The Untrustworthy Evidence in Dishonesty Research

Replicable and reliable research is essential for cumulative science and its applications in practice. This article examines the quality of research on dishonesty using a sample of 278 hand-coded test statistics from 99 articles. Z-curve analysis indicates a low expected replication rate, a high proportion of missing studies, and an inflated false discovery risk. Test of insufficient variance (TIVA) finds that 11/61 articles with multiple test statistics contain results that are `too-good-to-be-true'. Sensitivity analysis confirms the robustness of the findings. In conclusion, caution is advised when relying on or applying the existing literature on dishonesty.