The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/01/07/french-bio-lab-research-scandal/

by Tomte • 3 years ago

230 128 3 years ago

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

see also "cooling the mark out"

senkora• 3 years ago

I was not familiar with this term and found this blog post that explains it: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2002/10/31/cooling-the...

neilv2• 3 years ago

What really annoys me in these situations is how the institutions show loyalty to the people who did research misconduct.

"Loyalty" means different things to different people, and not necessarily "doing what that party wants".

So, if you don't call this "loyalty", it might be easier to imagine more of the possible/likely reasons for doing something that coincides with what that party wants, in an instance.

SiempreViernes• 3 years ago

I'm wondering if the loyalty really is with the cheater, or if they are instead trying to protect weaker parties like the students and post-docs that can be largely or event entirely innocent. The latter option is possible and hard to discern from the outside.

neilv2• 3 years ago

Yes, and some academics have altruistic hearts of gold. (I used to assume they were all like that, and that was half the reason I wanted to be a professor, thinking of the university as a testbed or incubator for a better world.)

As an exercise to flesh out the space of possible reasons for behavior that seems misaligned with academic ideals, you can also imagine different characteristics and profiles of some hypothetical academics: selfish self-interest and a touch of ethical flexibility (that might've given them an edge to get to the position of influence), arrogance (from the position or other reasons), personal relationships (these are colleagues, often friends, sometimes more), group solidarity, normal human biases, funding politics, being beholden to organizations that are cynical or misaligned with what a good academic would do.

DonsDiscountGas2• 3 years ago

"Who should I believe, some random blogger or this person I've known for years?"

Oftentimes the answer is "random blogger" but it's really not that surprising that people trust their friends more than strangers.

eviks2• 3 years ago

And if it's not a random blogger, but a team of professionals?

rgrieselhuber• 3 years ago

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00332747.1952.11...

mmazing• 3 years ago

Seems like this relates to many other areas of human interaction, politics comes to mind for one ...

KittenInABox• 3 years ago

Has anyone explored being the victim of a con and being a victim of other forms of abuse? For example, people who were beaten as children by their guardians also get angry when informed their guardians were abusive for doing so. People who get really upset when told their significant other is being controlling, manipulative, neglectful, etc.

lupusreal5• 3 years ago

People who's significant other isn't abusive would also get mad at you insisting they were (and rightfully so, if your accusation is wrong then what you're doing is gaslighting), so the other person getting mad doesn't mean that you are right.

scrubs4• 3 years ago

Throughout the 1960s to the mid-1980s it used to fashionable because it was so helpful to reconstitute manufacturing corporate culture around a three axis orientation of quality through SPC, of customers, and profit. This was done to avoid the distortions that ruin companies in the medium and long term including bankruptcy, layoffs, junk products, and all the related human BS that comes with it: corporate politics, in-fighting, lying, and so on. Think Ishikawa's tunnel analogy in his "What Is Total Quality Control?: The Japanese Way." Some organizations included additional emphasis on responsibilities to society.

I miss those days.

I've run into too many individuals in corporate American that:

* manage up/down

* think that if you're not hustling all the time actively managing your rep -- because everybody is doing it -- you're a chump

* A particularly ripe scenario to see this play out in tech sectors is cloud migration in companies that previously had large private data centers. The amount of BS and mid to upper level management cowardice that enables the in-fighting over capex, headcount, and control is truely disheartening.

Here in my backyard --- the US --- I sometimes seriously wonder if "American Management" is euphemism for political players in soap operas.

edmundsauto• 3 years ago

Can you elaborate why you think managing up/down is bad? Maybe we differ in definition, but I take it to mean customize how you communicate (zoom in / zoom out) based on the intended audiences typical scope and responsibilities.

I don’t want to tell my skip super in depth technical details they don’t need to know. It’s my job to process it for them.

scrubs4• 3 years ago

What you write sounds fine. "It’s my job to process it for them" has truth in it too.

However, it takes street smarts, experience, and being burned a time or two to know when it's two guys (associates) talking trying to get it right and when you're being played by a player.

Flailing individual trust precedes the decline in institutional competency. And once that happens the prospect for legit corrective action is largely gone. In-fighting will dominate.

Clues that maybe something is off (not exhaustive) based on some guys I worked with a few years ago:

* The boss talks with team individuals only then brings the team together to report what everybody said, and what everybody agreed to. Actually, no individual knows what anyone else said and didn't have a chance to ask questions.

* You're afraid to bring something up, or notice privately team members complain or share concerns but never say anything to decision makers or in a team setting

* You're encouraged to make changes because of "reputation," team image or other nebulous sounding reasons. Change may indeed need to happen. But those are not reasons

* You're instructed to remain technical to not engage or discuss issues that seem more pertinent to management, organizational values. Being boxed in is a bad sign.

* Being brow beat into doing things out of guilt or entitlement are bad signs.

