Category: science

Here is a list of issues, challenges, and problems with nudging. It is by no means an exhaustive list, nor am I sure whether I agree with all arguments presented below. I try to make as strong a case against nudging as I can, but this is not the same as my case is strong, […]

In 2020, I wrote a post on a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that politicians who are averse to lying have lower reelection rates. In other words, politicians who are less honest are more likely to do well in politics. In brief, I found that the results in […]

It is getting increasingly popular within the social sciences to preregister studies. That is, prior to collecting any data for a study, researchers register their theoretical predictions/expectations (i.e., hypothesis or hypotheses), the data collection procedure, the planned analysis, etc. I am generally in favour of preregistrations. All else equal, more information on how a study […]

726. While most social progress has been made in a nonlinear fashion, people believe progress is made in a linear fashion (Hur and Ruttan 2023) 727. The flow of information provided by East German industrial espionage in the West led to a significant narrowing of sectoral gaps between West and East Germany (Glitz and Meyersson […]

Last year I wrote a post on the endless supply of contextual factors that (might) explain support for Brexit. In brief, I argued that a potential problem with the different studies examining the different factors is that they only contribute to the illusion of cumulative science. That is, just because a new study is able […]