Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Thank you guys so much for writing in last week
Speaker 2: and giving us your feedback about the show. We really
Speaker 2: appreciate that, and we're going to ask you to write
Speaker 2: in one more time, this time with one any questions
Speaker 2: that you have about your lives, decisions that you're making,
Speaker 2: things that you might want to know the expected value of,
Speaker 2: and Nate and I are going to do our best
Speaker 2: to have some segments where we respond to those questions.
Speaker 2: So again, our email is Risky Business at Pushkin dot fm,
Speaker 2: all one word, and we hope to hear from you,
Speaker 2: and we hope to see some of your life dilemmas
Speaker 2: and hopefully we'll help you with them. Welcome back to
Speaker 2: Risky Business, our show about making better decisions. I'm Maria
Speaker 2: Kanakova and I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 3: Today on the show, we know a lot of you
Speaker 3: are in their process of traveling to and from places,
Speaker 3: so we'll have Nate and Marie's guide to gto travel.
Speaker 3: What do we do with people who think a lot
Speaker 3: about optimization to make our lives easier when we travel?
Speaker 3: And then what glaring and hypocritical mistakes do we make
Speaker 3: as you'll also find out about and.
Speaker 2: After that We're going to switch gears and talk about
Speaker 2: cheating in academia, in business schools, and specifically with several
Speaker 2: researchers who have been accused of cheating in cheating research
Speaker 2: research on dishonesty. So that'll be a fun one, especially
Speaker 2: for me since I'm working on a book about cheating.
Speaker 2: So this is Thanksgiving week. We're taping this on Tuesday.
Speaker 2: By the time everyone hears that, it will actually be
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving and they will already be at their destination, we hope,
Speaker 2: unless some major travelsnaff's happened. But this will still be
Speaker 2: very useful because we're in holiday season right, We're going
Speaker 2: to have holiday travel all through December as well. Nate,
Speaker 2: are you traveling for Thanksgiving this year?
Speaker 3: Yeah, going to Kansas City to see my partner's family.
Speaker 3: I got a lot of travel, my whole I got
Speaker 3: and then we're going to Vegas, then Japan, Korea at
Speaker 3: some point probably make it home to Michigan. So I
Speaker 3: need these tips, Maria.
Speaker 2: All Right, So we're going to actually do this segment
Speaker 2: in a slightly different fun way, I hope fun, and
Speaker 2: we're going to ask each other questions. Nate and I
Speaker 2: do not know what the questions are We have not
Speaker 2: seen each other's questions ahead of time, so this is
Speaker 2: going to be kind of a spur of the moment
Speaker 2: response to each other. Nate, Shall I start us off
Speaker 2: with our questions?
Speaker 3: How you start? Yeah?
Speaker 1: All right, all right?
Speaker 2: Question number one? How early should you get to the airport?
Speaker 3: Oh? Boy, Robbie and I my partner, are just having
Speaker 3: an argument about this today.
Speaker 1: I love it. Those are the best arguments.
Speaker 3: I aim. Traditionally, I aim to be at the airport
Speaker 3: an hour before departure time for a domestic flight. It's
Speaker 3: departure time, not boarding time. Now, in practice, like the
Speaker 3: security system has improved, I have like pre check. Actually
Speaker 3: don't have pre check, which is weird. Nate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we need to talk about this. Okay, everyone listening.
Speaker 2: This is like the number one thing to do in
Speaker 2: gto travel, get tsa pre check, get global entry if
Speaker 2: you travel abroad. I am shocked that my co host
Speaker 2: could be so neglitch of Nate.
Speaker 3: Well, there are workarounds. Clear is pretty good. Clear is
Speaker 3: basically pre check. No I should I should? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: committing like the sunk cost. I'm committing lots of cognitive
Speaker 3: errors by not doing that.
Speaker 2: You're right, yes, all right, So without pre check, I
Speaker 2: would say, and without clear you should probably be getting
Speaker 2: to the airport earlier then one hour, right, especially around
Speaker 2: the holiday because the lines going.
Speaker 3: Maybe the holidays in particular. I mean, look, yeah, if
Speaker 3: you arrive at the airport an hour before departure time
Speaker 3: for a domestic flight, you should not miss your flight
Speaker 3: if you have, unless you're in like the cattle car
Speaker 3: line with no clear or no premium or anything like that. Right,
Speaker 3: you should be able to make it through on time.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I actually happen to agree with you
Speaker 2: on this. One an hour is what I do as well.
Speaker 2: For domestic travel around the holidays, especially if you don't
Speaker 2: have tsa pre check like some people, you might want
Speaker 2: to consider longer. But if you are in that cattle
Speaker 2: line with no pre check, no anything, and you are
Speaker 2: cutting it close, come up to the agents and tell
Speaker 2: them what time your flight is. They will often let
Speaker 2: you skip the line and actually not miss your flight
Speaker 2: because they don't want you missing your flight either, because
Speaker 2: that fucks up travel for everyone.
Speaker 3: Maria, what is your best travel hack?
Speaker 2: My best travel hack is never checking luggage. And when
Speaker 2: I say never, I actually mean never I am a female,
Speaker 2: as people might have noticed, and I am capable of
Speaker 2: going on a month long trip, six week long trip
Speaker 2: with just carry ons. I have a carry on suitcase,
Speaker 2: a little you know, roller board which is the MAC size,
Speaker 2: and I have a backpack which has which is always
Speaker 2: my extra travel thing in the backpack fits a lot
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: And I am very.