* Putting internal politics or good light on the boss' project ahead of customer satisfaction even though the work will not satisfy intended customers is a bad sign.

* Abusing through manipulation internal service supplier status is bad. One guy I knew slickly sold his team's capability knowing once tied in they were practically married. The code was implemented such that the customer had no insight or control to it. By running around the floor and vacuuming up as many internal teams as he could, he parlayed his position to "take over the floor, but taking over the data." Guess what? It failed in a spectacular fashion; he never took over control of that system and never gave his "customers" a better solution. He treated his customers as suckers.

* The above point has a corollary: internal service suppliers get implicit management support, and it's implied internal customers have no choice but to work with them. This is NOT how it works on the outside. I choose my roofer and if I am not happy payment may not be given or is disputed or I fire the roofer. The hole in my roof is my motivation to treat the roofer right. My checkbook is why the roofer needs to treat me right. Either can walk away if the other is a jerk. But not in large corporations. That's why, for example, deprecating private data centers for the cloud are horror shows. The internal service suppliers are used to being in charge even entitled no matter how crappy or expensive their service is. And when they find out they might be replaced, they fight it all the way.

See:

https://www.amazon.com/What-Total-Quality-Control-Japanese/d...

https://www.amazon.com/Human-Element-Productivity-Self-Estee...

https://www.amazon.com/FIRO-Three-Dimensional-Theory-Interpe...

and any work from Deming, Crosby, or Drucker which do far better at integrating business, profit, people, and customers.

PoignardAzur• 3 years ago

I think this is what Robert Jackall refers to as "morall mazes", company cultures that are so far removed from practical reality and ethical behavior that it's impossible for a good-faith actor to navigate them.

scrubs4• 3 years ago

Agree! The human element book I referenced above deals with those issues in a very practical way as does Ishikawa's TQM. One thing Schutz points out in a particularly striking way: issues of trust and openness are often the last thing to ever get dealt with in an organization.

Players are a side effect of this. They work from a cynical base that a lot of office stuff is BS and as a professional --- not a naive nube --- they gotta hustle too . And that is what makes them savy; a pro who's seen it all. Instead they further erode climate.

It's the office equivalent to news headlines:

"The dirty secret behind ..."

"What you where never told about ..."

"The real truth about..."

"The official ____ about ____..."

The implication is clear: you are repeatedly lied to; you can't trust what you see or hear.

eschulz2• 3 years ago

This reminds me of the legal marketing field, which is one in which I have some experience. Just look at the billboards along the highways in major US cities and you'll be reminded how horrendously competitive law is in the US (and it's becoming more and more competitive by the year - lawyers are everywhere and covid encouraged a bunch of college students to consider law school).

I believe the vast majority of marketing businesses for lawyers are legit, but if there are scams then the bad actors could be encouraged by the idea that lawyers are the last people in the world who want to be outed as having fallen for a scam. Lawyers must put forth an image of being intelligent, informed, and aggressive; being the victim of a shady business doesn't fit this model.

cowthulhu• 3 years ago

My (very naive) thinking would be that lawyers are the worst demographic to con, since they have the skills and resources to try and make themselves whole again (at the expense of the conman), maybe with a few NDAs throw in for good measure. Is this not the case?

eschulz2• 3 years ago

My take is that lawyers will have to compare the damages they suffered to the potential harm their reputation will sustain if they become well known for being victims. Did they pay $1,000 for a subpar product? If so, they might not act beyond issuing some threats. However, if they lost $100,000 to a thief then they probably will act.

I have spoken with many lawyers who have threatened marketers with lawsuits, and in many cases the threat will help the lawyer. I have had a few lawyers tell me they WILL NOT file a lawsuit (why sue for $500 considering the time and court fees), but that it only costs about 60 cents to send a verbose letter using their firm's letterhead. They understand the old warning "if you sue for a cow, you may end up losing a cow".

Just as with a successful con against esteemed scientists, any skilled conman will know his target well and understand how he can fly just below the radar and probably avoid getting called out and destroyed.

kstrauser• 3 years ago

My naive thinking would be that a given lawyer would be either impossible to con, or ripe for the taking because they believe they’re impossible to con. I’d also guess that if you could manage to con a lawyer, they’d rather fall on a sword than admit they were swindled.

renewiltord• 3 years ago

In the foreword for Animal Farm (in the del Rey edition, I think), Orwell writes that he was asked by tankie friends to keep quiet about the USSR's crimes because they were the best chance for Communism.

Bullshit from scientists is normal. They're just people after all. But people who join the Culture War on one side must necessarily choose Science as a side despite it being just a technique for knowledge, not a team. And then they're forced to defend it in some way.

I've posted years ago about how biotech science is sometimes faked https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25926188

I wonder whether this reaction to a con is necessarily Western, though. I've noticed it in Americans as well. They'll get conned by corrupt politicians and rather than admit the con, they'll defend them and pretend they weren't conned.

