the
driver knows it, and use Google Translate Nate for Portuguese to.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Tell them how to say it. Say, you know, my.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Big bodyguard friend knows exactly where I am at this moment,
but I've got.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
It all worked out.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
And on that note, we hope you've enjoyed our gto guide.
And let's take a break and talk about some cheating. So, Nate,
have you been following this story about academic cheating that
first broke in the public sphere last year twenty twenty three,
(24:49):
about Francesca Gino and Dan Arielli Harvard Business School and
Duke Business School and how there are potentially fabricated and
manipulated results in some of their work on dishonesty.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Yeah, as a I don't know, as someone who likes
to tweak the S class when it flexs things up,
I've been following this, but probably not as closely as
as you have.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
This came out because a team of researchers that call
themselves Data Colata were able to do some statistical analysis
very in depth. These are brilliant guys, and they were
able to kind of publish this series of reports that
showed uh, oh, this work on being unethical is actually
(25:38):
unethical in and of itself, and this prompted, you know,
big reckoning. Francesca Gino was placed on leave and she
ended up suing both Harvard and Data Colada. Her lawsuit
against Data Colada has since been dismissed, but Danareeli, as
far as I know, is still on faculty at Duke.
(25:59):
And by the way, this is not the first time
he has been accused. There have been multiple accusations of
improper research in the past. There has been a crisis
of confidence in social psychology for a long time, and
because of replication issues, not because of fraud and misconduct.
But now you know, we're adding academic misconduct. And there
(26:22):
was a recent piece that just came out last week,
it's going to be in the next print issue of
The Atlantic by Daniel Enber who actually showed that it
turns out that multiple people may have been fabricating data
and that this is an endemic problem, especially among business
(26:46):
school researchers. So what do we think about this date
Other than the obvious irony that like, holy shit, you know,
people who are researching ethics are not ethical.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
There is some irony in comparing it to like the
poker community, which is also a place that seems to
like be quite tolerant of cheating. Yeah. Look, I have
various critiques. I mean, number one, I think the modal
academic paper is agreed because it's hard to have original
findings in a competitive field. There's a lot of pressure
to published, and so like the motive paper is a
(27:19):
paper that applies some and siscal inference is hard and
people don't they have formal training in it, but like
having intuition is harder, right, And so the motolctemic paper
is either coming to some counterintuitive conclusion that seems needed,
but it's actually just an artifact of the research design,
or a politically correct conclusion because those papers tend to
(27:43):
get greenlit more right, you know, the fact that there
is I don't know, is there a fine line between
cheating and just shitty methodology. I think there is, probably,
But I think the peer review system is pretty broken.
And we both know about the replication crisis, whereby various definitions,
when you try to recreate independently is a positive study
(28:05):
result than those recreation rates are are low.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yeah, I think that you're raising a really really important
point though, that I want to just go back to
a little bit before we dive further into kind of
this actual fraud and misconduct, which is this lack of
statistical knowledge sometimes. So I have a pH d in psychology, right,
So I actually I went through this academic training. I
had to take some stats classes, but it's not like
(28:30):
I had to take advanced statistics right like I, you know,
and I knew how little of a sense I had
for a lot of these things. So when it actually
came time to analyze my final data set, which was
you know, thousands and thousands of participants, I wanted to
make sure that I avoided any potential pitfall. So I
(28:51):
did some analysis myself that I could do, right, you know,
some more basic tests, but I knew what I knew
what conclusion. You know, I knew what my research premise was,
and so that can buy us you in different ways.
So what I then did was I hired a statistician
who had no idea what I was researching, who was
not a psychologist. I just gave them all the data
and said, this is what I need you to do, right,
(29:12):
build build me models, run these analyzes, and tell me
what you find. And that's actually how I ended up
taking care of that problem. I was like, if he finds,
if he finds things that actually are done in a
much more complicated way, then I'm doing great. Because one
of the things that has actually been a huge problem
in academia for a very long time, hence part of
the replication crisis, is a concept known as P hacking
(29:37):
and P hacking. So the P value is your significance
value on a paper, right, and it's somewhat arbitrarily. Point
oh five is kind of your threshold, right, So if
you're below point oh five, the finding significant. If you're not,
the finding's not significant. So it can be like marginally
significant if you have like a point zero six. Anyway,
it is a little bit arbitrarian and funny, but people
(30:00):
would do something known as P hacking, which is you
run your analysis, right, you have some sort of hypothesis,
You gather your data, and you find that your P
value is now significant, and you're like, hmm, what if
I excluded this set of participants, or what if I
excluded this set of data. What if I excluded you know,
based on education, or excluded all men, or excluded you know, blah,
(30:23):
blah blah. Usually it's not excluding all men. But they
end up trying to manipulate the statistics a little bit
by saying, oh, well, is.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
It going to be significant? Now? What about now? What
about now?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Until they find a result that is significant and that's
what they publish. But they didn't have any a priori
hypotheses about why you're going to do that to the data.