Speaker 2: Very good at recycling outfits, at packing, you know, very
Speaker 2: packing very well, so that I can manage without any
Speaker 2: carry ons. I think this saves you huge amounts of time,
Speaker 2: huge amounts of hassle. I don't have a single friend
Speaker 2: or family member who has checked luggage who has not
Speaker 2: had it lost at some point. And yeah, so I
Speaker 2: think that that's the single best piece of advice I
Speaker 2: can offer. Learn to pack light, Do not check your
Speaker 2: bags if.
Speaker 3: You are going to an international destination and you have
Speaker 3: to your customs when you arrive. There's less cost to
Speaker 3: that because I mean, I'm generally agreeing, right, but like
Speaker 3: because there by the time you're through customs, magically your
Speaker 3: bags might be there at the little carousel. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, the the risk of having your bag. I'm
Speaker 3: surprised that more strangers don't like steal people's bags. Right.
Speaker 2: It's it's so weird because you have all the security
Speaker 2: in the airport and then like you get to the
Speaker 2: carousel and like take your pick, tack whatever you want.
Speaker 2: So I am actually shocked that, you know, knowing what
Speaker 2: we know about human nature, I'm shocked that more bags
Speaker 2: don't get stolen. All right, Next question, Nate, what is
Speaker 2: your most underrated thing to always pack when you're traveling?
Speaker 3: A podcast? Microphone?
Speaker 1: Like, I okay, that's amazing.
Speaker 3: I usually bring a little bit of cash because you
Speaker 3: never know when you're gonna get bored and there might
Speaker 3: be a poker room nearby.
Speaker 2: M h, this is this is very good. That is
Speaker 2: that is very good advice. I think you should always
Speaker 2: have cash on you, and you should always have more
Speaker 2: cash than you think you need.
Speaker 1: Don't go over the limits.
Speaker 3: Well, the limits are internationally there's a ten thousand dollars limit.
Speaker 3: Domestically there's not supposed to be, although I've had a
Speaker 3: problem with it one So bestally, if you fly to
Speaker 3: like Vegas or New York, people are used to having
Speaker 3: a lot of cash in those cities. I don't know
Speaker 3: what people are doing with the cash in New York,
Speaker 3: but like you know, some some law off the records
Speaker 3: something or another. Yeah. I mean if an uninformed security
Speaker 3: person asks do you have more than ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: and you should say I'm allowed to because I'm American
Speaker 3: citizens is my currency and what you might call it,
Speaker 3: and like, I'm not flying internationally where these rules apply.
Speaker 3: Don't like try to bring fifty thousand dollars like the
Speaker 3: Bahamas or something. That's a really big mistake.
Speaker 1: That's a horrible mistake. Yep.
Speaker 3: So what's what's the best airport? What's your favorite airport?
Speaker 2: My favorite airport, I would say say is Heathrow because
Speaker 2: talk about nice places to hang out, nice places to eat.
Speaker 2: I don't think anything can beat Heathrow. I mean you can, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can.
Speaker 3: Do associate with like very very very long lines and
Speaker 3: very I hate.
Speaker 2: So here's the thing, So what's my most My favorite
Speaker 2: airport to travel through is absolutely not Heathrow. Right, he
Speaker 2: throws a nightmare in terms of lines. But if I
Speaker 2: have to be stuck in an airport, I want to
Speaker 2: be stuck in Heathrow because I can get good food, right,
Speaker 2: I can. I can go to the fucking caviar bar there.
Speaker 2: I can, you know, and there are good bookshops, which
Speaker 2: I really admit, Like, I really like that, and it's
Speaker 2: just it's nice, right. There are lots of places to
Speaker 2: spend time in terms of efficiency. Absolutely not Heathrow. I
Speaker 2: don't like traveling through Heathrow. I have heard so I
Speaker 2: haven't done a lot of travel through Asia, but I
Speaker 2: have heard that some of the best airports in the
Speaker 2: world are some of the Asian airports that are like
Speaker 2: many countries with you know, tropical rainforests. I look forward
Speaker 2: to visiting those one day. All right, Nate, let's let's
Speaker 2: do the other way. What's the most overrated airport?
Speaker 3: Uh? You know, I think La. I mean La. The
Speaker 3: problem is, like all these terminals are changing and turning
Speaker 3: around and so like I used to think there's some
Speaker 3: terminals in lax that are like quite annoying. Miami Airport
Speaker 3: is kind of a total shit show. Fort Lardale might
Speaker 3: be a little bit better, but then it takes over
Speaker 3: to get an uber. Yeah, those are on the Natelet
Speaker 3: you know, Phoenix is kind of a shitty airport.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm going to add one that you haven't
Speaker 2: to the over rated airport, which is O'Hare because people
Speaker 2: always say that O'Hare is so, you know, lovely and efficient,
Speaker 2: But I think O'Hare is such a shit show. And
Speaker 2: I have never been delayed more often than I have
Speaker 2: been in O'Hare.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I used to. And again I can you blame
Speaker 3: airports for having I mean, they have two airlines that
Speaker 3: try to have hubs there, but like, yeah, and like
Speaker 3: the facilities have not been like updated O'Hare, No, they
Speaker 3: haven't a long time. They do have a Tortesse Fronterra,
Speaker 3: which is like this amazing Rick Bayliss restaurant, but like,
Speaker 3: but there's never any place to like sit down. And
Speaker 3: if you do have like one of those long winter
Speaker 3: delays in Chicago, then it's pretty unpleasant.
Speaker 2: It is, it is pretty unpleasant. And also talk about
Speaker 2: having to walk far Ohara is one of those airports
Speaker 2: where you might be walking for half an hour before
Speaker 2: you finally take it to your destination.
Speaker 3: Maria, what is your go to airport meal?
Speaker 2: My go to airport meal is I actually bring food
Speaker 2: with me? I refuse, so I never eat on planes.