In the East, the attitude is different. It's more like "damn, well what can you do". Both failure-oriented but different. I wonder if it comes from different structures of pride.

scrubs4• 3 years ago

Stupidity in large human organizations does not favor or exclude the east or west. It's endemic to humans. Wasn't that the essential criticism of "The Lord of the Flies" and, in terms of putative solutions, Volaire's satire in "Candide"?

Leaving the conversation at I saw this or that ... is too incomplete. The question is what are we going to do about it. Management at scientific institutions should have more backbone not less on BS data reporting.

deanCommie• 3 years ago

he was asked by tankie friends to keep quiet about the USSR's crimes because they were the best chance for Communism.

I have a lot of empathy for the tankies of that era. It was clear that people like Stalin were truly evil, but it was also clear from centuries of evidence that capitalism was exploitative and needed upheaval.

On PAPER, Communism sounds great. I do think people genuinely believed there were simply growing pains and once through them something what today's generation thinks of as the "Star Trek The Next Generation Utopia" could be achievable.

There are still people that think it might have succeeded if given a genuine chance, and not undermined by the rich in the west.

In retrospect we now know they were wrong, and probably Russia was the worst place for communism to succeed. A society like China is probably the one in which it has the best chance, and even there we see that successful communism requires some free market economics and some pretty heinous repression.

iraqmtpizza2• 3 years ago

Everything sounds great until you ask, what if someone wants to opt out?

qwytw• 3 years ago

A society like China

Why? China was even more poor and rural that pre-revolutionary Russia.

I'm pretty sure Marx himself was thinking about France, Britain, Germany etc. you couldn't just jump from a pre-capitalist system to a communist one.

hnbad5• 3 years ago

The thing many people overlook is that the USSR was less interested in achieving communism than in co-opting any other attempts at achieving communism. This, in part, led to the Sino-Soviet split and the split with Yugoslavia. But even before that the USSR was literally founded on the Bolsheviks eliminating all other communist movements in its sphere of influence: starting with the actual soviets (bottom-up worker councils and worker cooperatives dissolved in favor of the central Bolshevik bureaucracy), the massacre of the anarchist movement in Ukraine under Makhno (which prior to that point had fought alongside the Bolsheviks against the White Army) and of course the betrayal of Spanish anarchists that led to the fascist dictatorship of Franco - the latter being something Orwell experienced himself and forever soured him on the USSR.

The Bolsheviks' (and their ideological offsprings' in China, Yugoslavia and the various countries whose movements they co-opted) idea of establishing communism was to do so with the iron fist of the vanguard party that would do all the work of preparing for communism until the unwashed masses of the entire world are sufficiently educated and enlightened to spontaneously erupt into global communism and the state would just voluntarily wither away after having served its function.

Anarchists argue that the fundamental mistake of this approach was to assume centralizing all the power previously held by a capitalist (or proto-capitalist/monarchist) state in a vanguard party is the antithesis of communism and creates perverse incentives for the party given all that power while also being told their function is to give up all that power eventually.

To paraphrase anarchist thinker Bakunin: if you're beaten with a stick it doesn't change anything if it is called The People's Stick, there needs to be no stick. If power corrupts (and absolute power... you know the drill) then we can't expect to pass the power previously held by those we despire to another group and expect them not to become equally despicable. Instead anarchists believe in building bottom-up power structures and abolishing hierarchical power structures.

[in China] we see that successful communism requires

To be clear as this is a common misunderstanding: just like the USSR, China has always been careful to identify its politics as ideologically communist but not its system as communism. Communism is a class-less, state-less society so "communist state" in Leninist parlance should always be understood as aspirational rather than descriptive. China hasn't achieved communism, China wants to achieve communism, or so its vanguard party says.

Marx was fairly explicit about what communism is and neither the USSR, nor any of its ideological offspring were that. Arguably prehistoric societies existed in a form of "primitive communism" but except for anarcho-primitivists few people think abandoning all human accomplishments is necessary or helpful in achieving communism.

dragontamer4• 3 years ago

I've put myself into classical con situations out of curiosity.

Even when I purposefully seek to be conned, it's embarrassing to have it happen.

In my case, simple subway con artist performing the classic magic trick where you bet money to determine where the queen is under three cards. As a hobbyist magician I'm able to follow him as the subway scammer performs the drop, switching the queen for another card.

I'm not ready for the smooth talking however that the con artist employees afterwards. It's a humbling experience but one that I'm happy to have lost real $$$ so that I can remember the lesson for the rest of my life.

-----------

Coming to terms with smooth talkers and how they're able to easily manipulate you, even if you are familiar with the tricks (both slight of hand tricks as well as 'Magicians Force' smooth talking / distractions).

It does make me want to practice classical street magic again, as it's so obviously associated with thievery and con-jobs. But street magic is perhaps the 'safe' way of doing it all so that no one gets upset afterwards.

