
Civic honesty around the globe - ojosilva
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/06/19/science.aau8712
======
dang
This thread has had a huge influx of comments from new accounts in the last 24
hours—over 250 and counting. They are all, I think, critical of the study.
Many have been unsubstantive, but many have had interesting things to say.

Normally we'd consider closing the thread in a case like this, to prevent it
from being brigaded. But this is an unusual case and I'm curious to see how
far it goes.

In case any of the new commenters happens to read this: I'm the lead moderator
of Hacker News. Would you mind sharing with us how you found out about this
discussion? It's unusual for us to see so much activity in a thread that is
already several days old, and I'm curious to find out what happened.

~~~
lunamenina
I mostly click on HN articles via Facebook, but I don't actively engage in
discussions. I also happen to come across a lot of discussion on Chinese
social media, like zhihu.

The news has been trending on Chinese sites for days, and when it's something
as sensational as "China ranked lowest in global HONESTY study", people
started to ask why, many went ahead and read the paper, found potential flaws
in the design of the study, and wanted their questions answered. And when
valid questions are not yet being addressed, many start to question the
motivation behind this paper; the motivation of using labels like "honesty",
that clearly has moral implications; the motivation behind Science publishing
it, etc. Did the author exclude Japan because the result differed drastically
from what was expected? Did the author include China because the result
conveniently confirms the stereotypes? Are there any ethical concerns for such
studies? After all, this seems to be a study about how likely it is for hotel
staff to email the owner of the lost wallet in different countries, but it is
being phrased into something much bigger.

Not saying those are real motivations of the paper, just emotions and
speculation running wild in Chinese forums, then people get a bit angry,
because they feel it's unjust, and they want to look for ways to communicate
outside of Chinese social media.

Anyways, thanks for still keeping the discussion open. Most just want to have
their voice heard, as they feel very, very strongly about it. And a possible
explanation of commenting in Chinese is to force native English speakers to
look up the translation, some sort of reference to how the study is conducted
in English, even in China.

~~~
dang
Thanks for the reply. What you're saying seems consistent with what some of
the other commenters are saying (e.g. what kiki1124 wrote here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271586)).
So that seems to be the explanation for what happened.

------
majia
1\. Contact information should not be just an email address. It’s better to
have email, phone and any locally popular communication channels. In countries
such as China, people don’t use email as often as apps like wechat. Desk
clerks are less likely to register an email address to return a wallet,
especially when it doesn’t have anything valuable inside.

2\. The difference between money and no-money percentage may be a better
indicator of civil honesty. The absolute percentage reflects more about a
“I’ll wait for someone to come” or “not my business” attitude of desk clerks.

3\. It is better to put something important to the owner but not everyone else
in the wallet, such as a driver license or national ID card. This could reduce
“not my business” factor.

~~~
davetannenbaum
Thanks for your comments.

1\. This is a fair point. In the Supplemental Material, we explore cross-
country differences in email usage. When we statistically adjust for country-
level differences in email usage (using World Bank data), the country ranking
remains essentially the same (adjusted rankings correlate over 0.90 with non-
adjusted rankings). Also, when you restrict the data only to drop-offs
performed at hotels -- which tend to rely on email more than other settings --
you see the same pattern of results.

2\. Also a good point. However, there are mechanical problems with using the
marginal differences between conditions -- for example, countries with high
reporting rates in the NoMoney condition will be naturally capped in the
possible size of the treatment treatment effect, compared to those with low
reporting rates. Because the scale is bounded at 0 and 100% you're also
fighting against reversion to the mean at the low and high ends of the
distribution. FWIW we find that absolute levels of reporting rates correlate
very highly with other known proxies of honesty both within and between
countries (measures like tax evasion, corruption, etc), whereas relative
differences between conditions do not.

3\. We explicitly test this by randomly varying whether the wallets contained
a key or not (valuable to the owner but not the recipient), while holding the
rest of the contents in the wallet constant.

~~~
Sjuliaaaaa
The world bank tells you half of the Chinese firms have emails but you won't
know that far less than that of them ARE WILLING to use it. For taxing, they
use super informal wechat group to send around notifications. I doubted if my
tax officer remembers his email or has it at all. Regression adjustment or
group it as outlier you know the best.

For hotels, I had experience that a 5-star hotel responded my message after
almost a month. They have it but not in your way of using it.

Anyway, did you know the reason for their not writing that email?

~~~
csh1505
Super agree. The designer of the experiment really need to read some books.
And has him considered the situation that the “wallet” might be returned to
the policed station?

------
oska
A bit odd that they didn't include Japan in their set of countries. My
expectation is that it would have probably topped the list.

~~~
davetannenbaum
We originally planned to include Japan but after some initial pilot testing we
realized that the country was unsuitable for methodological reasons. Japan has
a lot of small “police booths” where people can return lost objects. During
our pilot tests, we found that Japanese citizens would not contact the owner
but instead drop them off at a nearby police booth. This feature made it
virtually impossible for us to assign individual wallets to particular drop-
off locations.

~~~
jagrsw
Hm.. wouldn't it bias your results in some countries too? I used to live in
Poland, now living in Switzerland (both topping the chart), and in both
countries it's pretty customary to drop found wallets/IDs at police stations.

Btw, in both countries there's a rule (at least in Poland it's in the civic
law, probably more like a custom in Switzerland), that the person who found
your wallet can receive some share (finder's fee) of money, in Poland
currently 10%.

~~~
yoz-y
10% of cash inside? If so, I wonder how this fee could be amended for people
who never carry cash.

~~~
mjevans
Probably a flat minimum. In the US I'd imagine it'd best be a log curve
starting with a minimum of "minimum wage (of an hour)" and then shifting to a
% of the cash inside. Something like a gentle decay curve where every base 10
increase there's a halving of the percent cut.

~~~
dmix
$20-50 seems like a fine reward for the average person. I’d probably give
whatever money was in the wallet to them.

------
roystonvassey
Such an interesting study. Over the past few years, I encounter daily cynicism
about how ‘people are the worst’. But, it is so important to not lose this
basic trust in others because that, in fact, is the only true foundation in
life. We are all alone in this world and to lose trust in the one, absolutely
critical and positive tenet of human life is despairing. People are generally
good and even, when they are not, it is all explainable.

~~~
humanrebar
Of course, that doesn't show that people aren't "the worst", it just shows
that humanism doesn't make much sense if they are.

Other philosophies accept a flawed humanity and find hope in other things.

But most people don't think about it too much, I suspect. They love their dog,
their kids, and a couple friends and that's good enough.

------
pickleRick243
To me, the biggest confounding variable is the race/culture of the
researchers. From the supplementary material: "We recruited eleven male and
two female research assistants to perform the drop-offs. All research
assistants were recruited from two German speaking universities and born
between 1985 and 1993." Seems somewhat fortuitous that German/Nordic countries
uniformly performed the best. In many countries, they would stick out like a
sore thumb. To make this study more complete, they really should have someone
who looks and speaks more native do this as well. Especially as race/culture
seems to be so highly correlated with the result, it is only natural to see
whether factors like distrust/xenophobia play a part. I mean, some random
stranger (possibly using a language translator app!?) tells you to do
something with a package they drop off and then leaves very quickly. How I
react would certainly depend at least somewhat on my impression of the person
and how that brief interaction went.

~~~
davetannenbaum
Definitely a fair criticism. In the paper we test for experimenter effects
(are the results different for male vs female research assistants? Are some
researcher assistants acting differently in a way that might bias the
results?) and do not find any meaningful differences. But this doesn't get to
your broader point about the homogeneity of our research assistants (all are
undergrads from Western Europe, etc).