Speaker 2: I don't care unless there are some exceptions, like when
Speaker 2: I fly to Hong Kong, right where I'm on a
Speaker 2: plane for so long that it's not even funny. Or
Speaker 2: when I, you know, when I fly to South Africa,
Speaker 2: like when I fly somewhere really really really far away.
Speaker 2: But otherwise I don't eat on airplanes. And that's actually,
Speaker 2: by the way, little tip from kind of the psychology
Speaker 2: of sleep and how to help your body adjust to
Speaker 2: time zones. I did a lot of research on this
Speaker 2: and spend some time with the best sleep researchers at
Speaker 2: Harvard for a fellowship. I did it at one point,
Speaker 2: and that's one of the best hacks that you can
Speaker 2: have in order to transition and to not be jet
Speaker 2: lagged is do not eat on the airplane, but do
Speaker 2: drink a lot. So I usually will get sushi actually
Speaker 2: ahead of time and will bring sushi because I like
Speaker 2: to eat something really nice and light and.
Speaker 3: Eat it at the air Allow take that through security.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can absolutely take sushi through security. That's it's
Speaker 2: not a liquid.
Speaker 3: It's liquid sauce. About the soy sauce, you don't.
Speaker 2: Have to eat so the soy sauce I've actually never
Speaker 2: had a problem with. But if you do have a
Speaker 2: problem and they confiscate your soy sauce, there is always
Speaker 2: soy sauce.
Speaker 1: And the Panda Express exactly just just.
Speaker 2: Go go somewhere in the airport and get soy sauce.
Speaker 2: But I recommend eat light, no carbs, do not eat pea.
Speaker 2: It's the worst mistake I ever made was at one
Speaker 2: point eating a Hamburger in a Boston airport because I
Speaker 2: was really really hungry and I was so suck So
Speaker 2: do not do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's my that's funny thing.
Speaker 3: But I think airports is like the best setting for
Speaker 3: like fast food, right, Like I want like a Wendy's
Speaker 3: or some shit, and not some weird off brand Hamburger
Speaker 3: restaurant that probably sucks, right, like the one time when
Speaker 3: you want logistics of like serving people food quickly. I
Speaker 3: mean I agree about like even if you're in business
Speaker 3: class or something, it's just very hard to prepare good
Speaker 3: airline food for like a mass audience unless you get
Speaker 3: to the real high end luxury market Emirates or one
Speaker 3: of the Asian airlines or whatnot. Yeah, people have this
Speaker 3: like sunk cost fallacy of oh, I'm getting this free
Speaker 3: meal because I'm flying business and you actually a lot
Speaker 3: of time you're better off just sleeping or doing what
Speaker 3: I'll be reading, drinking, et cetera, and like, have your
Speaker 3: meal first, you'll have a better meal almost for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so glad you agree with me. Yes, it
Speaker 2: is crazy to me that there are so many people
Speaker 2: who fly first class business class, who have the money
Speaker 2: to pay for that ticket, who are like, ooh, free food.
Speaker 1: Right, that doesn't change from college.
Speaker 2: Right, free food. You want to get the free food.
Speaker 2: It's much better for your body. It's much better for you.
Speaker 2: It's much tastier if you don't do that, Nate, when
Speaker 2: you go into a new city, what's the most underrated
Speaker 2: thing to do?
Speaker 3: I mean, I just am a big walker. I walk
Speaker 3: around a lot, right. I hate being confined to a hotel. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I'll look up. I'll look up, do a
Speaker 3: little scouting, do some restaurant. Yeah, work, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: trying to find cuisines, like, for example, the Vietnamese food
Speaker 3: tends to be better on the West Coast and in
Speaker 3: New York and so that's a comparative advantage category for example,
Speaker 3: or you know tacos in La or Texas. So yeah,
Speaker 3: take an uber or something to like a fun neighborhood,
Speaker 3: have some tacos and then walk around.
Speaker 2: I'm totally with you, and I actually love traveling with you, Nate,
Speaker 2: because you and I both love food and you are
Speaker 2: always up for culinary adventures, and that is something that
Speaker 2: I really appreciate. Walking and then and then having some
Speaker 2: good food. Is I think the best thing to do
Speaker 2: in a new city. I don't know how underrated it is,
Speaker 2: but it's wonderful.
Speaker 3: What's the best place to kill time in an airport?
Speaker 3: Is there any scenario, let's say, and let's exclude any
Speaker 3: type of exclusive lounges or anything like that, right, think
Speaker 3: about any airport and now let's say, oh, your flight's
Speaker 3: been delayed for an hour and a half. Is there
Speaker 3: any airport where you're like, Oh, actually, I'm kind of
Speaker 3: happy about that because I get to hang out in
Speaker 3: place X.
Speaker 2: No, I'm never happy about place that is absolutely not happening.
Speaker 2: But if you don't have a good book, I would say,
Speaker 2: go to the bookstore, pick up a good book and
Speaker 2: get lost in it. That's that's the best thing I
Speaker 2: can think of. Otherwise, if you if you're with someone
Speaker 2: and your flight is really delayed, get some alcohol and
Speaker 2: get some get some food, and just pretend you're not
Speaker 2: stuck in the airport, but be careful with that because
Speaker 2: you also don't want to be dehydrated and drunk when
Speaker 2: you get onto the plane. So that's a that's a
Speaker 2: short term solution. No more than one drink.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. I don't pledge to bye By that.
Speaker 1: That's fine, that's fine. When you rent a car, do
Speaker 1: you get insurance?
Speaker 3: I don't have a license, Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: And I didn't have I didn't know how to drive
Speaker 2: up until a few years ago and I just learned. So,
Speaker 2: but I have heard that rental car insurance is a scam,
Speaker 2: so I never parted it.
