Bad Science Begets Ridiculous Results: A professor at Middle Tennessee State University thought his MBA students were cheaters. So, to deal with the problem, he had them sign a pledge…wherein they agreed that their immortal souls would go to hell if they’d ever cheated in his class. He claims he got the idea after reading about an academic study that showed students who read the 10 Commandments before an exam were less likely to cheat.
UPDATE Bad Writing Begets Ironic Results: I need to apologize to Dan Ariely for the terrible headline above. I meant this to be about bad science writing, which I’d assume would have something to do with the professor misinterpreting this so terribly. But you know how you sometimes type half an email, come back later and finish it and then, after sending, realize you did a terrible job of saying anything even close to what you meant? Yeah. The result, unfortunately, was a sentence that was extremely unfair to Dr. Ariely and put me squarely in that bad writing camp. My apologies.