They studied dishonesty – Was their work a lie?
&gt; <i>When she expressed her doubts, the adviser snapped at her, “Don’t ever say that!”</i><p>I don&#x27;t know whether the advisor was referring to collegial decorum in how good faith research is discussed, <i>or</i> more like whisper networks about bad faith that are impolitic or scared to speak aloud.<p>But I did actually once get a snap response like that.  I was chatting with another grad student, who&#x27;d mentioned a student who&#x27;d just arrive, who&#x27;d be working for Prof. X.  I hadn&#x27;t worked with Prof. X, but I happened to see them treat multiple students poorly over time, belittling the student, disciplining them in front of groups of others, giving them non-research chores like a personal assistant rather than a research assistant, not letting them pursue their research, etc., so I blurted out, concerned, &quot;Oh no!&quot;, and that X was a bad advisor.<p>This other grad student surprised me by snapping back at me, sternly, &quot;You shouldn&#x27;t say that!&quot;, and something about reputations.  That other grad student&#x27;s parent was a prominent academic, so I figured they were admonishing me in some decorum that they were brought up in, and which they knew better than me.<p>It might&#x27;ve been weeks later, that same grad student came back to me, apologetically, and spoke with surprise, of how miserable the new student was, once they realized the career disaster that they&#x27;d stumbled into.<p>Epilogue: A long time later, that grad student, who&#x27;d admonished me and then apologized, contacted me about a different professor, because they knew a prospective new student of that professor, they had some suspicions, and they thought that I might know something.  The truth was much worse than they suspected, and the student fled after hearing only a little, in vague terms.<p>BTW, there&#x27;s apparently a lot of all kinds of poor behavior, but the people doing it are almost never cliched evil, IME.  For example, a couple times I saw Prof. X do something kind, and I think probably they had something like a very stern taskmaster upbringing that caused their other side.  There was also another one, who was kind to me, but I later learned that they were decidedly unkind to some others, and were actually nudged out.  And one of the most body-count professors I saw was actually genuinely warm and charismatic and humble in some ways, and I don&#x27;t think they realized that they seemed to have emotional&#x2F;cognitive problems that they let kill other people&#x27;s careers in an awful way.  Off-the-record gossip with grad students and (later) professors will tell you of all sorts of other misbehavior, especially by people who aren&#x27;t all bad, but very driven and pressured.  (Raging narcissist&#x2F;psycho, however, seems relatively rare, or their trail of bodies doesn&#x27;t survive long enough to complain about it.  Maybe the worse people tend to go for careers with more money and power?)  And, back to this article, I once met with Ariely, and he came across as empathetic, down-to-earth, and of goodwill, so -- iff it turns out that he&#x27;s found to have done something academically dishonest -- again, that would seem like a bit of human frailty, in a more wholesome larger picture.<p>(Note: I&#x27;ve been a grad student a few places, and have talked with people at countless other places, so am not calling out a particular school or person.  A lot of people have seemed paranoid about saying anything at all, myself included, so please don&#x27;t speculate, or I think that would have even more of a chilling effect than already exists.)