Economist blasts academic fraud culture: defending obvious cheats like Ariely and Gino hurts honest researchers

Afinetheorem · x · 2026-09-23

Economist Afinetheorem criticizes academic misconduct in a thread: Ariely, Gino, Arday, Orélien and others cheated their way to career success while honest researchers struggle; reflexively defending obvious fraud makes it impossible to clean up academia.

He adds that friends from unconnected backgrounds trying to enter academia or publish books are effectively being told by society to cheat — a bad norm that would be easy to fix if people actually acted.

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