But in any case, just imagine a street magician who makes your money disappear. That's what it feels like. Even at the amateur level, you'll fall prey to the 2nd level or 3rd levels of trickery, cause the street con-man has probably tricked overconfident amateurs before.

------

I've heard stories of people who talk with street vendors selling lotions or other items as well and falling for those sales pitches. In my experience, it's similar to the street magician-thief and uses many similar techniques.

No one likes the fact that our actions, reactions and behaviors are so predictable that literal con-artists can make a living predicting and planning around our reactions to mislead us. (Or in safer circles, a street magician doing the same thing but for wonder/amazement rather than stealing your money)

--------

EDIT: For those not in the know, a drop and/or steal are magician slight of hand tricks that switch cards or other objects in a way that most people can't follow.

Magicians Force is a question that gives the illusion of choice, often a choice that doesn't matter for the trick. But the illusion of choice is sufficient to keep the audience's attention and let the audience think that they're still in control of the situation. Or in other words: smooth talking.

There are many ways to drop, steal or use Magicians Force. But using them all together in one smooth action is how magicians (or con-artists on the street) do their tricks.

wincy• 3 years ago

I was listening to Joe Rogan interview David Blaine and he said there are plenty of card players where it’s literally undetectable the tricks they use, even with cameras everywhere. Makes me have no interest in playing card games with anyone but a few friends.

dragontamer4• 3 years ago

Oh, there's so many card manipulation tricks it's hilarious.

I can false shuffle a deck, I can seed a deck through shuffles. I can false cut. Tricks with my hands to 'do nothing's with a deck even though it looks like I'm shuffling or cutting the deck.

When we get to truly skilled magicians, they can perfect shuffle (IIRC, 8x rifle shuffles in a row with perfect precision returns the deck to it's original state). They can perfect cut (two cuts that return the deck to the original state). And they can therefore look like they're shuffling, when in fact they're just leaving the deck in the same state the whole time (or at least they have a plan to return the deck back to it's original state later on).

There's also hidden cuts and hidden shuffles. To change the deck even though it didn't look like anything happens.

So if I perfect cut a deck, say a silly story to you, then hidden perfect cut the deck back to it's original state, the audience probably doesn't realize their chosen cards remain on the top of the deck. (Even if they spot the second hidden cut, they likely don't realize the importance of it)

----------

I did this once or twice (try) to pass out like 4x Royal Flushes on Poker night to prove a point lol. Seed some royal flushes on the top, false shuffle the deck, etc etc. IIRC only two Royal Flushes survived but the point was made.

It's certainly fun. But it does make me wonder how people are supposed to trust the dealer when so many of these tricks exist and aren't even that hard to do or practice. (Perfect shuffles are really hard. But the other stuff is just pretending to be a klutz and undoing the shuffle by dropping the cards or other such planned clumsiness, and then confidently pretending that the deck was truly shuffled). These sorts of things are more believable before your friends realize you are ridiculously practiced with card tricks.

Still though, street con artists are on another level. I guess when it's your living you get much better at it.

dehrmann• 3 years ago

Watch this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwFIJyWKs1k&t=94s

mbichan• 3 years ago

I always thought the “trick” in three-card monte is that pickpockets are working the crowd while everyone’s attention is on the cards.

dragontamer4• 3 years ago

Hmm, possibly true.

But inside of a subway, there's not so much of a place to run. For either of us (scammer or victim). And being out in the public likely mitigates any violent actions as well (knives or pistols).

fsckboy• 3 years ago

I'm not ready for the smooth talking however that the con artist employees afterwards. It's a humbling experience but one that I'm happy to have lost real $$$ so that I can remember the lesson for the rest of my life.

3 card monte on the street? from what I understand, you learn the real lesson if you find the Q and win the $$$: they'll follow you and beat your ass, you're not allowed to win that game, and you're not walking away with their money.

the point of that "game" is to take money from suckers/tourists. they have no tolerance for people who "know how it works". it's not a game, it's a con. Unless it's a big crowd, most of the people standing there are in on it, that's who follows you. They also play the game for show.

seeAls0• 3 years ago

See also: genius CEOs who react in disbelief their startup didn’t unicorn like the VCs promised!

It’s workers or users who misunderstood what they were trying to do! This is how capitalism works; they business, you give money!

dilyevsky2• 3 years ago

their startup didn’t unicorn like the VCs promised!

I think you got that backwards

caseysoftware• 3 years ago

What really annoys me in these situations is how the institutions show loyalty to the people who did research misconduct. When researcher X works at or publishes with institution Y, and it turns out that X did something wrong, why does Y so often try to bury the problem and attack the messenger? Y should be mad at X; after all, it’s X who has leveraged the reputation of Y for his personal gain. I’d think that the leaders of Y would be really angry at X, even angrier than people from the outside. But it doesn’t happen that way. The immediate victims of the con would rather act as if the con never happened. Instead, they’re mad at the outsiders who showed them that they were being fooled.