My sense is that our results probably serve as a lower bound on reporting
rates -- if the person who dropped off the wallet comes across as a local,
reporting rates would be higher. But this is pure speculation.

------
yskchu
The wallet in the experiment is doesn't look like a normal "wallet" at all -
it's a business card case. I wonder if the results would be any different if
they used a real wallet.

Pics: Fig S1 @
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2019/06/19/...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2019/06/19/science.aau8712.DC1/aau8712_Cohn_SM.pdf)

~~~
davetannenbaum
Absolutely. We thought a lot about this trade-off when designing the study.

The disadvantage of using a clear business-card case over a traditional wallet
is clear, in that it is relatively unusual. The advantage of using a clear
case, however, is that it affords considerably more experimental control in
that you can be relatively certain that every recipient knows what is inside.
With a wallet, there will be variation in who decides to inspect the wallet,
and that introduces selection effects into the experimental design (i.e., are
those who are willing to look inside a wallet, compared to those who don't,
different in their degree of honesty?). This makes interpreting the evidence a
lot more challenging.

FWIW we examined how our measure of civic honesty compares to other known
proxies of honest behavior (tax evasion, corruption, etc) within and between
countries. If there was something artificial or unique about our setting --
such as using unusual clear business card cases -- then you wouldn't expect
our results to generalize or correlate with other measures of honest behavior.
However, we find response rates correlate very highly with these other proxies
of honesty, suggesting that they are tapping into some broader construct.

------
rossdavidh
So, nice study, but two things: 1) it may be that when there is no money in
it, the finder thinks "by the time we get it back to them, they will have
replace their ID and called their credit card companies to cancel their credit
cards and issue new ones, so it doesn't really matter". When there is money,
it is more likely to actually matter. 2) It may be that the expected
consequences of keeping it seem negligible when there is no money, but if you
kept it and got found out, when there IS money, then you could be in trouble
3) What is Mexico's deal? The only nation which went the opposite way. Or,
perhaps, what happened with the data entry in Mexico that they got the numbers
reversed?

------
Sjuliaaaaa
1) Interesting when you conclude 'dishonesty'with no contacting received. A
second explanation would be that people put it to lost and found box or
culturally/occupationally have the practice waiting instead of searching for
the owner. For Japan you realized that and excluded it. For other countries,
the way to deal with unattended belongings might not be as black and white as
in Japan but certainly varies. I could also interpret the data as measuring
active searching vs passive waiting strategies across countries.

2) I feel dishonesty is a too big word and this title/claim goes too far. I
think it more reflects the sense of responsibility of the employees at this
particular job. 'Not my business' is different from being dishonest.

The workload, the degree of satisfaction towards the job and even how natural
to communicate in English/via email will largely affect whether an employee
would send out that email, which isn't part of their duty in their
understanding. They might just leave it there at the counter. Again, I won't
call that person being dishonest.

3) The nonusual looking of the wallet and the whole act might be more
perceived as a spam or fishing for info in certain regions. In deed, when I
moved to one big city in the US, I became less willing to reply to missing
phone calls compared to a rather spam-free top city of a different country.
Your subjects in certain countries might just be very alert to your behavior.

------
ppod
Very nice and unintuitive main finding. I wish there was a separate condition
where they sent a second experimenter back to the location of the hand-in to
ask for the wallet. Just waiting for a contact leaves some room for
unpredictable effects: perhaps with no money, the person can't even be
bothered to deal with it. With money, there is an incentive to try to contact
in the hope that if no response is received within a short period, the money
can be kept.

~~~
ebg13
> _With money, there is an incentive to try to contact in the hope that if no
> response is received within a short period, the money can be kept._

Your notion makes zero sense. Wanting to keep the money never incentivizes
contact. If they wanted to keep the money, the surest way to accomplish that
is to just keep it.

~~~
ppod
What's the point of your first sentence?

>Wanting to keep the money never incentivizes contact.

It could in combination with the authors' hypothesis of not wanting to view
oneself as a thief. Under that condition, the likely behaviour is to simply
let the wallet sit in a lost-and-found drawer. Writing the email starts the
clock on a license to take it while giving yourself a rationalization.

------
jeremydeanlakey
At first I thought it was counterintuitive.

But after self-reflection, I'm more likely to report it if it did have money.

If it had money, I'd feel an obligation to protect it and return it to the
owner. If it didn't, I'd feel more like it's their problem.

~~~
stronglikedan
I'd be more inclined to turn in a wallet with an ID, regardless of whether it
contained any money. Those things are a PITA to replace!

~~~
dougmwne
Actually the wallet in the study just contained some business cards, no ID or
credit cards.

~~~
yesco
Wallets are pretty cheap, if I found one with just some business cards and no
money I'd in all honestly just toss it in the trash and assume it was
litter...

~~~
dougmwne
And in fact it was nothing more than a clear plastic business card holder. It
looked like trash to me.

------
0815test
I know that we're not supposed to impute astroturfing/shillage on HN, but the
volume of similar, not-very-high-effort comments discussing one specific
country out of the many that this report deals with, is, um... surprising. At
this point, are we supposed to say as HN commenters "it's okay, these nice
folks are just _pretending_ to be wumao, just for the lulz of it", or what?

------
dougmwne
I wanted to see if they had collected data on how often the wallet was
returned with the money. That was not part of the main experiment design[1]
where the wallets were not actually collected, but they did collect wallets in
Switzerland and Czech Republic to see if it was common to return the wallet,
but keep the money. For these 2 countries at least about 99% of people did not
keep the money when returning the wallet.

[1][https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2019/06/19/...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2019/06/19/science.aau8712.DC1/aau8712_Cohn_SM.pdf)

------
ShLoss
It is true that Japan has different culture. Japanese prefer to give the purse
to the police stations rather than contact the owners directly. So it is
reasonable to neglect the research result in Japan. Guess what？CHINA HAS DIFF
CULTURE TOOOOOOOOOOOOOO！ More than half Chinese don't use email in their daily
life！（In fact, according to the research on Chinese Internet by government
that was published in 2018, More than 60% Chinese netizen don't use email for
years.） Chinese prefer WeChat（an communication app like WhatsApp）and phone
call. Also，Chinese prefer to give the items they found to Lost&Found police
station，the staffs of the hotels, banks, restaurants than contact the owners
directly，which kinds of same as Japanese. Besides, if the item they found is
precious or valuable（worth a lot of money）, then Chinese prefer to stay at the
place and wait for the owners, in case the owners come back but can’t find the
items immediately. In what universe can the researchers considered Japanese
culture difference but ignored Chinese culture difference?! Especially when
both of them are from Asia countries. Just like I can’t imagine a research
have considered Canada culture but ignored U.S. culture. It’s reasonable and
logical to doubt that the researchers are not racists. Shame on you, Science,
for letting this unreasonable article being published.

------
tangus
Civic honesty x civic duty, actually. One of the variables you measured was
whether that unknown guy's problem is worth my effort to contact them.

I'd guess (out of my ass, of course) that many people didn't steal it but also
didn't bother. They just left it there for someone to come and pick it up. And
I'd also guess they didn't trust they co-workers not to steal the money if
they left the wallet there at the end of their shift, that's why more wallets
with money were reported.

~~~
cs02rm0
Civic honesty and duty cover most of it, I think, in the UK for example.

When I was living in Saudi Arabia for a time as a kid I was told not to pick
up money even on the street or I could have my hand chopped off. However much
truth there was to that message, I suspect that mentality could colour the
results and probably falls outside honesty and duty.