So I had a lot of times when I was
excluding certain things from the data, but I would say
ahead of time, right, like, I'm going to be excluding X,
Y and Z for these reasons, right because I actually
have a hypothesis that this is going to matter, and
(30:57):
that's not you know, that's not what I'm looking at.
So if you fall into these categories, I'm just not
going to use your data. People have tried to Now
that people are aware that this is a problem, they
are trying to kind of remedy it by saying, Okay,
let's pre register all studies, let's preregister your conclusions, pre
register all of your analyzes to try to avoid P hacking.
(31:19):
But you raise a really interesting point. When P hacking
was prevalent, I had someone at Columbia in the Columbia
psychology department, not my advisor, who was Walter Michelle, who's amazing.
But I had someone when I had an analysis that
didn't quite work, be like, have you tried running it
without X or have you tried doing it in this
type of analysis instead? And I was like no, and
(31:40):
I'm not going to But that is a frequent response.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah, I mean you have to be really I mean
this also applies to journalism when you're writing about things
that have some amount of complexity, right, is it's kind
of just on you. I mean, it's very hard to
detect a story that like omits certain relevant qualifying facts
or arranges the chairs in a way that tells a
(32:07):
certain narrative, and you have to kind to be just
a real stickler for accuracy, right, And you also have
to know that like when you I mean I have
lots of I use for like newsletter post right, and
then you have something that seems promising and then maybe
you look at in a second way and then you're like,
this seems like there's not much there, and then you
probably just have to shelve that post right or every
now and then you can find some way to salvage
(32:28):
it for something. But like, yeah, I think some people
don't know it's bad, right, They think, oh, I'm doing
science by like trying new regression formula until I find
one that has a high R squared and like yeah,
and that's not good. And then there's also pressure to like,
you know, if you look at like what the p
values are in published paper, there's a big spike it
exactly point oh five because point oh five is deemed
(32:50):
is good and point oh six is deemed is bad.
And we'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
I think that there are a lot of people who
aren't like as you, who aren't fabricating data right, who
aren't actually manipulating data manipulating data sets, but who are
doing these like more subtle things that seem okay and
you know see, seem like they'll get your get your
research over the line, which actually dovetails really nicely. Which
(33:27):
with one of the other reasons why I think we're
getting these sources of scandals, these sources of crises, you know,
replication crisis before and now this just realization that a
lot of studies that are published by researchers, especially in
business schools, where peer review is even more broken than
it is in other places. I think one of the
(33:48):
reasons is the misaligned incentives. Right, the incentives for tenure,
the incentives for promotion are quantity over quality a lot
of the times, right they the publish or parish mantra
is not bullshit. And I was very lucky when I
was in when I was in grad school that I
(34:09):
knew I had zero desire to go into academia, So
my incentives were pure, right Like, I just wanted to
do the research because I was really interested in it,
and I knew that I was never going to be
on the academic job market, so I didn't care if
it was publishable, right Like, I didn't actually care what
the significance was. I didn't care what would end up happening.
I got very lucky that I had cool, significant findings,
(34:31):
but I never ended up publishing them. But there are
so many people for whom the incentives are right from
the very very beginning, you have to publish, published, publish
in order to get that first appointment, in order to
get a promotion, in order to get tenure, and quantity
is rewarded. I remember having a conversation with my advisor,
Walter Michelle, who for people who don't know, was kind
(34:53):
of one of the most prominent social psychologists of the
twentieth century who did kind of the Marshmallow studies, but
he did a lot of other work as well, and
incredibly an incredibly prominent researcher who has since passed away.
And I remember having this conversation with him about academia,
(35:14):
and he said, and I think that this was very true,
that he never would have gotten his first job, he
never would have gotten tenure, he never would have had
his career progression in the modern market because when he
was hired for the first time, he had two publications
and they happened to be incredibly important publications with very
deep theory, and so back in that schools were like, oh,
this is really really interesting. But he said that he
(35:36):
wouldn't go into academia these days because you can't do
theory work right. You can't do research that's longitudinal, that
takes years and years and years. And so I feel
like the field of psychology, and not just psychology, I
think this is true in academic work in general has
become diminished because you can't do important studies right. You
can't do a lot of this important work anymore because
(35:58):
it's not going to produce results for years, and some
of it is kind of very theoretical when you're trying
to develop these big ideas and big theories, and instead,
you know, you are incentivized to focus on one specific
type of neuron that does one very specific thing in
the brain and we you know, and we're just going
to publish a lot about that. And I think that
(36:20):
those are very misaligned incentives if you want good research,
if you want ethical research, and if you want research
that's actually going to be meaningful and make a difference
in the world.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
There's another irony too, which is that because academic prose
kind of is willfully obfuscatory, is aditive, it off skates
and it's just never said that.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Word out loud night, but it's that's the right word.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah. It's harder to detect flaws because the writing is
so bad that often it conceals really sloppy thinking, and
the opposite.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Can be true.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
So people like Dan Arieli are really good writers, and
so you actually miss the logical leaps that they're taking
where wait a doesn't actually lead to be But because
you're such a good writer and you made it sound
so nice. I thought that it led to be please continue.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah, Now, I guess it's kind of like a U
shaped curve where like mediocre to good writing, it's easier
to detect problems, and like very persuasive writing which is
aiming to persuade you, or very unclear writing, which is
you know, again, I unless you are writing in a
non native language, then in general we're not doing part
of particle physics here, right. In general, for a type
of B school study, if you can't explain it, well,
(37:38):
you probably don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, I think I think that's very true. And I
think the other one of the other problems that we
see is that you also have an incentive to kind
of have your work, especially for business school, have your
work be out there, right, and have journalists write about that.
