20 hours ago
Professor's fury after Harvard honesty research found to be dishonest
At the time Michael Sanders remembers being embarrassed, even ashamed.
He had convinced the World Bank to fund a study on an entire country to show that one simple trick could drastically increase tax compliance. If you made people pledge their honesty beforehand, research showed, they were more honest. But the one simple trick had proven tricksy.
Despite strong prior evidence it should have had dramatic effects, it had done nothing at all. Clearly, he had screwed up. 'We had let them down.'
Today the emotion is a little different. 'I'm furious,' he said. The former member of the British government-created Behavioural Insights Team believes he has good reason to feel misled about that evidence. 'We need to reflect on why it is that we have so many shysters in our field,' he said.