Speaker 3: I'm I really think that rental cars are pretty often
Speaker 3: not worth it. I mean, you know, even down into
Speaker 3: like the kind of small to medium size metro areas,
Speaker 3: the uber is pretty good and people have just like
Speaker 3: Fallacy where love you're like, oh, I have to pay
Speaker 3: marginally for these Uber or lyft rides when like Brunnea
Speaker 3: car can be pretty expensive. There is insurance. I've had
Speaker 3: rental cars that I wasn't dragging myself broken into and
Speaker 3: things like that, and like, yeah, yeah, I'm very anti
Speaker 3: rental car and it takes a long time to return
Speaker 3: the car, and like, oh, I mean there's something if
Speaker 3: you're like a national park or something you have to
Speaker 3: but like usually should be avoided.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you in cities unless you really need it,
Speaker 2: no rental cars, totally agree.
Speaker 3: What is the median amount of airline credit you require
Speaker 3: to be bumped off your flight?
Speaker 1: A million? I would never.
Speaker 2: I mean I book my travel because I need to
Speaker 2: get places and I need to get shit done, and
Speaker 2: you are not getting me off my flight. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm not getting bumped to the next day. I hate delays.
Speaker 2: I mean, let me rephrase. If there's a flight in
Speaker 2: like twenty minutes, sure you can bump me, but usually
Speaker 2: that's not the case. Right, Whenever they're offering a lot
Speaker 2: of money, that means that you're going to be bumped
Speaker 2: you know, that evening or the next day or something
Speaker 2: horrible like that, And to me, it's just not worth it, Like,
Speaker 2: there's my time is more valuable.
Speaker 3: You don't think people are a little bit irrational about that.
Speaker 2: I think that some people will irrationally accept any amount
Speaker 2: of money because they're like, ooh money, awesome, that's great.
Speaker 2: But when like I said, when I book my travel,
Speaker 2: like I don't like traveling, and like I like being places,
Speaker 2: but I don't like the process of travel, and I
Speaker 2: usually do it with you know, without that much margin
Speaker 2: of error, in the sense that I need to be
Speaker 2: somewhere by a specific time and that's where I'm going,
Speaker 2: And even if it's vacation, like I want to start
Speaker 2: my vacation. I don't want to spend another day in
Speaker 2: whatever city I'm in. If you give me, like there
Speaker 2: is an amount of money, like if you give me
Speaker 2: thousands of dollars, Like if you give me five K,
Speaker 2: I'll probably be okay with being bumped on a flight
Speaker 2: if I'm going on vacation, right, if you give me
Speaker 2: an amount of money that pays for my vacation, like sure,
Speaker 2: and you give it to me in cash, But oftentimes
Speaker 2: that's often not the case. Either it's like travel credit
Speaker 2: or some bullshit where you're not actually getting the money.
Speaker 2: And by the way, no one's paying you five K
Speaker 2: like that that is an outlandish amount.
Speaker 3: Do any airport to have poker rooms? I'm looking this up.
Speaker 2: I guess not right, I have no idea, but that's hilarious.
Speaker 2: While you're looking up poker rooms business class versus first class.
Speaker 3: Versus first class.
Speaker 1: I mean, these days, I think it's basically the same thing.
Speaker 3: There are so many funny distinct I mean, you have
Speaker 3: to know the airline and the route, right, if you
Speaker 3: really care about this stuff, then, like I mean, I like,
Speaker 3: there's only there's only so many things an airline can
Speaker 3: ultimately provide you with, right even until you get to, like,
Speaker 3: like I said, the very top tier first classes. Like
Speaker 3: you know, if you have a bid you can recline.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know, I guess you have like the
Speaker 3: private suites, but you're getting mediocre free food. You're getting
Speaker 3: as much freebooze as you want, but you maybe don't
Speaker 3: want that much, and you're getting a seat that you
Speaker 3: can fully recline in. Then I don't know. Beyond that,
Speaker 3: I tend to think that like there's diminishing returns on
Speaker 3: the amends that you get.
Speaker 1: But yeah, totally agree with you.
Speaker 3: I did, what's take a shower in a plane? I
Speaker 3: got bumped up, bumped up on Emirates flying back from Dangkok,
Speaker 3: and that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: All right, do you have any more questions for me?
Speaker 3: Worst travel decision you've ever made?
Speaker 2: Worst travel decision I've ever made. I think I kind
Speaker 2: of already answered this, and that was checking bags on
Speaker 2: my way to Georgia. But other than checking bags, I
Speaker 2: think that you have to be really, really careful with
Speaker 2: your layovers, and sometimes you make really shitty decisions without
Speaker 2: realizing it because there's an airport that's known for a delay,
Speaker 2: or the airline will let you book a flight where
Speaker 2: the layovers just way too tight, and if you don't
Speaker 2: know the airport, you're fucked. Like I once had Delta
Speaker 2: allow me to book an international flight and it was
Speaker 2: not direct, it was through Atlanta, and I think my
Speaker 2: connection was thirty minutes long something like that. I have
Speaker 2: no idea why they let me do that. And if
Speaker 2: you've been to the Atlanta airport, like Atlanta has multiple terminals,
Speaker 2: like you have to take a little tram in between them,
Speaker 2: like that, shit ate fast and I missed an international
Speaker 2: connection and I didn't do anything wrong, like Delta let
Speaker 2: me book this, but it was just way not enough time.
