Many Surveys, About One In Five, May Contain Fraudulent Data (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: How often do people conducting surveys simply fabricate some or all of the data? Several high-profile cases of fraud over the past few years have shone a spotlight on that question, but the full scope of the problem has remained unknown. [Tuesday], at a meeting in Washington, D.C., a pair of well-known researchers presented a statistical test for detecting fabricated data in survey answers. When they applied it to more than 1000 public data sets from international surveys, a worrying picture emerged: About one in five of the surveys failed, indicating a high likelihood of fabricated data.

Comments

One in 5 surveys incompetently fraudulent

[Diss Champ]

It's not that only 1 in 5 surveys may contain fraudulent data, it is that the fraud is only incompetent enough to be caught by this method in 1 in 5 surveys.