------
FenixP
I have to say that the methodology applied in this research lack basic social
and cultural understanding. It is fair to say that Chinese hardly use email as
their primary means of communication. Being in the States, I would use email
to contact people. But back in China I would rather use WeChat. In addition,
the design of the wallet looks weird and I would rather think that is a piece
of garbage. Conventionally speaking, a wallet would contain some money, an ID
card in some sort, and maybe credit/debit card in a actual wallet. Having a ID
card makes thing so much easier: If I were to pick it up, I would just hand it
to the Police and they would take care of it because there is a serial number
on the ID that helps to context the person. But the design of this so-called
wallet is dubious: a plastic warp with a business card ,a shopping list and a
key? Hummmmm. So clearly, this article failed to recognize the uniqueness of
the social conditions in China and thus resulted in a biased and distorted
conclusion. As a reverend publisher, Science and the editors should have
realized the experimental flaws and the confounding variables that presented
in this research, yet it still gets published. I hope the publisher should
realize this and try their best to prevent it from happening again.

------
phasejump
The experiment is just ridiculous. Even for Western countries like Australia.
Imagine you lost wallet in a bus, and someone picked up. What is a normal
reaction? The people notify the driver, the driver sent to lost@finding. And I
am sure that department will never contact the wallet owner. Even for the
owner comeback, a detailed ID check is necessary. And I believe here is no
culture difference between Western and Asian. Here you may lack of
understanding of lost property and the whole procedure of finding it. Then you
just used biased data to prove “Chinese is dishonest”. That is not like a
research people behavior. By the way in Australia, universities find students’
lost property will firstly use phone or message to contact students, less
likely to use email. If researchers are from famous university, why not start
investing the lost property recovering procedure at your home. In addition, I
really don’t think there is strong correlation between ‘notify the owner’ and
‘honesty’

------
ShLoss
It is true that Japan has different culture. Japanese Prefer returning it to
police station than directly contacting owners. Guess what? CHINA HAS
DIFFERENT CULTURE TOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Only a few Chinese use email in their
daily life(According to the research on China Internet by government in 2018,
more than 60% emails have been abondoned over a year), they prefer WeChat(An
communication app like WhatsApp) and phone call. Also more than half Chinese
prefer to return it to lost and found place or just wait at the original place
in case the owner return back but can’t find his purse. In what universe can
researchers consider Japanese culture but ignore Chinese culture? Especially
when both of them are Asia countries. Just like I can’t imagine a research
have considered Canada culture but ignored U.S. culture. It is reasonable and
logical to doubt the researchers are raciests. Shame on you, Science, for
letting racists’ article being published.

------
cbsks
>We visited 355 cities in 40 countries

That must have been a fun study to work on! I wonder how much funding they
received for it.

------
alex_zhu
Other points have been addressed amply, so I’ll just point out one major flaw,
which is that not returning a plastic bag containing miscellaneous garbage and
money that doesn’t even cover a decent meal in major cities doesn’t
necessarily mean they are taking it in their possessions. In fact most people
in China are careful of this kind of suspicious behavior as it might lead to
trouble if it is some sort of scam. The “not my business” attitude is quite
common, but dishonesty is not the correct word for it. The authors might have
been raised in such humane and altruistic families as they did not know that
there’s the word “indifference” in the English dictionary. So there you go
researchers. You just learned a English word and a new concept that’s part of
the general education, from me. You are welcome.

------
alex_zhu
Also, no amount of post-research data maneuvering can save your conclusions if
your data collecting method is seriously flawed and the data corrupted. If you
work with corrupted data, you get unreliable results, plain and simple, as I
believe you researchers definitely understand with all your academic training.
Pretty basic stuff, right? That is until you start getting attached to your
results: they just fit your cultural presumptions so well. Northern European
countries are populated by altruistic angels and east Asia, by petty
shoplifters who steals napkins from fancy restaurants. Also, what can you do?
All those years and research funds for nothing? Better make the results sound
plausible, well, at least to a western audience. What a bummer it’ll be if no
significant difference is found?

------
StevenXie123
I am a Chinese, I must claim I don't know why this paper can be published in
Science because its method is totally wrong. I think most of the Chinese
citizens even don't have email addresses and they just use phone call and
Wechat. There are 8 people in my family but just I have sent emails before.
They even never ever sent an email before and they don't know how to use it! I
know how the Western media has smeared China, but I did not know that the
academic has begun. It really makes me sad. If authors go back to the place
they put the wallets, they are likely to find that the wallet has been taken
care of or in the lost and found box. By the way, welcome to China, I know
there will be some places not good but it's better to know China with your
eyes and thoughts.

------
dongdongz
If I receive a lost wallet once a month, I may trying contacting the owner. If
I am busy with tons of customers and pick up multiple lost wallets every week,
I definitely would not spend hours sending emails to all owners - it is not my
job. I will instead hand it over to the police officer or just keep the
wallets at LOST & FOUND, waiting for owners. This way of thinking actually
supports the results why people tend to return the wallets with more money -
because they believe it is more important and necessary to contact the owners
rather than passive waiting. It is probably difficult for the westerners to
imagine the real life of living in a country with more than one billion
people, otherwise they would not test the "honesty" using such a bad
experimental design.

------
lyk91471872
The ridiculous generalization that wallet return rate in a minor sample equals
population honesty makes no sense at all, regardless of the conclusion. That
is to say, the research methodology is essentially problematic. Should the
research be valid, the role that a wallet plays in daily life must not vary
significantly from one cultural background to another. The pattern in the plot
actually appears to correlate better with the popularity of wallets in each
countries. In Northern-European countries, wallets (cash/credit cards) are
used for most payments, whereas mobile payments via apps/virtual credit cards
dominates the Chinese market (both online and offline, even including
miscellaneous fees like parking fee); the US lies in between the two poles.

------
Emmatt06
Science should have Op-Ed column to accommodate researchers who have deep-
rooted need to justify certain covet assumptions. The faults of the research
methods are sufficiently revealed by comments here. Labeling any individual
with negative moralistic quality based on very limited interaction is called
judgmental or bigotry in general conversation. Disguising such hurtful
expression with scientific diagraphes or data charts would not change the fact
that such generalization is against a bigger need to bridge the differences
between culture and social groups. The Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray
Bell Curve Study had already charred our conscience. This research group and
author should know they added more blows to human dignity.

------
TomMckenny
Remarkable finding.

And it is strange almost everyone, including myself, intuits the opposite.
Where does this negative view of people come from?

In that vein, I wonder, when the desk clerk received an empty wallet, if they
sometimes thought the money had already been taken and they would be blamed.

~~~
iliketosleep
> Where does this negative view of people come from?

Usually, trust is something which must be earned. When we don't have any
information about a person, the default position is one of distrust (pending
further information), as the cost of being swindled can be significant. A
strange side-effect is that we implicitly assume that most people cannot be
trusted.

------
RebeccaZ
Firstly, if you have every been to China and lived there for a while, you
should notice that they don't use email quite often(only 38.1%). If the card
inside the wallet includes a wechat QR code, that will be adifferent thing.
Secondly, the wallet didn't look like a wallet that people would use everyday.
They could be easily cleaned away by Chinese road cleaners. Thirdly, although
everybody in China learns English, it doesn't mean everyone can use it well.
If you speak English to tell someone that you found a wallet, you'd better
find a translator or simply go with Maindrain. The experiment wasn't quite
scientific, in my opinion.

------
coderintherye
Isn't there a degree of "apathy" vs. "honesty" here? A person could be fully
honest, but just not care enough to take the time to contact the owner of the
wallet. It doesn't seem they considered that in the study design?

