PRETEND12 Mar 2024

1608: The Truth Experts part 1

Everything we believe about what drives us to be honest might be a lie. A scandal rocks the behavioral science world, casting shadows over renowned researcher Dan Ariely and the integrity of academic research on honesty. We all tell lies—it's a human thing. But can we modify behaviors to coax people into doing the right thing? Let's delve into what the research indicates. After all, facts and numbers don't lie, and academic researchers shouldn't lie either, right? But what happens when these so-called truth experts, the Ivy League researchers who literally wrote the book on dishonesty, are accused of lying and manipulating data? Who fact-checks the truth-tellers? Science stands as our final bastion of objectivity. However, the individuals behind the studies we're discussing are people. And people make mistakes. But what happens when errors are set aside and data is deliberately fabricated to create an illusion of truth? The consequences could be dire, undermining our trust in everything we hear or read. Today's story recaps a major scandal in behavioral science, one that's been spotlighted by The New Yorker, The Atlantic, NPR, and podcasts like Freakonomics and Planet Money. Each outlet brought attention to different aspects of the story, but they all missed one critical voice—Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. In a rare interview, I confronted Ariely about the studies in question, and to my surprise, he answered all of my questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Episoder(324)

BONUS: How Doctors Diagnose Medical Child Abuse

How does a doctor actually decide that a parent is making their child sick? Dr. John Melville is a child abuse pediatrician, president of the Ray E. Helfer Society, and one of the people who helped wr...

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BONUS: Gypsy Rose Blanchard's Partner Ken Urker Has Died

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3 Okt 15min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 8

Gypsy Rose Blanchard thought no one was listening. For years, everything she said from inside Chillicothe was being recorded. Now it's public. More than five hundred hours of it. Some of those recor...

29 Sep 40min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 7

"I didn't f---ing get my own f---ing mother murdered just so I could live for everybody else." That is Gypsy Rose Blanchard on a recorded prison line, saying the quiet part out loud. She had taken th...

22 Sep 42min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 6

There are people online right now who don't believe Dee Dee Blanchard had Munchausen by proxy. Some of them don't believe Munchausen by proxy is a real thing at all. So if the abuse wasn't real, how d...

15 Sep 41min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, part 5

According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've found it. The smoking gun. Gypsy Rose Blanchard has a rare genetic disorder, a microdeletion on chromosome 1, and depending on who you ask online, that one wo...

8 Sep 42min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 4

According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've got the receipts. Gypsy really had leukemia. She really needed that bone marrow treatment, and the feeding tube and the surgeries were all real and documented...

1 Sep 39min

The Stalker: Shelbey Fernandez Speaks, Part 23

It's like getting to the end of a movie and discovering the twist, then going back to the beginning because every scene means something else. That's what I've been doing all week with the Rick and Tan...

28 Aug 25min