See: Harvard, Dec 2023 - Jan 2024

lazide• 3 years ago

See also: 99% of institutions that get security vulnerability reports.

JakeAl• 3 years ago

I go through this every time I have to ask for a refund and tell a business I just want a refund so we can part ways instead of filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau and with the FTC.

MobileVet5• 3 years ago

Shame and pride are such strong motivators.

My wife was taken by a very elaborate and well-crafted scam in November. In retrospect, it all sounds ridiculous... but in the moment, with kids in tow, it was very convincing. It was so traumatizing that when it was over and she finally realized it was a scam, she was relieved! They had convinced her she was going to jail and that was terrifying. Losing the money was less bad than going to jail.

It was also EXTREMELY well scripted with a TON of psychology and clever moments that were well rehearsed. They also had a background track playing with 'police station like' audio and had spoofed the Orange County Sheriff's phone number. One psychological trick that they employed was a very 'stepped' approach to the scam.

If you say it all out loud, it is obvious, but if you go step by step, each one was somewhat plausible. Lastly, by posing as law enforcement, they tugged on a natural tendency to follow orders and avoid being in trouble. My stomach drops when I think I am getting pulled over... being told you have an outstanding warrant was quite a gut punch for her.

Things to remember:

* ALWAYS hang up and call people on a phone number you enter yourself.

* If someone tells you to check the number by looking it up, they are very likely spoofing it. Hang up and call the police.

* The police don't call you if they are trying to serve a warrant, they show up.

* A judge's 'gag order' does not mean you can't talk to a family member or legal counsel.

* NEVER pull money out of an account for someone you don't know without talking to a friend or spouse.

* ANY change in the situation is a red flag - bring the money to the courthouse. - its getting late, we use an after hours processor - you are running out of time, just wire it

dudinax• 3 years ago

From one of my family members: if the bank transaction doesn't go through, and you call the bank and they tell you it's probably a scam, don't overrule them.

hnbad5• 3 years ago

Also if you're in the EU make sure to check the actual SEPA/IBAN code. The first two letters are the country code and if this is supposed to be an organization/institution in your country then those should match most transactions you've done before. Don't be fooled just because the country code letter combination happens to also be the initialism of something else or a state/city/etc involved.

I've had an accountant fall for a company registration scam and while the letterhead was plausible, the bank account was in an entirely different country, which should have given pause.

par• 3 years ago

Is there anywhere we can read up on this scam?

MobileVet5• 3 years ago

I posted details in a reply to myself above

hnbad5• 3 years ago

I think the common thread with all such scams is creating a sense of urgency and high stakes. I'd generalize what you said though: if something involves a legal process or supposed pre-existing correspondence, anything crucial will happen in writing or in person and they'll be able to specifically provide you with the dates and details of anything they claim to have on you.

Personally I haven't had fake police calls yet (well, except for one Eastern European lady in a call center using a fake mobile number while pretending in broken English to be from INTERPOL, whom I immediately hung up on) but I have had calls about contracts I supposedly agreed to over the phone and was going to have to pay for either way but could now immediately agree to a compromise so I wouldn't have to pay the full amount owed but order (this time for real) something else or some contrivance like that. Of course calling back was not an option because this was already about to hit collections and they had recorded my previous (non-existant) call but couldn't play it back to me right now. It was all a bit ridiculous but I still felt a bit unnerved until I called my lawyer and learned that even if everything they said were true the contract as described would be invalid and any claims would have to be sent in writing before anything actionable even happened on my end.

MobileVet5• 3 years ago

This scam is pretty active right now. My brother in law was called 2 days prior and they called my wife again 2 days later…

Rough scam script:

- <background audio of police station> - hello, is this XYZ? - this is Officer Z, do you agree to abide by Judge ABC’s orders? - we have been trying to reach you by mail about this case. It has to do with a minor. - the judge has issued a gag order, do not talk with anyone about this - look up the number from the phone, see I am really calling from the courthouse

== keep you on the phone, my wife actually didn’t pick up when I called in the midst of the scam and followed with a text ==

- someone committed a crime using your name, we don’t think it was you but because you didn’t respond to mail, there is a warrant for your arrest - you need to post bail - go withdraw money from the bank and bring it to the courthouse - where are you? The courthouse is closing - it’s getting late, use a 3rd party processor setup during Covid - go to grocery store, use a CoinStar machine - send money to phone number (using XLM currency)

akoboldfrying2• 3 years ago

Every step feels plausible to me, except the last. Sending crypto to a government agency?

Not saying I wouldn't be taken in by this or other scams in the heat of the moment, but from my armchair position, that redlined my suspicion.