~~~
woah
I don't want to say that the study was a failure, because I don't know what
the standard for a successful study is, but it reads like they are trying to
gloss over the fact that they did not actually end up measuring honesty.

------
1227534
Dear Professors, I don’t think leaving a so-called wallet (actually I think it
is a file bag) with email address is an effective way to make this research.
I’m appreciating to see you considered Japan’s social situation but why you
didn’t take China’s into consideration? As we all know, only less than 40%
people who always use email in China and we also have police stations in the
Main Street. If you didn’t know these things, please delete your essay from
this. If you DO know this things but still do this to insult civil in China ,
you are responsible for your racism and discrimination in your essay.

------
cb2019
Firstly, there is little use of e-mails in China, and more people use
telephone or wechat. Secondly, there is a deviation in the definition of
wallet, that is, most Chinese people don't think it is a wallet and it is
important. Thirdly, Chinese people think that wallet conuld be handed over to
the police or relevant staff, and many places have lost and found such places,
waiting for the owner to find it back. It is not for the staff to contact the
owner on their own initiative.But it should be regard as civic honesty.Last
but not least,there are may be more misunderstanding of many other countries.

------
yongjik
I propose closing comments on this topic (or maybe close comments to new
accounts), as I think enough discussion was had, and it's annoying to see the
/newcomments page spammed with dozens of similar comments.

~~~
kiki1124
Could you tell me where is the response to all those similar questions? If the
authors don’t reply, it is reasonable to keep asking. 1:Chinese only use email
for business issues, the SI data from the paper ignores the fact that most
workers in reception do not have email.And they may could understand and speak
easy English, but they could not write a email. Why the author do not use
local language and multiple communication ways? It could exclude the language
and communication variables.(I realize that non-english speaking country have
relatively low scores).2:It is a culture thing that we used to leave the
wallet in a certain place, just like japan did. But author just excluded japan
off the paper? The truth is, there is no countries in this paper contain a
Chinese culture-relative country, it is typical double standards. If you could
explain those two questions well, I believe there would be no similar comments
at all.

------
27777777
Sorry, I don't think this experiment can prove anything. You have mentioned
Japan have their unique police to handle this kind of things, in fact, in
China, each public places have an individual office which duty to save lost
goods or help people to find their lost. According to this, the most times, we
do not need to call the police. In addition, email is not a common contact
method for Chinese people, we often use wechat. I hope the writer can have
more scientific research before you give any comment for a country or their
people.

------
AmandaDiao
Check this test video below to see and hear how much we common Chinese people
CHERISH honesty and integrity.

Alipay, the biggest mobile payment company in China, did the tests in several
cities.

Without any guarantee and supervision, people can borrow and need too return
their favorite product from a shelf with just a name.

[https://video.sina.cn/tech/2019-06-06/detail-
ihvhiews7158597...](https://video.sina.cn/tech/2019-06-06/detail-
ihvhiews7158597.d.html?vt=4&pos=91&wm=2256_1231)

------
kimtaeyu1206
It’s not like a research, and it’s just like a kidding. I’m also suspicious
that the person who conducts this ‘kind of experiment’ is a discriminator.
Because of the difference in cultures, every country adopts different ways in
connecting with each other. It’s not appropriate to use email as the only
media between each others. The method used in your ‘experiment’ is not fair.
Also, the design of your ‘wallet’ is ridiculous. If you didn’t explain it to
me, I believe that no one will recognize it as a wallet.

------
kimtaeyu
It’s not like a research, and it’s just like a kidding. I’m also suspicious
that the person who conducts this ‘kind of experiment’ is a discriminator.
Because of the difference in cultures, every country adopts different ways in
connecting with each other. It’s not appropriate to use email as the only
media between each others. The method used in your ‘experiment’ is not fair.
Also, the design of your ‘wallet’ is ridiculous. If you didn’t explain it to
me, I believe that no one will recognize it as a wallet.

~~~
lijiajia
I agree with you. And I have to believe that the authors and reviewers
deliberately discredit China

------
HarperJiang
Science is an authorize academic magazine in all over the world, I don't
understand why would this paper could be recognized in it. It's a crucial time
when China and America have the unsettled relationship, which giving people
more information over it. Concentrate at this study ,obviously it has so many
disadvantage,why a excellent professor have designed such sick experiment and
it even couldn't approve this conclusion, at the end it left a feeling hurting
in our chinese heart.

------
sharonlyx
May I know what did you do to make sure the research takes consideration of
different culture and social differences? Because, honestly, I see none. It’s
naive and biased to draw any conclusion from the simple experiments, let alone
to measure and rank countries civic honest levels. For example, emails are not
popular in many Asian countries. And in many countries, like China, people use
lost & found centers or direct give the stuff to the policemen. Did you
consider all of these?

------
2390352
Only around 57% of people in China use Internet and we do not use email as
often as WeChat. Usually, the lost is more likely to be picked up by cleaners
and most cleaners do not know how to send an email. In my humble opinion, the
wallets which used in research were more like trash:）. What's more, when you
find a lost, you can hand over to community or police. When you lost
something, you need to connect lost-and-found office of community or police
station by yourself.

------
yilunsul
Not to mention that I am also not fully convinced by the design of this
methodology, I don‘t think one can conclude the civic honesty by such a
convey. I mainly want to point out that I think this in the end is a cultural
misunderstanding. If one of the authors has had consulted any Chinese about
the design of the test, they would not have done this convey in China. Simply
because any Chinese would know this won’t work in China based on the knowledge
of Chinese culture.

------
sharonlyx
What did you do to make sure that the research considers the culture and
social differences among the countries? Because honestly I see nothing. It’s
naive and biased to draw any conclusion from the simply experiments, let alone
to measure and rank country’s civic honesty. For example, emails are not
popular in many countries. And in many countries, for example China, people
are more likely to return the lost stuff to the nearest list & found center or
policemen.

------
AmandaDiao
Did the researchers conduct any background survey for their experimental
subjects? The researchers don’t understand Chinese as Chinese participants
don’t understand English. Communication efficiency -100.

Participants’ lifestyle is different from researchers’. We use instant message
apps for work and dailylife communication rather than Email, (e.g., apps
WeChat, QQ. )

Without considering these variables (language barrier and lifestyle) into
account. It’s unreasonable to call it a fair test.

------
susumia
In my personal experience, I forgot my phone on the basketball court of
Chinese university campus in 2015, and it took me four hours to remember. When
I went back to look for it, it was still in its place. In this study, the
owner was asked to contact the owner by email. However, Chinese people do not
often use email, and they usually return the lost property to the lost and
found office. I hope Science can be more rigorous in future research. Thank
you.

------
AmandaDiao
Did the researchers conduct any background survey before the test? Did they
take the variables like language barrier and lifestyle into account? Chinese
mainly use Instant message apps like QQ wechat in most scenes of life, we do
lost and found with police.

Without knowing the experimental subjects, how come this impractical can be
regarded as fair?

If you want to know real China, go there and live like a Chinese, you will
find out things are totally different with this unfair test.

------
shchwwaa
This is 2019,our chinese local people are quite far more modern than the old
moneys. we use wechat instead of emails.ok? if we do some research in your
country,left money and namecard and wechat accounts there.I do believe no
wallet will be send back.but I know you.what a hell ,full stereotypes and
prejudice！extremly ridiculous researchers!don't be angry,you deserve
that.science at least lost 20% prestige in China mainland because of you.