Speaker 2: And I think that paying attention to that is actually
Speaker 2: really important, and sometimes you don't because you just assume
Speaker 2: that an airline is not going to let you book
Speaker 2: a connection that's too tight to miss but they just
Speaker 2: assume that it's going to be the best case scenario, right,
Speaker 2: like everything's on time, Like you arrive on time, but
Speaker 2: the moment your flight's twenty minutes late, like you're fucked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you have to know the I mean
Speaker 3: because they actually have tables of how long minimum connection
Speaker 3: time is at different airports, and just like like I
Speaker 3: will take a short connection in Detroit because the airport'
Speaker 3: is not that big and to get from went into
Speaker 3: the other little skytrain thing takes ten minutes. Right Atlanta Atlanta,
Speaker 3: you gotta I mean, Atlanta's an overrated airport too. People
Speaker 3: are like, oh Atlanta, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I haven't talked about Atlanta. Yes, Atlanta is very much
Speaker 2: an overfrated airport.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it has a little bit more capacity
Speaker 3: than Yeah. Look, my worst decision. I'm not gonna blame
Speaker 3: myself for this, but let's say somebody in the traveling
Speaker 3: party made the following calculation. Right, we were flying back
Speaker 3: home from Rio to New York via sal Paolo, and
Speaker 3: the person who made this booking didn't realize that there
Speaker 3: are more than an airport in Salt Paolo. It's one
Speaker 3: of the biggest materias in the world. And so we
Speaker 3: flew into this little commuter domestic airport, and of course
Speaker 3: our flights and the big flew me. I don't know
Speaker 3: what the fuck it's called, the big international airport that's
Speaker 3: about forty five minutes by uh uber or taxi if
Speaker 3: you're taking the right route. So we did't uber. We
Speaker 3: explained to the guy that we're kind of in a hurry,
Speaker 3: and then lo and behold, we're kind of out on
Speaker 3: this like country road and we were getting further and
Speaker 3: further away from the airport, and I guess ostensibly he
Speaker 3: was taking some very circuitous route that was going to
Speaker 3: take an hour and a half, which wasn't gonna work.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, we don't speak English. We're in
Speaker 3: we don't speak Spanish. Excuse me, we're thinking Portuguese. I
Speaker 3: do speak a tiny bit of Spanish, but not Portuguese
Speaker 3: at all. And you know, we kind of think we
Speaker 3: might be getting like kidnapped, and I'm not quite sure what,
Speaker 3: and so we start like getting hysterical at the guy
Speaker 3: and then and then eventually he kind of is like, Okay,
Speaker 3: these guys are gonna fucking I don't know what, but
Speaker 3: he felt like he had to stop this premise of
Speaker 3: like taking us in this very long route at best
Speaker 3: being kidnapped at worse. And then I don't know what
Speaker 3: was wrong with the guy, right, and then we're trying
Speaker 3: to tell him which gate to go to or which terminal,
Speaker 3: and he like wouldn't listen to us, and so like
Speaker 3: we're just so fluster when we finally to the airport
Speaker 3: that like, I leave my passport had fallen out of
Speaker 3: my wallet, and U in this guy's fucking uber right,
Speaker 3: and he comes rushing in and actually gives us the
Speaker 3: passport right, So it seemed to travel nightmare.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So I wasn't sure what's star rating? So you try
Speaker 3: to kidnap us, but do so on.
Speaker 2: The one hand, he tried to kidnap us, but on
Speaker 2: the other hand, he gave us back our past, So
Speaker 2: I gave.
Speaker 3: Him three stars. Okay, that averages out.
Speaker 1: That is a that is a horror story. Oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm uh.
Speaker 2: I get very nervous, especially by myself when when things
Speaker 2: like that start happening. I love that you can share
Speaker 2: your location these days, and I highly recommend it, whether
Speaker 2: you're male or female. You know, if if something's going wrong,
Speaker 2: Just share your location and to make sure that the
Speaker 2: driver knows it, and use Google Translate Nate for Portuguese to.
Speaker 1: Tell them how to say it. Say, you know, my.
Speaker 2: Big bodyguard friend knows exactly where I am at this moment,
Speaker 2: but I've got.
Speaker 1: It all worked out.
Speaker 2: And on that note, we hope you've enjoyed our gto guide.
Speaker 2: And let's take a break and talk about some cheating. So, Nate,
Speaker 2: have you been following this story about academic cheating that
Speaker 2: first broke in the public sphere last year twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: about Francesca Gino and Dan Arielli Harvard Business School and
Speaker 2: Duke Business School and how there are potentially fabricated and
Speaker 2: manipulated results in some of their work on dishonesty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as a I don't know, as someone who likes
Speaker 3: to tweak the S class when it flexs things up,
Speaker 3: I've been following this, but probably not as closely as
Speaker 3: as you have.
Speaker 2: This came out because a team of researchers that call
Speaker 2: themselves Data Colata were able to do some statistical analysis
Speaker 2: very in depth. These are brilliant guys, and they were
Speaker 2: able to kind of publish this series of reports that
Speaker 2: showed uh, oh, this work on being unethical is actually
Speaker 2: unethical in and of itself, and this prompted, you know,
Speaker 2: big reckoning. Francesca Gino was placed on leave and she
Speaker 2: ended up suing both Harvard and Data Colada. Her lawsuit
Speaker 2: against Data Colada has since been dismissed, but Danareeli, as
Speaker 2: far as I know, is still on faculty at Duke.
Speaker 2: And by the way, this is not the first time
Speaker 2: he has been accused. There have been multiple accusations of
Speaker 2: improper research in the past. There has been a crisis
Speaker 2: of confidence in social psychology for a long time, and
Speaker 2: because of replication issues, not because of fraud and misconduct.
