Top all-time · #766
Data Colada
Personal blog · datacolada.orgsciencedata
Data Colada is a personal blog at datacolada.org about science and data. Since 2013, 86 different Hacker News readers have linked it 121 times, most often “Evidence of fraud in an influential field experiment about dishonesty”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 8 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Data Colada for its forensic debunkings of research fraud, especially the Gino and Ariely cases, and for its statistics explainers on effect sizes and sample sizes.
- Recommended for · 8 comments
- Called 'simple but brilliant', 'really fun read' and a 'mic drop'; 'stone cold proof'; better source than Gelman.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Thinking about evidence and vice versa
Most-linked posts?
- Evidence of fraud in an influential field experiment about dishonesty14 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2021-08-17
- Data Falsificada (Part 1): “Clusterfake” – Data Colada10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2023-06-17
- /5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-07-11
- Data Litigada: crowdfunding scientific whistleblowers' legal defence4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-09-01
- Data Falsificada (Part 2): “My Class Year Is Harvard”4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-06-20
- Artificial Deadlines (Part 2): Retrograding Ariely and Wertenbroch (2002)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-09-02
- Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Field Experiment About Dishonesty4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-09-06
- MRAN is Dead, long live GRAN3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-04-28
- /1093 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-06-21
- Greg vs. Jamal: Why Didn't Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) Replicate?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-22
What Hacker News says?
this is so precise. I guess we’ll need a global version of https://datacolada.org/ quite soon to not get hit by a bus in every scientific field
Comment linking /
on “Introducing deep research”Submitted Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination as a story · 365 points
HN discussionThis analysis is simple but brilliant. Some rows appeared out of order. They changed them back to what they should be according to their position, then checked the effects on the distributions: https://datacolada.org/111
Comment linking /111
on “Data sleuths who spotted research misconduct cleared of defamation”Submitted Evidence of fraud in an influential field experiment about dishonesty as a story · 161 points
HN discussion> To believe that the Original data are fake and the Posted data are real, you’d have to believe that the sensible data are fake and the backwards data are real. That is a difficult thing to believe. > We were right about how the data were altered, Gino’s prevailing explanation for the alterations does not make sense, and yet we are the defendants in this case. What's the academic term for "mic drop"? https://dataco…
Comment linking /118
on “Data sleuths who spotted research misconduct cleared of defamation”Submitted Groundhog: Addressing the Threat That R Poses to Reproducible Research as a story · 161 points
HN discussionthis image https://datacolada.org/wp-content/uploads/scatter_like_vs_in... itself visually shows fake data. Too perfectly clustered.
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/scatter_like_vs_interesting_partial_original-1024x910.png
on “Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination”Submitted P-hacked hypotheses are deceivingly robust (2016) as a story · 41 points
HN discussionIt should - one of the papers that Data Colada reported on about Gino was co-authored with Dan Ariely: https://datacolada.org/98
Comment linking /98
on “Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination”Submitted Three Ideas for Civil Criticism as a story · 27 points
HN discussionAgain, academia/research is not my profession. But, some cool efforts in this area include osf.io, which is trying to be the Arxiv or Github of preregistration for scientific studies. The best preregistration plans will typically include a declared sample or population to observe ( http://datacolada.org/64 ), or at least clear cut criteria for which participants or observations you will exclude. I think for the type…
Comment linking /64
on “p-Hacking and False Discovery in A/B Testing”Submitted (Francesca Gino Lawsuit) Our (First?) Day in Court as a story · 17 points
HN discussionI'll hold my breath until I see this result replicated a few times using different methods. This reminds me a lot of https://datacolada.org/98 and if I think about it, the data would be trivial to fake.
Comment linking /98
on “The later we meet someone in a sequence, the more negatively we describe them”Submitted Do Elevated Viewpoints Increase Risk Taking? as a story · 13 points
HN discussionRelated: http://datacolada.org/18 > we were interested in the question of how many participants a typical between-subjects psychology study needs to have an 80% chance to detect a true effect. > Turns out you need 47 participants per cell to detect that people who like eggs eat egg salad more often than those who dislike eggs.
Comment linking /18
on “The claimed effect size is about a zillion times higher than is plausible”Submitted Groundhog 2.0: Further addressing the threat R poses to reproducible research as a story · 10 points
HN discussionFor excellent ongoing coverage of Francesca Gino and other misconduct cases in academia, esp. behavioral science (such as Dan Ariely), see Pete Judo. Also covers replication failures, data hacking, and much more. [YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeteJudo1 , https://www.petejudo.com/ ] Also: DataColada blog [ https://datacolada.org/ ], who made public the misconduct reported by Gino's graduate student.
Comment linking /
on “Harvard concluded that a dishonesty expert committed misconduct”Submitted The Impersonator: The Fake Data Were Coming from Inside the Lab as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThe first blog post of the Data Coladia fraud exposure series: https://datacolada.org/109 Francesca Gino's response: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/francescagino_i-want-to-be-ve...
Comment linking /109
on “The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened”Submitted Artificial Deadlines (Part 2): Retrograding Ariely and Wertenbroch (2002) as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> E.g. how does this argument account for the data we have that someone with black sounding name will get less opportunity than someone with a white sounding name and an identical resume? You're referring to a decades-old study that failed to replicate: https://datacolada.org/51 (This is extremely common in social sciences.)
Comment linking /51
on “IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge”Submitted Maybe people actually enjoy being alone with their thoughts as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThere is a bigger accusation of fraud, not only failure to replicate Edit: Also [0] was on HN 5 days ago (discussion here: [1]). This is another blogpost that discusses [0] [0] https://datacolada.org/98 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28210642
Comment linking /98
on “Noted study in psychology fails to replicate, crumbles with evidence of fraud”Submitted Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Field Experiment About Dishonesty (2021) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMaybe your friend could reach out to people like Elisabeth Bik, who blogs here: https://scienceintegritydigest.com/ Alternatively, maybe the people behind the Data Colada blog can help: https://datacolada.org/
Comment linking /
on “A Post Mortem on the Gino Case”Submitted The Fake Data Were Coming from Inside the Lab as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe New Yorker article from 2023 about this saga is worth a read: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/09/they-studied-d... Technical details of the fraud can be found in four famous-ish blog posts of the Data Colada group, also from 2023, beginning with: https://datacolada.org/109
Comment linking /109
on “A Post Mortem on the Gino Case”Submitted Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Field Experiment About Dishonesty as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe trail of the data goes cold at Ariely. He is refusing to tell who supposedly gave him the data, and can't keep his story straight. He is also marked as the creator of the Excel file in the metadata [0]. If he received the data in Excel format, he wouldn't be the creator. If he received it in some other format. It's obvious that Ariely is dirty, and I'd bet we'll hear of other similar cases soon enough from other…
Comment linking /98
on “A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data”Submitted Data Falsificada (Part 1): “Clusterfake” – Data Colada as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