Journalists often don't have statistical training, right, then they don't
actually when they're looking at a paper. There are some
(37:59):
journalists who do absolutely who are very rigorous about this,
but most journalists, like they you know, they look at
the abstract, right, they look at a few things, but
it's not like they have the resources to be able
to tell is this a solid study or not? And
so they might report it the way that more misaligned incentives,
the way that the press release puts it right, the
(38:20):
way that the PR Department actually puts it the.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Way that And that's a problem even more so in
this era where you know, journalists are concerned or liberal
journists are concerned that, oh, science is under attack from Trump.
Then like there is some degree of expertise laundering that
you go shopping for an academic study that tells you
the thing that you want to hear, and then you
(38:46):
get quotes from the same group of four people. A
lot of problems, Maria.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
There are a lot of problems, And I think this
is a topic that we'll be returning to. It's something
that I'm writing about in my next book, which is
about cheating, and I think that is just something that
everyone needs to be aware of. And one other thing,
you know, once this is something that I actually wrote
on my substack last week. You know, once misinformation, once
(39:12):
kind of incorrect results get out there, it's really difficult.
You can't just take it back because the way that
our brains work, they don't work that way, right, Like
you just misremember it, not on purpose, but like there's
so much stuff that I remember from you know, my
grad school days, where I'm like, oh, right, like if
you do X, then Y happens, and like that shit's
been retracted. But I don't necessarily either I wasn't aware
(39:35):
of it or I didn't you know, didn't really register.
But it still informs my thinking. Right, So even if
you know about it, it is incredibly difficult to undo those effects.
So if you're you know, I think if you're a journalist,
you have to be try to be vigilant. You're gonna
make mistakes, like you know, I've made mistakes. Just make
sure that you correct yourself and try to just try
(39:57):
to hold yourself to a high standard. But if you're
an academic researcher, you have to do that as well,
and the incentives aren't there, And when the incentives aren't there,
I think the.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Behavior doesn't really change. Yeah, people very efficient, even if
even if a lot of people are truth seeking, and
academia has that capacity more than some. Right, we know
from studying games that like, if there's a way to
exploit something and it's a profitable exploit, then some unscrupulous
person is going to take advantage of it.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Right, absolutely, absolutely, and if the incentives are so out
of whack as they are in academia, it doesn't take
like a really unscrupulous person. There are degrees of this, right.
There are people who aren't going to fabricate data sets,
but who will potentially get rid of some outlier results
or like swap data points around just a tiny bit, right,
(40:51):
like little things, and they'll be like, oh, well, it's
not as bad as fabricating a data I'm not that bad.
I didn't really do anything wrong, and I know my
results are correct, right, I believe in me, and I
know that this thesis is accurate, so I'm just doing
something good. It's really easy to start justifying bad behavior
when you're incentive to do that, and every single institution
(41:12):
right now incentivizes that. And this is true you know
outside of academia as well. Whenever you're trying to figure
out like what are how are people going to behave?
Look at the incentive structures, right, look at what type
of behavior is incentivized.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Since I am sort of a journalist, I mean like
having more skepticism about things you read in an academic paper,
just you need the level has to be like two
to three x higher than it is right now.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
I totally agree with that, and yeah, that's it's a
sobering conclusion. And as someone who does you know, who
does have a PhD in psychology and who believes in
the discipline, who thinks that it has a ton to
add like, it breaks my heart because I want, you know,
I want good data, I want good studies. I think
there's so much that we can learn about the human mind.
I just want people to do good work. So please,
(42:00):
please do good work. Let us know what you think
of this. Reach out to us at Risky Business at
pushkin dot FM. Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannikova.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
And byby Nate Silver.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our associate producer
is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too. And if you
want to listen to an ad free version, sign up
for Pushkin Plus for six, ten and nine a month.
You would access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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