Speaker 2: But now you know, we're adding academic misconduct. And there
Speaker 2: was a recent piece that just came out last week,
Speaker 2: it's going to be in the next print issue of
Speaker 2: The Atlantic by Daniel Enber who actually showed that it
Speaker 2: turns out that multiple people may have been fabricating data
Speaker 2: and that this is an endemic problem, especially among business
Speaker 2: school researchers. So what do we think about this date
Speaker 2: Other than the obvious irony that like, holy shit, you know,
Speaker 2: people who are researching ethics are not ethical.
Speaker 3: There is some irony in comparing it to like the
Speaker 3: poker community, which is also a place that seems to
Speaker 3: like be quite tolerant of cheating. Yeah. Look, I have
Speaker 3: various critiques. I mean, number one, I think the modal
Speaker 3: academic paper is agreed because it's hard to have original
Speaker 3: findings in a competitive field. There's a lot of pressure
Speaker 3: to published, and so like the motive paper is a
Speaker 3: paper that applies some and siscal inference is hard and
Speaker 3: people don't they have formal training in it, but like
Speaker 3: having intuition is harder, right, And so the motolctemic paper
Speaker 3: is either coming to some counterintuitive conclusion that seems needed,
Speaker 3: but it's actually just an artifact of the research design,
Speaker 3: or a politically correct conclusion because those papers tend to
Speaker 3: get greenlit more right, you know, the fact that there
Speaker 3: is I don't know, is there a fine line between
Speaker 3: cheating and just shitty methodology. I think there is, probably,
Speaker 3: But I think the peer review system is pretty broken.
Speaker 3: And we both know about the replication crisis, whereby various definitions,
Speaker 3: when you try to recreate independently is a positive study
Speaker 3: result than those recreation rates are are low.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that you're raising a really really important
Speaker 2: point though, that I want to just go back to
Speaker 2: a little bit before we dive further into kind of
Speaker 2: this actual fraud and misconduct, which is this lack of
Speaker 2: statistical knowledge sometimes. So I have a pH d in psychology, right,
Speaker 2: So I actually I went through this academic training. I
Speaker 2: had to take some stats classes, but it's not like
Speaker 2: I had to take advanced statistics right like I, you know,
Speaker 2: and I knew how little of a sense I had
Speaker 2: for a lot of these things. So when it actually
Speaker 2: came time to analyze my final data set, which was
Speaker 2: you know, thousands and thousands of participants, I wanted to
Speaker 2: make sure that I avoided any potential pitfall. So I
Speaker 2: did some analysis myself that I could do, right, you know,
Speaker 2: some more basic tests, but I knew what I knew
Speaker 2: what conclusion. You know, I knew what my research premise was,
Speaker 2: and so that can buy us you in different ways.
Speaker 2: So what I then did was I hired a statistician
Speaker 2: who had no idea what I was researching, who was
Speaker 2: not a psychologist. I just gave them all the data
Speaker 2: and said, this is what I need you to do, right,
Speaker 2: build build me models, run these analyzes, and tell me
Speaker 2: what you find. And that's actually how I ended up
Speaker 2: taking care of that problem. I was like, if he finds,
Speaker 2: if he finds things that actually are done in a
Speaker 2: much more complicated way, then I'm doing great. Because one
Speaker 2: of the things that has actually been a huge problem
Speaker 2: in academia for a very long time, hence part of
Speaker 2: the replication crisis, is a concept known as P hacking
Speaker 2: and P hacking. So the P value is your significance
Speaker 2: value on a paper, right, and it's somewhat arbitrarily. Point
Speaker 2: oh five is kind of your threshold, right, So if
Speaker 2: you're below point oh five, the finding significant. If you're not,
Speaker 2: the finding's not significant. So it can be like marginally
Speaker 2: significant if you have like a point zero six. Anyway,
Speaker 2: it is a little bit arbitrarian and funny, but people
Speaker 2: would do something known as P hacking, which is you
Speaker 2: run your analysis, right, you have some sort of hypothesis,
Speaker 2: You gather your data, and you find that your P
Speaker 2: value is now significant, and you're like, hmm, what if
Speaker 2: I excluded this set of participants, or what if I
Speaker 2: excluded this set of data. What if I excluded you know,
Speaker 2: based on education, or excluded all men, or excluded you know, blah,
Speaker 2: blah blah. Usually it's not excluding all men. But they
Speaker 2: end up trying to manipulate the statistics a little bit
Speaker 2: by saying, oh, well, is.
Speaker 1: It going to be significant? Now? What about now? What
Speaker 1: about now?
Speaker 2: Until they find a result that is significant and that's
Speaker 2: what they publish. But they didn't have any a priori
Speaker 2: hypotheses about why you're going to do that to the data.
Speaker 2: So I had a lot of times when I was
Speaker 2: excluding certain things from the data, but I would say
Speaker 2: ahead of time, right, like, I'm going to be excluding X,
Speaker 2: Y and Z for these reasons, right because I actually
Speaker 2: have a hypothesis that this is going to matter, and
Speaker 2: that's not you know, that's not what I'm looking at.
Speaker 2: So if you fall into these categories, I'm just not
Speaker 2: going to use your data. People have tried to Now
Speaker 2: that people are aware that this is a problem, they
Speaker 2: are trying to kind of remedy it by saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: let's pre register all studies, let's preregister your conclusions, pre
Speaker 2: register all of your analyzes to try to avoid P hacking.
Speaker 2: But you raise a really interesting point. When P hacking
Speaker 2: was prevalent, I had someone at Columbia in the Columbia
Speaker 2: psychology department, not my advisor, who was Walter Michelle, who's amazing.
