经济与社会科学2022pnas.org
调整发表偏倚后没有证据支持助推干预
No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias
进阶 · 约 45 分钟读完前置知识：元分析基础、发表偏差、行为经济学
导读
这篇 PNAS 论文对 nudge（助推）干预的实验文献做元分析，并在校正发表偏差后重新检验其整体效应。作者的核心结论是：调整发表偏差后，没有可靠证据表明 nudge 平均有效；不同干预类型（如信息提醒与改变选择结构）的证据强度并不相同。
HN 关注点：若这一元分析成立，曾深刻影响公共政策（如 401k 默认选项）的行为经济学招牌研究是否建立在不可靠证据上，以及这类“揭穿”本身是否也可能被操纵。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：支持 1 质疑 2 补充 1
补充前社会科学家指出 nudge 曾直接影响 401k 默认选项等政策；若该元分析成立，整个行为经济学招牌研究可能不可信。
作为一名有怨气的前社会科学家，这对我冲击很大。我想给 HN 社区提供背景：每个主要社会科学（心理学、社会学、经济学、人类学）都有约 300 个“研究”系，据他们说约一半使命是教学、一半是研究，那是数百亿美元的投入。Nudge 发现是少数不仅进入公众知识、还直接影响公共政策的成果之一。以我最熟悉的为例：固定缴费退休计划（如 401k）的默认选项。政府法规原本假定最大化缴费符合公共利益；基于 nudge 研究，经过大量辩论和努力，法规被更新为预先勾选最高缴费选项，希望更多人选择它而不是缴零。nudge 因此成了公共政策入门课程的经典案例。这项元分析的发现取决于作者测量发表偏差的方法；因为我接受它，我就必须相信这整个研究体系——大概是行为经济学的招牌工作——基本上毫无价值！
a_simm查看英文原文
Wow. As a former social scientist with an axe to grind this hits hard. I like to provide that HN community with some context as to what this means. There are some 300 “research” departments in each of the major social sciences: psychology, sociology, economics and anthropology. If you believe what they say, about half of their mission is teaching and the other half is research. That’s a lot, tens of billions of dollars. The nudge findings were among the few to not only reach the level of public knowledge but, more importantly, directly influence on public policy. To use the one I most familiar with: the so called default for defined contribution retirement plans, eg 401k. These government regs assumed, for good reason, that maximizing contributions was in the public interest. Based on the nudge findings, after much debate and effort, they were updated to dictate that the max options forms was pre selected in the brief it would cause more individuals would opt for that as opposed to contributing zero. So far so good, right? In fact nudge has become a canonical example in introductory public policy courses as to how their research can in some sense make things better. This meta-analytic finding turns on the authors’ method for measuring publication bias. Because I accept that, I must believe that this entire body of research, probably the signal behavioral economics work, is essentially worthless! Thus, all that effort has not only been wasted but the credibility of social science in general is damaged. Adding this to the well/known gamesmanship in peer review, debate over tenure and etc. means it’s past time to reform a large chunk of academia.
质疑质疑把不同 nudge 混为一谈求平均，类比医学干预；并强调 nudge 成本低、可试错。
读完后，我不明白怎么能把所有“nudging”一棍子打死并宣布“没有证据”。Nudging 显然涵盖一系列不同实际行动，有些 nudge 有效，有些无效，你不能把所有都平均。可能我完全误解，但这听起来类似说“没有医学证据”，因为你把有效和无效的医学干预论文平均了。我以为 nudge 的要点是实施成本低，可以轻松尝试很多；大多数不会有效，有些会。
rjmunro查看英文原文
Reading this, I don't get how you can take all "nudging" and declare "No evidence". Surely "nudging" encompasses a whole range of different actual actions. Some nudges work, some don't. You can't just average across all of them. I'm probably totally misunderstanding, but it sounds similar to saying "there is no evidence for medicine" because you've averaged all the papers describing medical interventions that work and those that don't. I thought the point of "nudges" is that they are so cheap to implement you can easily afford to try many. Most won't work, some will.
质疑提醒“揭穿”本身也可能被操纵成不显著，对发现和 debunking 都应同等怀疑。
我同意其他评论者：nudge 不太可能从无影响。我们也应警惕高调的“揭穿”，如今因复制危机和普遍阴郁情绪而越来越流行。把结果 p-hack 成显著容易，但也可以同样容易地把结果 hack 成不显著。如今发现和揭穿都需要怀疑眼光。
civilized查看英文原文
I agree with other commenters that it's unlikely nudges never have an impact. We should also be wary of high-profile debunkings, now that they're increasingly in fashion due to the replication crisis and the general dour mood. It's easy to p-hack a result into significance, but you can just as easily hack results into insignificance. These days, both findings and debunkings need a skeptical eye.
支持专业解读：默认选项属结构干预；校正后结构干预证据不确定（置信区间含 0），且除金融外存在异质性，说明部分 nudge 可能有效。
链接的研究（以及它建立其上的 Mertens 研究）将默认选项归类为“结构性”干预。在这项元分析中，剥离发表偏差估计后，结构性干预剩下的证据最“稳健”（95% CI 为 0.00–0.43），但论文正文说“而‘结构’干预的证据未定”。其他结构性干预包括让选择期望结果更容易、让偏离期望结果更难、改变选项范围以便评估，或补偿选择结构中的偏差和损失厌恶，范围很广。论文还说，除“金融”外，所有干预类别和领域都显示异质性，这意味着即使有证据反对平均效应，某些 nudge 也可能有效。人们通常理解利害，会在不同情境投入不同关注和努力，从而改变具体干预的效果。我认为论文论证合理：nudge 研究存在显著发表偏差；在选择时提供额外信息、或为自我控制提供提醒/肯定的效应基本不存在；改变选择结构的效应不确定，很可能某些结构性修改有效。
icegreentea2查看英文原文
The linked study (and the Merten's study it's built ontop of) classifies defaults as "structural" interventions. In the linked meta-analysis, after stripping out estimates of publication basis, structural interventions have the most "robust" evidence left (95% CI of 0.00-0.43), and as their paper text says "whereas the evidence is undecided for “structure” interventions". Other structural interventions include, making it easier to select the desired outcome (or make it harder to switch away from desired out come), changing the range of options to facilitate evaluation, or trying to compensate for biases and loss aversion in choice structure. As you can see, this is a broad range of interventions. A little bit further they say "However, all intervention categories and domains apart from “finance” show evidence for heterogeneity, which implies that some nudges might be effective, even when there is evidence against the mean effect", which makes sense. People understand stakes generally, and will likely apply different care/effort in different context, modifying the context specific effect of any given intervention. I think the paper makes a reasonable argument: 1. There is significant publication bias in nudging studies 2. The effect of providing additional information at time of selection, or providing reminders/affirmations for self control is basically non-existent 3. The effect of modifying choice structure is indecisive. Likely we'll find that some structural modifications have strong effects in some context, but others have little or no effect is other context.
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