------
mike132435467
A meaningless and ridiculous paper with full of prejudice and arrogance! In
China，very less people use email. In general, submitting the lost wallet to
police or lost and found place are more commonly way. However, the authors
choose Email as contact way without considering the more commen method. How
can a person contact you via email if he/she does not have an email? How can
such an irresponsible paper published in an adademic journal！

------
Luke_Young
why not take Japan into account? China also have its local condition. this
study can prove that Chinese seldom use emails, can prove that Chinese don't
regard a plastic bag as a wallet, can prove that China has more efficient
local police and "lost and founds" who can help you find your losts, it can
prove that the author is a prejudiced man and Science is a discriminatory
journal, but has nothing to do with civic honesty.

------
gRain
Do you have any problems? Do you understand China's actual national
conditions? There are very few mails in China, and we have lost and found
centers, and we will wait for the owner to find them. This is our national
condition. In the absence of understanding at all, you have taken very
inappropriate measures. I doubt the authority of your magazine. Is the
previous article so unfounded? Or is it purposeful for China alone?

------
zxiaowen96
Firstly, in China, although most people learn English during their education,
but they can’t really speak/understand English. Secondly, we have loads of
lost and found offices, why in the published paper, the authors can understand
the similar culture in Japan, but cannot understand the culture in China?
Finally, we don’t contact each other by email, cause we have WeChat, which is
much more conscience than email.

------
mandyhuhu
In China, we have lots of Lost and Fund Offices in hotels/rail stations etc.
When we find/lost something important, we would go there. BTW, almost no one
in China use emails to inform other people. Even for those needs email-check,
we would use other ways(such as phone or WeChat)to connect the person to check
the email, rather than just sending an email. Because we won’t check emails
everyday

------
Alice0908
I’m a Chinese. Actually, I found an interesting thing that your experiment
leaving email as the connecting approach. People in my country are not used to
use email to connect a stranger. The experimenters have considered the special
condition in Japan, but not in other countries? I wish when people want to
investigate cross-cultural behaviors, they could be more objective and
cautious.

------
windoze10
A Swiss funded research shows Switzerland is the most honest country, and
China happened to be the worst, and the research deliberately ignore Japan and
Korea because the author knows these countries have some specific policy which
could lead to bias, while the author is very sure that China doesn’t have same
policy or culture. Hmmm, your payers must be very glad to see the result, well
done.

------
rmbryan
That's a fun study. Shame their protocol selects for people who are likely to
get stuck working the front desk at a city office building.

------
MMSTATHAM
Here is one replication of the experiment in China. Vary the email variable to
phone number, plastic one to real wallet:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg6WG6pRcFM&t=36s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg6WG6pRcFM&t=36s)
I believe this Science paper needs at least a major revision in my opinion.

------
helabazhou
Most of the time, it is based on cognitive differences. First, China seldom
uses plastic bags to pack money or documents. Second, China is accustomed to
using micro-mail or telephone instead of mailbox. Third, there are police
stations or lost-and-found centers in public places in every region of China.
It is too one-sided to rely on mail response rate.

------
EllaFang
1\. The author failed to address to the special local practice in many
countries such as India and China. I had experience in China that some of my
friends put the lost and found information on their WeChat moments (something
like 'timeline' in Facebook or moments in Path) . Others just hand it to
nearby security guard hub, since the owner would ask the security guard
anyway. These are common practice. As to email, it's a rare choice, even if we
have it, we are reluctant to use it. For one thing, the general public doesn't
use it anymore. For another, the owner would rather search along the way than
check their dust-laden email box.

2\. The survaillance camera coverage could be a fairly important factor, which
is merely slightly memtioned in this article. Take China, UK and the U.S. as
examples. China has more and more coverage of surveillance cameras now, about
10 per thousand person
([http://new.mbu.cn/zjc/article/212/13759](http://new.mbu.cn/zjc/article/212/13759)),
but still not comparable to developed countries (75 in England and 96 in the
U.S. per thousand person). This would change people's awareness whether there
exist a camera or not.

3\. As a scientific article, shouldn't it be culturally-neutral to avoid being
used as tools to undermine some cultures? In this sense, the author and the
journal editor clearly did not qualify. The result is potentially prejudiced
and not purely scientific. And that's why lot's of people in these countries
would have emotional comments on this.

P.S.: Hail Bibi :)

~~~
lyk91471872
都是从比比来的呀

------
zqzhou
Totally biased methodology designed by the researchers. There were several
hypotheses that are based on lack of understandings of cultural and social
behaviors. This is such a clueless study that almost has no value in
contributing to sociological science but full of unawareness that may lead to
the wrong impressions of the tested countries.

------
cinniey
Well, you call that plastic bag “wallet” or “purse”.... In China, a plastic
bag with no ID and no other important documents, usually we call it trash.
Btw, we have a lot of small police offices and community centers that can
store lost items but will never contact you. They only wait for the owner to
go there and find their lost items.

------
984980525
The researcher should trade off the importance of essential variables such as
commutication preference, third party variables control...Wait, all above were
applied on Japan which result in it wasn’t opted as a sample. I’m trying
really hard not to believe in conspiracy, still, Chinese people deserve a
reasonable explanation.

------
sherryye337
The researcher did not consider the cultural difference at all (eg, in China,
that kind of 'wallet' would not be considered as a real wallet and Chinese ppl
rarely use email as contact way.), which means the samples and results are
completely meaningless. Now I really doubt the ability of the editor of
Science....

------
JacquelineBai
So Japan has its own culture, what about China then? It's more common for
owners to go to the nearby Lost and Found/ Police stations for their
belongings instead of waiting to be contacted. Try again with phone number
provided, and I believe the results will be different. Thanks for this
interesting research.

------
aries0108
Please don't talking rubbish in the name of science ！！！ In china，if we found a
wallet or anything looks important ，we will take it to the police station or
lost-and-found office,the government can content the owner more quickly.
Because nobody would leave a e-mail address or phone number in their wallet ！

------
creichenbach
I think the numbers in reality are a bit worse. I recently lost my wallet,
noticed about a minute later and went back - it was already gone. Later
someone found it in a trash can, emptied of all money. This happened in
Switzerland, which is at the top of this list, and I've heard similar stories
before.

------
aries0108
In china，if we picked a wallet or anything looks important ，we will take it to
the police station or lost-and-found office ，the government can content the
owner more quickly，because nobody would leave a e-mail address or phone number
in their wallet！ Stop talking rubbish in the name of science ！！！

------
CSFA-wrq
The validity problem of this research method is so obvious that I am surprised
that it should appear in Science. Researchers say there are many small police
booths in Japan. But the funny thing is that China learned police model from
Japan. So there are also many small police booths in China. For this reason,
researchers are investigating China instead of Japan in the hope that China
will appear at the bottom. In addition, the Chinese jumped directly from
writing letters to sending text messages, then Wechat (an app like Line),
skipping e-mail. It's like Chinese people jumping from using bank cards to
mobile payments, skipping credit cards. So Chinese people use e-mail and
credit cards only occasionally. Why do researchers selectively ignore Chinese
customs and culture? Maybe you can also do a research that defines "people
have to take off his/her shoes when he/she enter a room" as "not free" and
then excludes Japan for "cultural reasons", so that China will become the
"least free" country. Does that sound great? Shame on you.

------
dba7dba
I remember watching 'lost wallet test' videos on youtube while back. Vloggers
test leaving expensive stuff and/or wallet in cafe/subway and see if it gets
taken by strangers.

In some nations, stuff just wasn't touched at all for hours.

I didn't think a scientific study would be done on this and published.

------
ZhenZhang
In China we dont usually use e mail，the researcher even doesn't know the basic
national conditions when he designed that study. I cant believe he give a
cursory conclusion in that way.How can we believe an research result that used
a wrong method? And I question his purpose

------
Ausy
I realized this organization has some difficulty with achieving authoritative.
As I know, in china there are lots of small lost and find office where the
wallet won’t send to the police office. Hoping these international
organization have more respect to themselves.

------
praptak
I found a wallet in a parking lot of a mall in Warsaw, Poland. The customer
info desk would accept it, citing "internal regulations". Maybe I should just
have dropped the wallet on their desk and run away :)

(Owner found me, because the info desk at least wrote down my number)