Speaker 2: But I had someone when I had an analysis that
Speaker 2: didn't quite work, be like, have you tried running it
Speaker 2: without X or have you tried doing it in this
Speaker 2: type of analysis instead? And I was like no, and
Speaker 2: I'm not going to But that is a frequent response.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you have to be really I mean
Speaker 3: this also applies to journalism when you're writing about things
Speaker 3: that have some amount of complexity, right, is it's kind
Speaker 3: of just on you. I mean, it's very hard to
Speaker 3: detect a story that like omits certain relevant qualifying facts
Speaker 3: or arranges the chairs in a way that tells a
Speaker 3: certain narrative, and you have to kind to be just
Speaker 3: a real stickler for accuracy, right, And you also have
Speaker 3: to know that like when you I mean I have
Speaker 3: lots of I use for like newsletter post right, and
Speaker 3: then you have something that seems promising and then maybe
Speaker 3: you look at in a second way and then you're like,
Speaker 3: this seems like there's not much there, and then you
Speaker 3: probably just have to shelve that post right or every
Speaker 3: now and then you can find some way to salvage
Speaker 3: it for something. But like, yeah, I think some people
Speaker 3: don't know it's bad, right, They think, oh, I'm doing
Speaker 3: science by like trying new regression formula until I find
Speaker 3: one that has a high R squared and like yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's not good. And then there's also pressure to like,
Speaker 3: you know, if you look at like what the p
Speaker 3: values are in published paper, there's a big spike it
Speaker 3: exactly point oh five because point oh five is deemed
Speaker 3: is good and point oh six is deemed is bad.
Speaker 3: And we'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 2: I think that there are a lot of people who
Speaker 2: aren't like as you, who aren't fabricating data right, who
Speaker 2: aren't actually manipulating data manipulating data sets, but who are
Speaker 2: doing these like more subtle things that seem okay and
Speaker 2: you know see, seem like they'll get your get your
Speaker 2: research over the line, which actually dovetails really nicely. Which
Speaker 2: with one of the other reasons why I think we're
Speaker 2: getting these sources of scandals, these sources of crises, you know,
Speaker 2: replication crisis before and now this just realization that a
Speaker 2: lot of studies that are published by researchers, especially in
Speaker 2: business schools, where peer review is even more broken than
Speaker 2: it is in other places. I think one of the
Speaker 2: reasons is the misaligned incentives. Right, the incentives for tenure,
Speaker 2: the incentives for promotion are quantity over quality a lot
Speaker 2: of the times, right they the publish or parish mantra
Speaker 2: is not bullshit. And I was very lucky when I
Speaker 2: was in when I was in grad school that I
Speaker 2: knew I had zero desire to go into academia, So
Speaker 2: my incentives were pure, right Like, I just wanted to
Speaker 2: do the research because I was really interested in it,
Speaker 2: and I knew that I was never going to be
Speaker 2: on the academic job market, so I didn't care if
Speaker 2: it was publishable, right Like, I didn't actually care what
Speaker 2: the significance was. I didn't care what would end up happening.
Speaker 2: I got very lucky that I had cool, significant findings,
Speaker 2: but I never ended up publishing them. But there are
Speaker 2: so many people for whom the incentives are right from
Speaker 2: the very very beginning, you have to publish, published, publish
Speaker 2: in order to get that first appointment, in order to
Speaker 2: get a promotion, in order to get tenure, and quantity
Speaker 2: is rewarded. I remember having a conversation with my advisor,
Speaker 2: Walter Michelle, who for people who don't know, was kind
Speaker 2: of one of the most prominent social psychologists of the
Speaker 2: twentieth century who did kind of the Marshmallow studies, but
Speaker 2: he did a lot of other work as well, and
Speaker 2: incredibly an incredibly prominent researcher who has since passed away.
Speaker 2: And I remember having this conversation with him about academia,
Speaker 2: and he said, and I think that this was very true,
Speaker 2: that he never would have gotten his first job, he
Speaker 2: never would have gotten tenure, he never would have had
Speaker 2: his career progression in the modern market because when he
Speaker 2: was hired for the first time, he had two publications
Speaker 2: and they happened to be incredibly important publications with very
Speaker 2: deep theory, and so back in that schools were like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is really really interesting. But he said that he
Speaker 2: wouldn't go into academia these days because you can't do
Speaker 2: theory work right. You can't do research that's longitudinal, that
Speaker 2: takes years and years and years. And so I feel
Speaker 2: like the field of psychology, and not just psychology, I
Speaker 2: think this is true in academic work in general has
Speaker 2: become diminished because you can't do important studies right. You
Speaker 2: can't do a lot of this important work anymore because
Speaker 2: it's not going to produce results for years, and some
Speaker 2: of it is kind of very theoretical when you're trying
Speaker 2: to develop these big ideas and big theories, and instead,
Speaker 2: you know, you are incentivized to focus on one specific
Speaker 2: type of neuron that does one very specific thing in
Speaker 2: the brain and we you know, and we're just going
Speaker 2: to publish a lot about that. And I think that
Speaker 2: those are very misaligned incentives if you want good research,
Speaker 2: if you want ethical research, and if you want research
Speaker 2: that's actually going to be meaningful and make a difference
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 3: There's another irony too, which is that because academic prose
Speaker 3: kind of is willfully obfuscatory, is aditive, it off skates
Speaker 3: and it's just never said that.
Speaker 1: Word out loud night, but it's that's the right word.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's harder to detect flaws because the writing is
Speaker 3: so bad that often it conceals really sloppy thinking, and
Speaker 3: the opposite.
Speaker 1: Can be true.
