Bad Science Begets Ridiculous Results
Bad Science Begets Ridiculous Results: A professor at Middle Tennessee State University thought his MBA students were cheaters. So, to deal with the problem, he had them sign a pledge...wherein they agreed that their immortal souls would go to hell if they'd ever cheated in his class. He claims he got the idea after reading about an academic study that showed students who read the 10 Commandments before an exam were less likely to cheat.
UPDATE Bad Writing Begets Ironic Results: I need to apologize to Dan Ariely for the terrible headline above. I meant this to be about bad science writing, which I'd assume would have something to do with the professor misinterpreting this so terribly. But you know how you sometimes type half an email, come back later and finish it and then, after sending, realize you did a terrible job of saying anything even close to what you meant? Yeah. The result, unfortunately, was a sentence that was extremely unfair to Dr. Ariely and put me squarely in that bad writing camp. My apologies.
Share this post
Read more News Science
show full bio
Maggie Koerth-Baker
I do the Twitter, the Google+, and (to a much lesser extent) the Facebook.
Books
• Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us
Upcoming Appearances
• April 2 at Skeptics in the Pub, Boston, Mass.— 7:00 pm at Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square. Please RSVP.
•April 4 at MIT: "Shedding Light, Online", a discussion about how blogging and a dynamic audience helped shape my book, Before the Lights Go Out—4:00 pm in Maseeh Hall. Please RSVP.
• April 6 at Carnegie Mellon University: More details to come
• April 9-13 at University of Colorado, Boulder: 64th Annual Conference on World Affairs
• April 10 at Colorado State University, Fort Collins: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—3:30 pm in the Rocky Mountain Innosphere.
• April 19 at The Bakken Museum in Minneapolis: Book Launch Party! Come enjoy snacks, a presentation by me, and some fun with the Bakken's Leyden jar.
• April 21 at Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul: Earth Day Tweetup event with Will Steger and Sean Otto—events run 10:00 am to 2:00 pm.
• May 2 at University of California, Berkeley: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—6:00 pm, location TBA.
• May 3 at the American Institute of Architects, San Francisco Chapter—Lunchtime lecture, time and location TBA.
• May 3 at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito, Cali.—7:00 pm.
• May 30 in New York City—Panel on local and DIY energy with the New America Foundation
• June 22-25 in Aspen, Colorado: Aspen Environment Forum
• July 5-8 at CONvergence in Minneapolis, Minn.—exact times and dates TBA
Where not otherwise specified, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States and other countries.