~~~
nosianu
Nuremberg, Germany: I once found a wallet with most of the cash already gone,
but loads of cards and ID cards in it, and other stuff, pretty thick. I went
to the police - and they were not exactly happy. They would have preferred to
send me elsewhere but admitted they were the only ones open at the time. I can
understand why they felt that way - it took well over an hour, every single
tiny item in the wallet had to be catalogued, an arduous procedure for sure.

~~~
BeeOnRope
How did you know "most of the cash [was] already gone"?

------
Gal2019
Please retract this article and issue an apology statement because of the
infringement of the reputation for Chinese civil by publishing the article.
The truth is — First, in China, we don't use email very often, using Wechat
app to communicate instead. Therefore, the way of receiving responses in this
study is not in line with China's situation and is unfair. Secondly, we
usually have "lost and find offices" in every place — such as airports,
hotels,restaurants — and we choose to wait for the owner to come rather than
contact the owner. Why do you investigate the national conditions of Japan,
but do not respect ours? Third, China is one of the largest cashless payment
countries in the world, now in China, everyone uses mobile phones to pay, no
one will take cash out, so it is rare to lose your wallet in China. I hope you
could design an objective and fair experiment next time, and science magazine
can make an objective and fair report! THANK YOU!

------
zhongguoren
I am so angry and sad when I see this post. As a Chinese , i have to say ,
your way of texting is not " science ". you just notice the difference of
Japanese , why don't you notice ours ! You have damaged China's reputation!

------
bswbmb
One thing missing form the design is to go back and check the status of the
wallets. If most are just put in some lost & found boxes waiting for the owner
to come and claim, then a low reporting rate cannot be considered a measure of
honesty.

------
passerby101
I can see nothing but bias and innocence in this article.

MOST CHINESE PEOPLE DO NOT USE EMAIL TO CONTACT STRANGERS!

Last time I check Science is still a journal of "science". What happened to
change that? The entrenched bias towards Chinese ppl? Interesting.

------
Kevinzbchen
If there is a mobile number within the wallet, I will give a call, if there is
none then I will hand in the wallet to the police. It is hard to think about
emails though, email is probably only used to retained a forgotten password in
China

------
uestcdavid
It is such a ridiculuous research,the method is not reliable and scientifical
at all. And the paper reflects discriminate against chinese from the author.
However,how can this unscientifical paper published in science？what a fXXk

------
xiao-cyx
“Cultural Differences”?Oh,guys. Are you serious?And why would you make a
plastic bag pretend to be a wallet?Last year, the China Internet network
information center (cnnic) calculated that the usage rate of mailbox in China
was only 38.1%.So why don't you use WeChat?At least 900 million people in
China use WeChat.Even without WeChat, there must be a phone?China has 1.3
billion mobile phone users.In addition，In China,Lost-property office won't
actively contact owner commonly, because most lose property, do not have
identity information, even if have, also confirm very hard is owner himself,
because this is inferior to wait for the owner to come back.And with 1.4
billion people in China, of course you have to wait to find the owner.This
paper is really full of holes.Luckily,now I understand how is “science”
“justified”.

------
aigylfeng
The report rate should be also related to population density in that area. I
know there is someone who tried to exclude the effect of population density
and got a totally different result. Have you considered it in your work?

------
hongmi
If you don't already know, here is the link of the original data:

[https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/honesty](https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/honesty)

------
tindrum
There are too many flaws in this study, and the writter is a typical Mr Right.
So I won't join the ridiculous discussion.

I just want to ask how much does it cost to make such a low-quality paper be
published in the journal Science？

------
uestcdavid
It is such a ridiculuous research,the method is not reliable and scientifical
at all. And the paper reflects discriminate against chinese from the author.
However,how can this unscientifical paper published in science？

------
onyva
Funny. I’ve lost mine in Switzerland. Some cash, credit card and driver’s
license. Never heard anything back directly or from city’s lost and found.
Heard of many with similar experience, not to mention pick pocketing...

------
hongmi
If you don't know, here is the link to original data:

[https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/honesty](https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/honesty)

------
hahahayo
I want to say, it's just a transparent bag. I can't pick it up when I see it.
I just put it on the roadside and wait for the owner to come back and find it.
By the way, I'm Chinese.

------
warm3bear
so absurd，the SCIENCE's authority is out of sight ,First of all, Do u know
Chinese people seldom if ever use e-mill. Next , for Chinese condition ，One
has a wallet of 49 yuan and no important documents such as id card ，Ordinary
people will choose to bring it to the public of"lost and found" or forget this
thing ,everyone is busy.most people think that there is no important documents
lost,just 49yuan,so let it go,its doesn't matter, so please Learn about
China's national conditions ,thank u.

------
warm3bear
so absurd，the SCIENCE's authority is out of sight ,First of all, Do u know
Chinese people seldom if ever use e-mill. Next , for Chinese condition ，a
wallet of 49 yuan and no important documents such as id card ，Ordinary people
will choose to bring it to the public of"lost and found" or forget this thing
,everyone is busy.most people think that there is no important documents
lost,just 49yuan,so let it go,its doesn't matter, so please Learn about
China's national conditions ,thank u.

------
imaginaryuser
Honestly the ranking in figure 1 is ridiculous, as the method the authors
used. First of all, very few people uses emails nowadays. According to CNNIC
(China Internet Network Information Center), only 38% of chinese people still
uses emails, and even fewer of them utilises emails for contact use. Secondly
and the most importantly, there are lost and found Centers in China. These
organisations won’t contact owners of lost items. They usually wait for people
to come and ask, then confirm their identity. These two characteristics would
obviously affect the result. Thus I would suggest the authors to do a proper
cultural research before the investigation. Best wishes.

~~~
imaginaryuser
And wait... Your wallets were transparent business card cases...?! I may
understand that real wallets are expensive, but seriously, transparent
business card bags could be considered as junior students’ pencil bags here in
China.

------
EvaPan
Ridiculous research. Bad study design. The proportion of sample so-called
wallets (I will call them “unimportant things” due to their appearance) and
total population for each country is NOT the same, which is problematic. Also
this study doesn’t take the discrepancy of countries into account. For example
you noticed that Japan is “different” but you didn’t notice China, which you
have to admit. I don’t know if there exists discrimination here. Besides, I
wonder if the authors noticed something called LOST&FOUND office. Putting
wallets there can’t be defined as NOT HONEST. I also wonder why SCIENCE
published this paper when it has ridiculous biases.

------
Wenbin_Liz
The measure does not match Chinese situations. We have plenty way to find the
lost staff, not just go to policeoffice. I strongly doubt the accuracy of the
test result in China.

------
nickJustice
This is not scientific way to do the research, not considering culture
diversity at all.

