SCIENCE FICTION

Five years after a widely revered behavioural study was debunked, Helen Coffey asks the experts whether trust in the sexiest branch of science has been irrevocably eroded

- Helen Coffey

The Noughties and early 2010s were a good time to be a behavioural scientist. At least, they were if you happened to be doing the right kind of behavioural science – the sexy kind. Pick an eye-catching, media-friendly topic, garner a surprising result in your research, and the world was your oyster. A well-trodden path that included university tenure, a Ted talk watched by millions, a New York Times bestseller and a lucrative gig on the public speaking circuit lay ahead. Career and cash-wise, you’d be set for life.

Theories from this compelling and accessible branch of science made their way firmly into the mainstream via pop science books. People well outside the sphere of academia could be found quoting the likes of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge (exploring why we make bad decisions based on biases); Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice (positing that too many options lead to bad decision making); and Stephen J Dubner and Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics (an immensely readable melding of pop culture and economics).

A whole strata of academics became akin to rock stars thanks to their ability to explain why humans behaved the way they did. Research was applied by government policymakers and businesses alike; Thaler even won the Nobel Prize in 2017 for his work providing psychological insights into how people make economic decisions.

There was just one problem. Though much of the science in question was robust (you don’t tend to win Nobel Prizes based on woolly research), not every success story that landed in the spotlight was quite as rigorously backed up. It was, experts explain now, something of a Wild West period.