Green British Academics Blast Politicians for Allowing Consumer Choice

If I had known years ago how easy it would have been to fool those “academics” and alter public opinion with lies, I could have devised a scheme to enrichen myself – just as Al Gore and his fellow-liars have done!

Stuart Capstick Senior Research Fellow in Psychology, Cardiff University

I originally read his name as Stuart Slapstick. I suppose there must be a psychological reason for that.

The report drew on evidence from leading experts on behavioural science and social change …

I recently came across a preprint paper by Dillon Bowen (direct arXiv link), titled “Simple models predict behavior at least as well as behavioral scientists”.

The Abstract is, in my opinion, worth copying in full in response to the Conversation article :

How accurately can behavioral scientists predict behavior? To answer this question, we analyzed data from five studies in which 640 professional behavioral scientists predicted the results of one or more behavioral science experiments. We compared the behavioral scientists’ predictions to random chance, linear models, and simple heuristics like “behavioral interventions have no effect” and “all published psychology research is false.” We find that behavioral scientists are consistently no better than – and often worse than – these simple heuristics and models. Behavioral scientists’ predictions are not only noisy but also biased. They systematically overestimate how well behavioral science “works”: overestimating the effectiveness of behavioral interventions, the impact of psychological phenomena like time discounting, and the replicability of published psychology research.

The start of the “Introduction” section is also relevant to generic “trust the experts” arguments :

Behavioral scientists’ predictions regularly inform academia, public policy, and business decisions. Academic researchers decide which projects to pursue based on which hypotheses seem most plausible. Nudge units test and implement interventions they expect will be most effective. Businesses regularly consult marketing and management experts for advice.

The underlying assumption in these instances is that behavioral scientists’ predictions are accurate. In general, we expect experts in any domain to be able to make accurate predictions about their domain of expertise [Tetlock, 2009]. We should have especially high expectations of scientific experts, given that prediction is a fundamental function of science [Kuhn, 2011]. We might even argue that accurate predictions are necessary for the credibility of a scientific discipline [Tetlock, 2009, Tetlock and Gardner, 2016].

From the “Discussion” section :

Behavioral scientists’ bias can have serious consequences. A recent study found that policymakers were less supportive of an effective climate change policy (carbon taxes) when a nudge solution was also available [Hagmann et al., 2019]. However, accurately disclosing the nudge’s impact shifted support back towards carbon taxes and away from the nudge solution. In general, when behavioral scientists exaggerate the effectiveness of their work, they may drain support and resources from potentially more impactful solutions.

…

Experimental economics might suggest that behavioral scientists are less biased because people with experience tend to be less biased in their domain of expertise.

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Then again, there are at least three reasons to believe that behavioral scientists should be more biased than the general population: selection bias, selective exposure, and motivated reasoning. First, behavioral science might select people who believe in its effectiveness. On the supply side, students who apply to study psychology for five years on a measly PhD stipend are unlikely to believe that most psychology publications fail to replicate. On the demand side, marketing departments and nudge units may be disinclined to hire applicants who believe their work is ineffective. Indeed, part of the experimental economics argument is that markets filter out people who make poor decisions [List and Millimet, 2008]. The opposite may be true of behavioral science: the profession might filter out people with an accurate assessment of how well behavioral science works.

Second, behavioral scientists are selectively exposed to research that finds large and statistically significant effects. Behavioral science journals and conferences are more likely to accept papers with significant results. Therefore, most of the literature behavioral scientists read promotes the idea that behavioral interventions are effective and psychological phenomena substantially influence behavior. However, published behavioral science research often fails to replicate. Lack of reproducibility plagues not only behavioral science [Collaboration, 2012, 2015, Camerer et al., 2016, Mac Giolla et al., 2022] but also medicine [Freedman et al., 2015, Prinz et al., 2011], neuroscience [Button et al., 2013], and genetics [Hewitt, 2012, Lawrence et al., 2013]. Scientific results fail to reproduce for many reasons, including publication bias, p-hacking, and fraud [Simmons et al., 2011, Nelson et al., 2018]. Indeed, most evidence that behavioral scientists overestimate how well behavioral science works involves asking them to predict the results of nudge studies. However, there is little to no evidence that nudges work after correcting for publication bias [Maier et al., 2022]. Even when a study successfully replicates, the effect size in the replication study is often much smaller than that reported in the original publication [Camerer et al., 2016, Collaboration, 2015]. For example, the RCT study paper estimates that the academic literature overstates nudges’ effectiveness by a factor of six [DellaVigna and Linos, 2022].

Finally, behavioral scientists might be susceptible to motivated reasoning [Kunda, 1990, Epley and Gilovich, 2016]. As behavioral scientists, we want to believe that our work is meaningful, effective, and true. Motivated reasoning may also drive selective exposure [Bénabou and Tirole, 2002]. We want to believe our work is effective, so we disproportionately read about behavioral science experiments that worked.

Isn’t it fortunate that “behavio[u]r science” is the only scientific domain that suffers from the deficiencies highlighted above …

Make no mistake, these people are serious. A climate lockdown society in which politicians and academics get to dictate your choices appears to be their genuine end goal. In places like Britain, they are perilously close to getting their way.

The response to the wuflu shows that it can be done. The official response to the wuflu was to push a vaccine that demonstrably doesn’t prevent transmission and that, through constant boosters, may actually reduce natural immunity. That’s bad enough but then they did their best to suppress the free speech of those who thought the official response was proven to be wrong.

Man-made CO2 has a minute effect on the climate and can be ignored. Net Zero achieves nothing but poverty.

This is the same profession (psychologist, psychiatrist) that have tried to drug our children into oblivion with everything from ADHD drugs to anti anxiety meds) . They tried to get us to put my daughter on some of this crap in the first grade( was nothing wrong with her except a speech empediment , she was born at 7 months) I told them :no way in hell! I told them It is a statistical impossibility for this many kids out of a population to have ADHD or any other affliction at that rate. Worse yet they continued to push it, I never gave in.

She turned out great – high GPA thru all her school years ,now works as a well paid travel Nursing tech.

The vast majority of her class mates that were put on those meds ended up with all kinds of drug and alcohol and psychological problems. Mist of them are completely unproductive members of society now.

Oh this is rich, I’m being ostracized for not paying more attention to psychologists and the House of Lords. There is no need to reach or attempt to reach net zero. Net zero is a fiction, it is an imaginary solution for a non problem. These people make me sick.