As many people said, Chinese people do not use email at all. Some people like
my father, who asked the iPhone store to set up an apple id for him. Only 38%
people use email, and most of them just use it during the work time.

We are more likely to message people instead of emailing.

Second, we are told that do not directly contact the people's information on
their belonging. Because it might be a spam. Give it to the policeman or "lost
and found" is the right behavior.

Many people like me do respect Science, which is most authorized educational
magazine. So please retrieve this article!!

------
newviewworld
第一，中国人还是认得钱包的，不过你们那是钱包吗？感觉是刻意扔了不要的垃圾啊。第二，邮箱联系？那么古老的联系方式现在还存在？你们的世界那么落后啊？我也是刚听说。有手机么？有微信么？第三，不考虑文化差异，能做出这种研究结论的人能被称为科学家也是刷新了我们的价值观啊。第四，所谓科学杂志，就刊登这样的文章？是打自己的脸不？这个小编也快领盒饭了

------
XuAN_
What?? We Chinese don't use email except for work, we also have our own local
customs on how to find the owner. So how did you arrive at your conclusion???

------
qidongymt
Ridiculous research about the science on the society which without any culture
research...develop your little brain now,It's been 2019,not the 1029

------
krennic
Additionally, we rarely use mails to contact, we would like to use wechat or
phone. We usually handle the things we found to the police office near by.

------
XuAN_
What?? Chinese never use mail except for work, we also have our own local
condition for finding the owner. So how did you arrive at your conclusion???

------
HLLiu1
A potential possibility of why not including Japan is the result they found
differs significantly from the reality because of their way of measurements.
It seems that the authors concluded as “Cultural Differences” and decide not
to use data points of Japan. However The datapoints of India and China seem to
coincide with the authors’ hypothesis so they decide not to eliminate them and
publish in the journal. This is complete discrimination and I found this
extremely dishonest. Shame on the authors and Sciences Journal.

------
xxx111
It’s like the I drop a plastic bag,if you don’t give back to me, I will call
you a liar,ok?that’s fair enough?read it and speak carefully.

------
gjm11
Pretty expensive study -- unless I'm misunderstanding, it seems like they gave
away hundreds of thousands of dollars in these wallets.

~~~
LeonidasXIV
Depends on the amount of wallets being returned.

Also, the wallets have a cost too, so it is not only the equivalent of $13
being lost in some cases.

~~~
gjm11
The replies they sent to emails said "it's OK; please keep or donate the money
as you please".

They did in some cases (seven cities in the Czech Republic and Switzerland)
then drop by in person to try to retrieve the wallets, but (unless I
misunderstood) that's only about 1% of the wallets.

------
Cassandra1010
I’m Chinese. I noticed the researchers asked Chinese ppl to send email to
report loss. We rarely use email to communicate in our daily life. We use
Wechat ! I strongly recommend the researchers to do it again in China using
Wechat. It’s highly likely you’ll get different results. And — the plastic bag
used in this experiment doesn’t look like wallet at all. Anyway, if you do it
again using Wechat and the result changed significantly, it means the existing
studies ignored important factors.

------
jerrre
Had a lot of fun reading the names and shopping lists etc they chose for all
these countries, not sure why this always intrigues me...

------
sciisidiot
If you realized that Japanese has different culture, then you should do more
research on Chinese cultural difference before designing such a research with
deep bias and ignorance. Instead of wallet and email, most Chinese today use
Apps like Alipay, the convenient e-payment, and WeChat, the social networking
app on their mobile phone instead of the wallet (which in your test is more
like a trash bag）. Please do not take advantage of science to show you
discrimination and ignorance.

------
qianli1717
I believe one serious social investigation should base on certain degrees
understanding of the local culture and background. Regarding this study, it is
the usage of internet and especially email in China, the widely spread of the
lost and found office, the prove of returning the wallet equals to the honesty
of the nation. It is very disappointing that study not lack the basic
understanding appears in science which to my opinion is a great damage to the
reputation of Science.

------
zrandy
The methods used in this paper are not convincing contributing to the
conclusions. Also, I truly wonder the standard of SCIENCE.

------
janis1996
if it just give me a email address, I may really just put it to the
LOST&FOUND. I don't even use email, how can I think that is the best way to
find the owner? come on,2019, I just knew there really have countries widely
use email. if the study is about the usage of email, true enough! F5--
Search(honest)--replace to(use of email)

------
yMilssr
The statistical methods used by the authors of this article in statistics and
rankings are not adapted to the local situation and have problems with the
referential nature of integrity rankings. Is it really surprising that such an
article, which is dubious and likely to deepen prejudice against Asian
Americans, should be published in Science, the world's most authoritative
academic journal, in a somewhat odd way? Or is the reputation of the Chinese
worthless?

------
liuyd16
If the contact info is Wechat rather than email, then your result is that
Chinese are most honest peolple around the world???

------
woshinbderen
1\. Contact info only limits to the email, which is of little use in China.
2\. Returning the wallet is equalled to Civil honest by the author
arbitrarily. 3\. Passively returning the wallet is the way how Chinese perform
honesty. They wait for the owner coming to them, instead of searching for the
owner themselves. 4\. If knowing little about China, stop using the unfair
data judging China. 5\. So-called Science is nothing but discrimination in
this article.

------
emmaeileen
Who would use an email to contact to return a Wallet. We use phones or Webchat
in China. It’s 21th century, forget emails.

------
yepipi
仁者见仁智者见智！如果没有充分考察文化差异，单方面、想当然的将检测结果刊登，结果对于受检地区是不尊重的！我对这份检测结果合理性提出异议，对检测目的提出质疑。希望如果还有要把华夏儿女加入的检测，麻烦在检测之前能够去试着走近中国，看一看、听一听。

------
Eeeeeelein
They should probably know that citizens in China hardly use email to contact
the possessioner...Also, lost stuff is generally turned in in the lost and
found boxes or police stations in the vicinity. It is just me or is the
research a well designed political reference which is aimed at enhancing
certain unfair stereotypes? If the latter is the answer, those who took on the
research should NEVER claim themselves as scientists. Shame on them.

------
liuyd16
If the contact info is Wechat rather than email, then your result is Chinese
are most honest people around the world???

------
Silvermoon
What a ridiculous research. In China how many people usually use the email,
did you ever research this? You said Japan is different, then do you know how
many lost property offices are there, isn't China different? In fact, you
didn't want to do a academic at all, you only want a political propaganda,
right? Oh, I got an advice that in China the black race never suffer gun
shots, will you research this and reach a conclusion?

------
bigbrother988
Sorry, we don’t use email in China. We will leave stuffs those lost in police
office or lost and found place around.

------
janenius
Researchers may need to redesign this experiment. Methods used in this study
are lack of cross-culture validity.

------
1056015354
This is a completely ineffective experimental method. First of all, China is
very developed. Almost no one uses e-mail to communicate, but mainly uses
WeChat and telephone. Secondly, lost items in China, the police station and
the Lost and Found Center will not contact the owner, but it does not mean it
was taken away by others. Such junk articles can be published in the science
magazine, it is really shameful.

------
semon766
Am I the only one think the wallet looks more like a college open day goodie
bag thing than a serious wallet

------
AmyLeee
>Japan has a lot of small “police booths” where people can return lost
objects.

I must to say that in China we have more.

------
xxx111
It’s like the black peoples will never gotten shooting in China.You know
why?read it and speak carefully.

------
noire
Well... Most of us are likely to wait for the owner in situ or other
ways.Anyway I will not by email.

