On getting it right by being wrong: A case study of how flawed research may become self-fulfilling at last

Scientists prominently argue that the COVID-19 pandemic stems not least from people’s inability to understand exponential growth. They increasingly cite evidence from a classic psychological experiment published some 45 years prior to the first case of COVID-19. Despite—or precisely because of—becoming such a canonical study (more often cited than read), its critical design flaws went completely unnoticed. They are discussed here as a cautionary tale against uncritically enshrining unsound research in the “lore” of a field of research. In hindsight, this is a unique case study of researchers falling prey to just the cognitive bias they set out to study—undermining an experiment’s methodology while, ironically, still supporting its conclusion.