EDIT: heart -> heat

pinkmuffinere• 3 years ago

I had this exact same scam a couple months ago! I never figured out how they spoof the courthouse’s number though — any idea how they do that?

eurleif2• 3 years ago

The police don't call you if they are trying to serve a warrant, they show up.

But be aware that the converse isn't true: someone who shows up at your door claiming to be law enforcement with a warrant isn't necessarily legitimate. E.g.: https://madison.com/news/local/crime-courts/jack-mcquestion-...

MobileVet5• 3 years ago

Good point

akoboldfrying2• 3 years ago

I don't trust anyone to be a police officer unless there's another police officer present certifying that they are in fact a police officer, and another police officer present certifying that that person is a police officer, and so on, up to a piece of paper listing hundreds of "root" police officers around the world that was prepared in an unspecified way by an unknown programmer involved in making whichever browser I happen to be using, and which I have not even glanced at.

godelski4• 3 years ago

I really wish there was a certificate authority run by the government. In the past we didn't have the capacity to do a lot of these things but now we can make many improvements, even if incomplete.

Can we not have something like a CA but for, at minimum, officials? Or something like keybase for identity proofs? This seems quite invaluable. Couldn't this even be done within the phone, mail, and email systems? I don't think this should be for everyone, because we should have some anonymity existing, but at least for government officials? What's preventing us from having public/private keys that are verifiable by general citizens? Even if it was as bad as PGP used to be (before tools to make it easier developed) there would be at least some form of verification. But right now it's far too easy to spoof and honestly I don't even know how one would perform verification other than hanging up and calling back. But that doesn't solve your example.

Note: I am not a security expert.

reaperman2• 3 years ago

I have absolutely gotten legitimate phone calls from a sheriff/marshal in the stats of texas to let me know I had two warrants out for my arrest (failure to pay wrong left turn ticket, failure to show up at court for said ticket).

I called him back at the published phone number for his division. He let me know he wasn't going to be bothered driving 45 minutes across the metro area to find me and arrest me, and if I just stopped by court and got it taken care of in next three months that would be great.

injeolmi_love2• 3 years ago

I’ve received so many of these scam calls from fake authorities that I used to just hang up (now I don’t answer calls ever). One time I didn’t hang up because something felt weird. Turned out it was legit and I owed a $20 traffic ticket from years ago. I’m pretty certain it wasn’t a scam, maybe it was.

sokoloff• 3 years ago

I would guess any traffic ticket that was only $20 was a great number of years ago…

vtwoods• 3 years ago

A trick I started using was asking the scammer for a challenge code to prove they where who they said they were (from my bank). The scammer was dumbfounded and hung up.

I agree it is always better to just hang up and call the bank yourself but it was pretty humorous.

mmasu• 3 years ago

I don’t get many calls, but a LOT of whatsapp messages. What i usually do is ask them if they know how to trade crypto and if they want to 10x their money - they quit immediately.

Related, a close friend of mine was looking for jobs and in a moment of desperation he got prayed on by someone asking all their personal information. No follow up. Not sure what the end game is there, however it might turn ugly.

I find your strategy - putting them off foot - is a very good deterrent and an effective way to get rid of most scammers quickly.

I am incredibly fascinated by how scammers work and their inventive - many of them would be very successful in a corporate environment, they are clearly very smart and capable, you wonder why they end up doing this for a living.

akira25013• 3 years ago

Shame and pride are such strong motivators.

That's why they drill them into you in public school.

bigstrat2003• 3 years ago

They don't need to drill in anything. Shame and pride are intrinsic human nature.

alexpotato2• 3 years ago

If you say it all out loud, it is obvious, but if you go step by step, each one was somewhat plausible.

The step by step at the time vs the "in hindsight" really is a powerful persuasion tool/learning tool.

e.g. the below is a real situation that happened at work:

- I run a SRE team

- We do a short term embed of an SRE member to do some one off dev work for a migration

- Dev Mgr to my team member: "oh, since you are touching that code, you should probably also work on this tiny business feature that depends on it"

- DM: "Oh, since you worked on that, you should also work on this other feature"

- DM: "Oh, since you worked on the above, just take over the whole feature"

- DM: "Oh, since you did all THAT, can you talk to the business and figure out the next features??"

Again, totally ridiculous overreach but spread out over 6 months in a fast moving, high stress environment, it can go unnoticed.

eviks2• 3 years ago

Since it's so stepped, the main counter is to break the first step (so hanging up right away is indeed right), but then for the same reasons other pieces won't help (they'll come up with some excuse re. why they call instead of showing up or you won't contact anyone because of the "gag" order)

hnbad5• 3 years ago

This isn't really surprising. Cons are literally "confidence tricks", i.e. betrayals of social trust, which can be disorienting and distressing, even traumatizing. We know that rape victims, to use an extreme example, often try to normalize what happened to them - especially when the attacker was a close friend or intimate partner. A common story is a victim being sexually abused by a partner in the evening and making their abuser breakfast the next morning because then it can't have been abuse and must have been consensual because why would a victim make breakfast for their abuser - that'd be absurd.

