Several years ago, MIT Professor of Marketing Drazen Prelec proposed a "mathematical truth serum" which he claimed could help government agencies predict future terrorist events. MIT and a local defense contractor used his work to win a $12 million grant from the intelligence community. The only justification provided for using the mathematical truth serum (a trivial application of KL-divergence) was that it would "promote honesty" among intelligence analysts who may hold divergent opinions.
Unfortunately, honesty on the part of MIT and its defense contracting partner was in short supply during the bid and proposal process. Federal prosecutors were tipped off shortly after the program was funded, prompting the government to swiftly cancel the contract.
I think this is a fairly inaccurate mischaracterization of Prelec's work and BTS. If you search "bayesian truth serum" on Google scholar, you'll find that there are hundreds of papers from credible researchers based or inspired by Prelec's work. Just because the math is simple does not mean Prelec shouldn't be credited with having introduced it to economics and mechanism design. Also the core BTS papers were published in Science and AAAI, so they are pretty mainstream.
I hadn't heard of the deal/fraud you're describing and am curious to learn more, but you should include some citations before trashing influential, interesting work.
Just because the math is simple does not mean Prelec shouldn't be credited with having introduced it to economics and mechanism design.
No one is saying that simple mathematics cannot have profound applications to the real world. One need look no further than Claude Shannon's fundamental work in information theory for an universally acknowledged example of this phenomenon.
Also the core BTS papers were published in Science and AAAI, so they are pretty mainstream.
That really doesn't prove anything either. Academia is full of brown-nosing "I'll cite your paper if you cite mine" types. After all, Prelec claims that one of his motivations for introducing a "truth serum" is that consensus opinion can't be trusted, because sometimes the experts have a reason to lie. Has he ever run his own research through the serum to see what comes out? And more importantly, would anyone else really care?
I hadn't heard of the deal/fraud you're describing and am curious to learn more ...
Don't really have that much more to add except that from what I understand, Prelec knowingly lent his name (and by extension, MIT's name) to a grant proposal that to a grant proposal that deliberately misled taxpayers.
The interesting question of course is why would Prelec do something this foolish after securing tenure at the MIT Sloan School of Management?
It is true that there is a lot of pressure on academics to raise money to help support their bloated university administrations, even after receiving tenure. Perhaps this was part of the reason why he allowed himself to become a willing tool for his partners in the defense contracting industry.
It is also possible, however, that Prelec was eager to move beyond the world of art critics and sexual promiscuity surveys into something with more prestige by associating his name, for example, with this country's national intelligence counter-terrorism program ... perhaps motivated in part by professional narcissism and/or delusions of grandeur.
Paper from Science, worth reading ...
Thanks for sharing the link, but including a list of the most significant applications of Prelec's theory over the past 15 years would be even better!
You should check out his more recent work. Your reply is pretty ironic given that his focus has been studying the prevalence of "questionable research practices" and how to detect and avoid them.
The first paper you mention (on measuring the prevalence of questionable research practices with incentives for truth telling) was especially timely since 2012 was one year after Drazen's program with the defense contracting partner was reported to federal prosecutors for misconduct.
By the way, not at all surprised that the paper found such a high rate of dishonesty in psychological research. After all, Drazen earned his PhD in the same department at Harvard University where now-disgraced evolutionary biologist Marc Hauser was forced to resign after admitting to fabricating data, manipulating experimental results, and publishing falsified findings.
The defense contractor considered hiring Hauser as a consultant on a different problem not long before it was reported in the news that his office had been raided by authorities:
The defense contractor unfortunately didn't act fast enough, because based on an investigation into that program, Hauser would have probably fit right in! Ironic too that Hauser was also the author of a popular best-seller entitled Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong :)
At the time of the raid, Hauser was already well known to students on the Harvard campus on account of his support for this salacious Harvard first:
That's why I included a reference to his job title here. When this country's intelligence agencies are looking to "professors of marketing" for new ideas to reduce terrorism, this is exactly what they should expect to land in their taxpayer-installed stainless steel toilets.
Apparently no one on the government side ever received the memo about the "replication crisis" that afflicts so much of what is passed off today as "research" in the field of psychology.
In which case, the gullible suckers on the government side provided the perfect audience for this snake-oil selling salesman. The fact that MIT and the defense contractor were only guilty of "marketeer-ing" here (rather than racketeering ... think Jeffrey Epstein, the underage girls that were trafficked to MIT professors, and the thank-you notes from the MIT administration) is probably why this "bad act" on the part of MIT and the defense contractor received far less media attention.
Unfortunately, honesty on the part of MIT and its defense contracting partner was in short supply during the bid and proposal process. Federal prosecutors were tipped off shortly after the program was funded, prompting the government to swiftly cancel the contract.