Madigan had a theory, borne out by some data, that people are more likely to cheat when they are anonymous and that they'll cheat less the more they are connected to other gamers — the more, in other words, that they are known.
NO SHIT?
"Then there's the double-barreled shotgun from Doom 2 - no-one within your entire household could be of any doubt that it's been fired because it sounds like God slamming a door on his fingers." - Yahtzee Croshaw
You mean increasing the consequences of cheating without a relative increase in the rewards (or even a potential decrease) affects a change in the number of cheaters? Wow.
"Look at my car. Do you think that was bought with the earnest love of geeks?" - HaemishM
A lot of these idiotic studies get done because even though "everybody knows" what they aim to prove, nobody had done a study about it... so there's nothing to reference in academic papers when you state the obvious, and you don't get published. So one person risks ridicule by doing an idiotic study, and a hundred academics sigh in relief that they didn't have to bite that particular bullet and can now publish their serious papers using that particular piece of "common knowledge" as a launchpad.
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