Maybe, they should start with their fellow social scientists and change their behavior towards publishing garbage (ie non-reproducible, p-hacked) papers.
In truth, there is likely to be a massive selection effect, just like with charter schools. Basically, the people who want to change will enroll in the study. We basically know that a subset of people have enough motivation to make themselves better and that is whom the studies will select.
Finally, this improving human "frailty" has a horrible track record in terms of perpetrating horrible atrocities - from the Inquisition to the Soviet gulags. Often, the most evil people in their own eyes have only the purest motives for the good of humanity.
Social sciences may produce a lot of "garbage", but they do have at some point failed to avoid learning the most banal ideas about statistical thinking, which do include selection bias.
We know more than enough about good habits of health, education and finance. This project is completely astray of the actual problem. Humans are just so very weak for some reason. Ex.: I know it's healthier for me to go to sleep, yet I'm writing this comment instead.
That's exactly what this project is attempting to tackle. As addressed in the podcast, we can do a pretty good job teaching knowledge of what good behavior is. This project is attempting to get beyond knowledge to action.
The project lead asks Kahneman for candid advice at around 36 minutes. So, Kahneman told the audience the truth about competing for the attention of business decision makers-- that they'll have to over-promise the benefits of a behavior lab partnership-- and David Laibson immediately calls him out on it.
Maybe Kahneman should have replied with, "look, I don't know how else to tell you this-- you're not really going to make a huge difference with this work so if you want to get anywhere you'll have to exaggerate the benefits"
Lots of negative comments here, which is understandable given the problem. There's a company that has demonstrated success in one of these areas and is working on another. The trick is using behavioural economics to get customers to change their behaviour. If they won't work hard for health, make them work for karma, which they can use for real-world benefits. They get widgets, they get healthier as a side-effect, the insurance company benefits.
"...who believed that his field should acknowledge that people rarely behave as rationally as economic models predict."
So, umm, maybe your models are bad?
If you base your economic model on the silly idea that all (or at least most) economic actors are inherently rational and act in their own self interest then perhaps the model will result in a different goal than planning every tiny detail of people's life like some Soviet Commissar.
I agree. Economists have always been able to get away with saying their models are better than data. Imagine biologists coming up with a theory of A cellular process but makes silly predictions. The biologist doesn't stand firm with their model and say "ah the cell isn't being optimal here, they are so stupid". Any real scientist would go back and rethink about their model.
Just like physicists know that an apple dropping from a tree will not perfectly follow Newton's laws, economists know, and have always known, that these models are idealised, and incomplete.
That's why they keep handing out Nobel prizes to people finding better frameworks approximating actual human behaviour. (i. e. Kannemann 2002, and this year's)
The difference is physicists don't try to change the behavior of apples unlike the quote that claims economic actors are irrational because they don't fit the models.
In the red corner, a rag tag bunch of scientists trying to get people to make choices in their own self interest.
In the blue corner Google, Facebook, Coke, Mars, every advertising agency, marketing guru, financial advisor, corrupt politician and dependable scientist with questionable funding.
Good grief, can they even spell hubris. "...but Marcus Aurelius and St Augustine didn't have _the free market and technology_". These people are completely ideologically indoctrinated, they might as well be in North Korea.
I felt it was both substantive and thoughtful. It addresses the issue directly that these researchers are tackling a topic that the greatest thinkers since antiquity have addressed and answered to varying degrees, and breezily wave it away by saying that it's different now because of technology. I consider that breathtakingly naive, arrogant, and indoctrinated.
In truth, there is likely to be a massive selection effect, just like with charter schools. Basically, the people who want to change will enroll in the study. We basically know that a subset of people have enough motivation to make themselves better and that is whom the studies will select.
Finally, this improving human "frailty" has a horrible track record in terms of perpetrating horrible atrocities - from the Inquisition to the Soviet gulags. Often, the most evil people in their own eyes have only the purest motives for the good of humanity.