Speaker 2: So people like Dan Arieli are really good writers, and
Speaker 2: so you actually miss the logical leaps that they're taking
Speaker 2: where wait a doesn't actually lead to be But because
Speaker 2: you're such a good writer and you made it sound
Speaker 2: so nice. I thought that it led to be please continue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now, I guess it's kind of like a U
Speaker 3: shaped curve where like mediocre to good writing, it's easier
Speaker 3: to detect problems, and like very persuasive writing which is
Speaker 3: aiming to persuade you, or very unclear writing, which is
Speaker 3: you know, again, I unless you are writing in a
Speaker 3: non native language, then in general we're not doing part
Speaker 3: of particle physics here, right. In general, for a type
Speaker 3: of B school study, if you can't explain it, well,
Speaker 3: you probably don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think that's very true. And I
Speaker 2: think the other one of the other problems that we
Speaker 2: see is that you also have an incentive to kind
Speaker 2: of have your work, especially for business school, have your
Speaker 2: work be out there, right, and have journalists write about that.
Speaker 2: Journalists often don't have statistical training, right, then they don't
Speaker 2: actually when they're looking at a paper. There are some
Speaker 2: journalists who do absolutely who are very rigorous about this,
Speaker 2: but most journalists, like they you know, they look at
Speaker 2: the abstract, right, they look at a few things, but
Speaker 2: it's not like they have the resources to be able
Speaker 2: to tell is this a solid study or not? And
Speaker 2: so they might report it the way that more misaligned incentives,
Speaker 2: the way that the press release puts it right, the
Speaker 2: way that the PR Department actually puts it the.
Speaker 3: Way that And that's a problem even more so in
Speaker 3: this era where you know, journalists are concerned or liberal
Speaker 3: journists are concerned that, oh, science is under attack from Trump.
Speaker 3: Then like there is some degree of expertise laundering that
Speaker 3: you go shopping for an academic study that tells you
Speaker 3: the thing that you want to hear, and then you
Speaker 3: get quotes from the same group of four people. A
Speaker 3: lot of problems, Maria.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of problems, And I think this
Speaker 2: is a topic that we'll be returning to. It's something
Speaker 2: that I'm writing about in my next book, which is
Speaker 2: about cheating, and I think that is just something that
Speaker 2: everyone needs to be aware of. And one other thing,
Speaker 2: you know, once this is something that I actually wrote
Speaker 2: on my substack last week. You know, once misinformation, once
Speaker 2: kind of incorrect results get out there, it's really difficult.
Speaker 2: You can't just take it back because the way that
Speaker 2: our brains work, they don't work that way, right, Like
Speaker 2: you just misremember it, not on purpose, but like there's
Speaker 2: so much stuff that I remember from you know, my
Speaker 2: grad school days, where I'm like, oh, right, like if
Speaker 2: you do X, then Y happens, and like that shit's
Speaker 2: been retracted. But I don't necessarily either I wasn't aware
Speaker 2: of it or I didn't you know, didn't really register.
Speaker 2: But it still informs my thinking. Right, So even if
Speaker 2: you know about it, it is incredibly difficult to undo those effects.
Speaker 2: So if you're you know, I think if you're a journalist,
Speaker 2: you have to be try to be vigilant. You're gonna
Speaker 2: make mistakes, like you know, I've made mistakes. Just make
Speaker 2: sure that you correct yourself and try to just try
Speaker 2: to hold yourself to a high standard. But if you're
Speaker 2: an academic researcher, you have to do that as well,
Speaker 2: and the incentives aren't there, And when the incentives aren't there,
Speaker 2: I think the.
Speaker 3: Behavior doesn't really change. Yeah, people very efficient, even if
Speaker 3: even if a lot of people are truth seeking, and
Speaker 3: academia has that capacity more than some. Right, we know
Speaker 3: from studying games that like, if there's a way to
Speaker 3: exploit something and it's a profitable exploit, then some unscrupulous
Speaker 3: person is going to take advantage of it.
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely, absolutely, and if the incentives are so out
Speaker 2: of whack as they are in academia, it doesn't take
Speaker 2: like a really unscrupulous person. There are degrees of this, right.
Speaker 2: There are people who aren't going to fabricate data sets,
Speaker 2: but who will potentially get rid of some outlier results
Speaker 2: or like swap data points around just a tiny bit, right,
Speaker 2: like little things, and they'll be like, oh, well, it's
Speaker 2: not as bad as fabricating a data I'm not that bad.
Speaker 2: I didn't really do anything wrong, and I know my
Speaker 2: results are correct, right, I believe in me, and I
Speaker 2: know that this thesis is accurate, so I'm just doing
Speaker 2: something good. It's really easy to start justifying bad behavior
Speaker 2: when you're incentive to do that, and every single institution
Speaker 2: right now incentivizes that. And this is true you know
Speaker 2: outside of academia as well. Whenever you're trying to figure
Speaker 2: out like what are how are people going to behave?
Speaker 2: Look at the incentive structures, right, look at what type
Speaker 2: of behavior is incentivized.
Speaker 3: Since I am sort of a journalist, I mean like
Speaker 3: having more skepticism about things you read in an academic paper,
Speaker 3: just you need the level has to be like two
Speaker 3: to three x higher than it is right now.
Speaker 2: I totally agree with that, and yeah, that's it's a
Speaker 2: sobering conclusion. And as someone who does you know, who
Speaker 2: does have a PhD in psychology and who believes in
Speaker 2: the discipline, who thinks that it has a ton to
Speaker 2: add like, it breaks my heart because I want, you know,
Speaker 2: I want good data, I want good studies. I think
Speaker 2: there's so much that we can learn about the human mind.
Speaker 2: I just want people to do good work. So please,
Speaker 2: please do good work. Let us know what you think
Speaker 2: of this. Reach out to us at Risky Business at
Speaker 2: pushkin dot FM. Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannikova.
Speaker 3: And byby Nate Silver.
Speaker 2: The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our associate producer
Speaker 2: is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
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