Nobody wants to be a victim. Some people like to play the victim, sure, and some victims (usually after quite a bit of therapy) try to own their victim status to come to terms with what they've experienced but victims are at least as likely if not more to pretend nothing happened (even when they're traumatized and their denial is perpetuating that trauma) as they are to speak up.

With cons that are scams there's of course also the chance to play hot potato: you may have been the mark but that only makes you a victim if you are the end of the chain. If you can still con someone else to make your money back, you didn't get fooled, you just got inconvenienced at worst and you're not really at fault for conning the next person because after all you wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been conned to begin with. Crypto, one might argue, might be one such example.

jongjong• 3 years ago

I'm all too familiar with this. Also, they will pretend that the con is not happening while they are in the middle of being conned.

MenhirMike• 3 years ago

Didn't people literally send letters to Charles Ponzi in prison - after he got convicted and all - asking to invest even more money into his scheme? Or is that an urban myth?

epolanski• 3 years ago

The immediate victims of the con would rather act as if the con never happened. Instead, they’re mad at the outsiders who showed them that they were being fooled.

This is why getting cult members sane again is difficult, they would rather live in the denial of having been fooled and can go any length to reinforce that bias. Even killing family members or themselves.

This is also the reaction C-suite holds as you deliver rationally why their long thought plan won't work.

This is also why if you want to rise high in corporate you want to be the one not delivering bad news, ever.

People will just dislike you, it's stronger than them.

subpixel• 3 years ago

This is also why if you want to rise high in corporate you want to be the one not delivering bad news, ever.

FFS, the emperor’s new clothes keep getting nicer!

DavidWoof• 3 years ago

Did anyone notice that the author talks about scams and cons, but when it actually comes to a list of examples the majority are actually about plagiarism?

Which... I largely don't care about. I understand why it's super important for academics, but in my book it's not a con or scam. It's accurate information. If somebody is giving me accurate information, the fact that they don't have correct citations isn't really a concern to me as a consumer of the data, and I absolutely don't put it in the same category as faking data or lying about results.

xoa2• 3 years ago

Which... I largely don't care about. I understand why it's super important for academics, but in my book it's not a con or scam. It's accurate information.

This is not correct on a few levels, at least in the context of science. At the most basic, you're engaging in circular reasoning. You're accepting it's "accurate information" as a truism when the point of science is to discover what is actually "accurate information" in the absence of any oracles. Someone who is plagiarizing doesn't actually know whether what they're plagiarizing is accurate or not, by definition they haven't done the work. They don't know how it all connects together, and not only might what they're copying be wrong, they're more likely to introduce errors of context and omit qualifiers.

Tying into that is the issue of meta-information as well. One of the core foundations of science and assessing whether information is accurate or not is replication. A second/third/fourth/etc researcher independently reaching even 100% identical results is itself new information each time, even if conclusion is the same. More independent replication raises the chance of signal and decreases the chance that it was noise, some unaccounted for variables unique to a given lab or researcher. Everyone makes mistakes, but even with zero mistakes low probability things can happen in any single given experiment/study/place. Diverse distributed replication is a basic way to help discover/dismiss that.

A plagiarist in research is therefore, at a bare minimum, always engaged in a con/scam: they're claiming they have independently produced a result, which then adds to the weight and other people will be more likely to depend on. They have not.

Of course, they've also conned/scammed whatever money/time/resources anyone else contributed to them with the expectation of independent work and thus at a minimum new replication information. They took that, and then didn't follow through. It's fraud. And there is opportunity cost there since those are a zero-sum game, the resources that went to funding a plagiarist could have instead gone to fund someone honest who could produce something with actual ROI as expected.

lupire3• 3 years ago

You're making a lot of assumptions about the nature of the plagiarized content.

If plagiarizing is bad because the copied info might be wrong, then original research is bad because it might be wrong.

DonsDiscountGas2• 3 years ago

Every single case of plagiarism can be fixed with some combination of quotation marks, proper citations, and rephrasing of relevant text. It is never a claim to have independently reproduced a result.

If a scientist claims to have independently reproduced an experimental result - and they haven't - that is outright fraud. It doesn't matter if they describe that experiment in original words, with proper citations and quotation marks/blocks.

Aurornis2• 3 years ago

Did anyone notice that the author talks about scams and cons, but when it actually comes to a list of examples the majority are actually about plagiarism?

It’s an article on a .edu written in the wake of one of the highest profile academic plagiarism scandals in a long time (Claudine Gay). It’s not an article targeted at general audiences, you have to read it in context.

