5.0 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| When Contact Changes Minds | 2/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Contact_Changes_Minds | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:31:21.307446+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Falsified data == The "When contact changes minds" study was discredited after a critique by David Broockman, Joshua Kalla, and Peter Aronow on May 19, 2015, titled "Irregularities in LaCour (2014)", concluded that the data had been falsified and no data had been collected. The survey company that LaCour claimed to have used denied performing any work for the study and did not have an employee by the name LaCour listed as his contact with the company. In addition, LaCour had claimed that participants were paid using outside funding, but no organization could be found that had provided the amount of money required to pay thousands of people. The "Irregularities" paper also identified the likely method by which LaCour had forged the data. The baseline survey results appeared to have been taken from an earlier dataset called the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP), to which LaCour had access. The later sets of data appeared to have been simulated from the first using statistical methods to shift the results and by adding normally distributed noise. In addition, the paper noted that canvasser identifiers were missing from the results, making it impossible to verify whether different canvassers produced different results as the original study claimed. Additional evidence of the study's fictitiousness later emerged, such as evidence that LaCour had tried to retroactively claim that the study had been pre-registered using falsified documents. LaCour's coauthor, Donald Green, subsequently requested that the paper be retracted because of “irregularities” in the paper's data and LaCour's failure to give him the raw data on which the paper was based. Yet Green, as senior author on the Science paper, certified that he had examined the raw/original data on his Science/AAAS Authorship Form and Statement of Conflicts of Interest. The Science terms include, prominently, the following statement: “The senior author from each group is required to have examined the raw data their group has produced.” In his letter to the journal, Green wrote: "I am deeply embarrassed by this turn of events and apologize to the editors, reviewers, and readers of Science." Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, wrote in The Washington Post that Donald Green had accepted LaCour's data "on faith". On May 28, 2015, the study was retracted by Science, on the basis that incentives to participate in the survey on which the study was based had been misrepresented, that sponsors had been falsely identified, that the authors could not produce the original data, and (citing the findings of Broockman et al.) that there were "statistical irregularities." On May 29, 2015, LaCour uploaded a response to the criticisms. LaCour admitted to some false statements and apologized for "misrepresenting survey incentives and funding", but denied intentionally falsifying the data itself (though he stated that he could not rule out the possibility that he had "mistakenly mixed up" hypothetical data with collected data). He disputed the timeline of events presented in Broockman et al. (2015). He argued that the failure of Broockman et al. to replicate LaCour and Green (2014) was likely the result of a failure to follow the respondent-driven sampling procedure used in LaCour and Green (2014). He stated that Broockman et al. had selected the "incorrect variable" from CCAP (2012) and then manipulated that variable to make the distribution look more like that in LaCour and Green (2014). LaCour claimed that when the "correct" variable is used, the distributions between the CCAP thermometer and the LaCour and Green (2014) thermometer are statistically distinguishable. LaCour said, "selecting the incorrect variable may have been an oversight, but further manipulating that variable to make the distribution look more like LaCour and Green (2014) is a curious and possibly intentional 'error.'" LaCour also claimed that an independent replication supported the main finding reported in LaCour and Green (2014). In the New York Times article, LaCour said the study erred in methods, not results. A subsequent article published by Science indicated that LaCour's response was lacking, failing to address a number of issues while raising new questions about his conduct. A blog post published by Discover stated that LaCour's rebuttal arguments were "very weak" and failed to refute a central criticism of the Broockman paper. After the retraction, the Carnegie Corporation of New York rescinded Donald Green's 2015 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, revoking a $200,000 award to support Donald Green's research, and Princeton University rescinded an assistant professorship that had been offered to LaCour. The journal Science retracted the article with the concurrence of Green while LaCour did not agree to the retraction.