The Claudine Gay plagiarism scandal has been difficult for academia because there were many reactionary responses trying to defend her, but after further investigation people are realizing that her plagiarism was something that would have gotten any average student in severe disciplinary trouble. This has refueled the conversation about everything from plagiarism to falsified data that has become a worrying trend in academia: People are getting duped at worryingly high rates and the initial response to uncovering the academic fraud is to deny and defend.

dilyevsky2• 3 years ago

This hardwired coping mechanism is why populism is so effective, as well as religions, some governments and much more

nneonneo• 3 years ago

The article calls out the reason why this happens in academia: administrators need to perform the thorough investigations even if things appear obvious in order to protect themselves against a lawsuit. See what’s happening with Francesca Gino for example: she’s suing Harvard and the four scientists who uncovered her fraud for $25 million, and you can bet that she would win (or at least make it very expensive for the defendants) unless the evidence is very strong. Institutions are obviously incentivized to not prosecute misconduct strongly, or at least not until the misconduct is so blatantly obvious it cannot be ignored.

lupusreal5• 3 years ago

Most of the people who have defended Claudine Gay are not administrators, and all of them had the option to simply stay silent if they were worried about getting sued. There is really no defense for the buffoons who defended her.

lupire3• 3 years ago

denial

anger

bargaining

depression

acceptance

TrackerFF• 3 years ago

Yeah, I've seen this twice in person.

A friend (he was experiencing psychosis, so that played a big part) fell prey to some bog-standard love scam when some bot added him on facebook. He ended up sending his life savings to the scammers. Everyone around him were warning him, trying to intervene - but to no avail. In the end he got mad at everyone trying to show the warning signs. Started ranting about people trying to ruin his love life.

Older family acquaintance that suddenly started to purchase gift cards. Gets all fired up when someone say that this is a scam. (The scam was crypto investments, and scammers would only take gift cards, yeah...) The person was convinced it was legit, and got frustrated and pissed off that people were trying to hinder investments.

knodi1232• 3 years ago

oof. that really hits home, I've seen similar problems (although not with such extreme results as your example).

cognition-disrupting disorders are so frustrating and scary!

chiefalchemist• 3 years ago

The immediate victims of the con would rather act as if the con never happened. Instead, they’re mad at the outsiders who showed them that they were being fooled.

In the USA, is this not the current state of the sociopolitical system? Let's take Philadelphia for example. Known to be long-time loyal to Party L. Yet, chronic poverty, plenty of gun violence, Etc. Yet in the most recent election, Party L replaced Party L. And the former Party L mayor had high praise for the new mayor (also Party L).

That is, the mayor who did little for me / us / them is a critic of others? How is that disconnect going to help anyone?

SuperNinKenDo• 3 years ago

I'd go a step further and say that many people don't want to be told they're being scammed in the process of it happening.

I've literally spent afternoons resecuring business infrastructure after it was compromised by my boss whom I had already cautioned upon hearing dodgy calls.

And more than once.

I've seen the same thing happen in recordings of people getting scammed, where even if they acknowledge they might be getting scammed, their panic or frustration becomes so frantic that they just refuse to take a breath because the people warning them just "don't understand the urgency of the situation" or some such thinking. For whatever reason I haven't fallen into this trap yet, it might just be a generational thing, I dunno, but I suspect the fact that I meditate a lot means I can see my own thought process from abive, and so far short-circuit any of these tricks ptetty quickly.

Aurornis2• 3 years ago

These situations reveal the true preference toward status over accuracy: People would rather make an effort to preserve their status than to admit having made a mistake.

There are domains where playing games like this will cause you to lose even more status.

However, there are other domains where being loud and denying reality can actually preserve your status: If people are too tired, afraid, or avoidant to challenge the denial then eventually it becomes more or less accepted fact. This is a common feature of toxic work environments, where denying facts or trying to dictate reality can actually work in someone’s favor because the cost of disagreeing with that person is too high.

You see this in bad CEOs who get caught in scandals and then think they can talk their way out of it by writing flowery statements and going on social media to respin the story. These tactics work when you’re preaching to people whose jobs depend on accepting the things you tell them, but they fall apart in the court of public opinion where people have nothing to lose by doubting you.

cf1241290841• 3 years ago

These situations reveal the true preference toward status over accuracy: People would rather make an effort to preserve their status than to admit having made a mistake.

This is especially bad if it happens internally, with peoples self image.

I used to recommend to people to just get to grip with how big of a moron they are but this lead to all sort of other problems. Framing it as managing expectations about ones competence for specific situations and moments and accounting for cognitive bias in the process seems to be much more palpable. With the inability of just taking the moron advice being a good example for what other difficulties you need to compensate for outside competence alone.

Sabinus• 3 years ago

The first blog post of the Data Coladia fraud exposure series: https://datacolada.org/109

Francesca Gino's response: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/francescagino_i-want-to-be-ve...

adfm• 3 years ago

Grifters rely on shame for the con to work. It’s a trip watching marks double down and reenforce the narrative. Those talking points become your mantra because you don’t want others finding out how far in the hole you are.

The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened

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