------
EricccccY
In China: 1\. Most people do NOT use email. They prefer to call or use Wechat.
2\. In China, institutions such as Lost&Found usually expect those who lost
their stuffs to come or simply call them rather than contacting them via email
because most people in China do NOT use email.

This ‘objective’ method really makes me laugh.

------
onespringday
Context differences really need to be taken into account if you are doing
research related to different counties.I don't know why the authors can only
see cultural/political differences in Japan but are blind to those differences
in China，given that China and Japan have lots in common

------
lawskiy
中国人他不用邮件交流啊，凭啥日本有自己的文化中国就没有呢。中国的失物招领处很少联系失主，为什么作者不考虑呢？到底是有多傲慢？14亿人口大国就没有自己的文化了？

------
xiongfei
The serious flaws in the experimental design made the feasibility of this
article seriously degraded. The cultural differences between countries and the
different definitions of “wallets” make this result seem ridiculous.
Stereotyped design, simple and rude analysis, no scientific value.

------
sesameee
I saw people get robbed in Paris. It would never happen in Beijing or in China

------
sesameee
I saw people got robbed in Paris. It would never happen in Beijing or in China

------
LaraDurant
If the researchers considered the special situation in Japan, why didn't they
reflect the situation in China as well? I doubt the different rates of usage
of e-mail are ignored deliberately.Anyway, Science shouldn't publish such a
reseach which isn't objective enough.

------
YIHANJ
So this is what a so-called TOP ACADEMIC PAPER does? The authors and editors
are just the same as unscrupulous and boring media reporters, desperate in
flubdub. The only reason for ur overclaim is arrogance and lack of basic
respect to culture,race and academic work. Shame on you.

------
Lexisandson
As a faculty in statistics and probability, I need to clarify this publication
is based on the most annoying and unbalanced experiment I have ever seen. The
reviewer and journal should be responsible for this mistake. It is obviously
related to trump politics strategy these days.

~~~
Lexisandson
Journals like science has no sense to publish such low quality stuff. It is
truly shocking.

------
Sailifar
I guess if the email address is replaced by Wechat number, Chinese will be at
the top of the list. Japanese culture can be taken into consideration while
Chinese cannot. Anyway, can research be done so arbitrarily and racially? Ah,
such a SCIENTIFIC SCIENCE!

------
Gloria23333
I always believe that the research should be based on the fairness so that I
hope you can do it without DISCRIMINATION!!! It just made me not want to read
the Science anymore and I will suspect the results of the others from now on.
Shame on you!

------
htk
The amount of pro-chinese spam here is having the opposite effect.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
_Dozens_ of new (a few hours or less) accounts, all saying the same thing.
That looks... rather suspicious. The scale is amazing.

I'd say someone is rather aggressively defensive.

~~~
NowAnti
Unfortunately, I am also one of the new accounts you said. As an ordinary
citizen of China, I basically don't visit this website. Because of this
unscientific unscientific and unfair article, I specifically registered an
account to comment. Many new accounts come based on the same reasons as me. I
am not proficient in English, this is from Google Translate.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
So you "basically don't visit this website". So how did this article come to
your attention? And to the attention of so many other Chinese who have never
commented here before?

You're not even going to Science Magazine to yell at them; you're coming to a
discussion on a completely different, unrelated site.

This sure looks like someone's orchestrating this response...

~~~
wecombo
It seems that holding an account registered since 2013 makes you proud enough
to say ironic words about new accounts. We are not native English speakers but
try to make our opinions heard ANYWHERE the article and the ridiculous
conclusion mentioned.

By the way, how do u know we have not sent emails to Science Magazine and
yelled at them?

------
zzjlanzi78
This is completely non-sense and ridiculous, as Chinese citizen, first of all
we don’t use email like you do and considering the huge amount of people the
method to test the civic honesty is never fair at the first place. Those
plastic bags could be easily cleaned by our street cleaner because it doesn’t
look like a wallet AT ALL! Secondly we use we chat, the test has never
considered China’s local customs, we have lost & found in every police station
and we have those police stations every twice a block. People could just put
the bag there! And why would any Chinese citizen want to keep a bag with only
that much of money? Each country has different type of culture and indeed we
are conservatives, a lot of us will not contact the owner if we can just give
them to the police station. This test is completely non sense and not
realistic.

------
Cassandra1010
I’m Chinese. We don’t use email in our daily life communication. We use Wechat
! Why don’t you try Wechat and see whether you’ll get the same results? If the
result changes a lot then it means existing studies ignored important social
factors.

------
votrepere
I thought Science is a rigorous and authoritative journal, once.

------
thistestsucks
Using Emails??? Sorry, China is too advanced for you test. :)

------
aries0108
Please don't talking rubbish in the name of science ！！

------
cclaugh12556
Even a 3 yrs old Chinese kid know the best way to return lost stuff is giving
it to a policeman nearby or returning center not by sending emails. How can
this kind of article which has no solid basis can be published!?

~~~
pinxue
哈哈，脑中回响起“我在马路边捡到一分钱，交到警察叔叔手里边……”

------
malachite2019
Wow, what a "Research"…… yet SCIENCE did publish it ?? So many factors being
selectively ignored by the author and the reviewers, just to "Prove" a biased
conclusion that chinese are unethical.

------
vincentvincent
Now thousands of Chineses have known how narrow you are.

------
Tyler111223
Don't you guys think that they really care about how reliable the method is?
They are just trying to put China to the bottom in the rank. That is how
western world does all the time. It is real shame.

------
maggieky
It left huge concern with me for its rather unreasonable experimental tools
and unbelievably arrogant assumption that China does not have lots&found
center. Don’t let ignorance blind your eyes.

------
YaoMing2
This kind of 'Science', let me disapointed.

------
jadon
In China,people do not connect with each other in e-mail. God, are you guys
from ancient?By the way, like japan do, we have similar situation that people
can get their lost things in return center

------
producercameron
Dude the research method is so casually decided wtf?

------
frestery
Why not test the civic intelligence of using chopsticks around the world? This
article really made my day of such unscientific research can really appeared
in the science. How ironic it is.

------
Sophia___
whose wallet could look like that? by the way we use wechat often and we
usually wait the owner to come back and fetch the thing... reply

------
asdf1a
oh, fack this research! u serious? why don't u run a research about how many
black people are killed by gun in China every year?

------
ccccarlsson
Do you dare to conduct a research comparing honesty of different races？ I
don't understand why you western guys manage to attack Chinese people so hard.
Also, shame on SCIENCE.

------
315571321
it's not suitable for Japanese cuz they dont call the police. However，it's
suitable for Chinese cuz they dont call police.

~~~
mojituka
Indeed, that’s the principle of science

------
zadalouis
It's a real disgrace to the academic world.

------
RhaegarTg
There is an old saying goes in China. 欲加其罪，何患无辞！

------
Joe1106
So do you want to publish a paper on the ranking of shootings in various
countries?Why not consider Chinese cultural customs?Biased
investigation,unacceptable!!! Thank you.

------
jas0nh
Email is totally old fashioned and out dated... Who the hell use email to
contact the owner despite the convenience of IM and phone calls? Won’t trust
Science anymore.

------
kimocean
It is unfair way to judge Chinese people. May be contract with Wechat will be
more useful. And China also have the certain place for people to find their
losting tings.

------
Luke_Young
why not take Japan into account? China also has its local condition. this
study can prove that Chinese seldom use emails, can prove that Chinese don't
regard your plastic bag as a wallet, can prove that China has more efficient
local police and "lost and found" which can help you find your losts. can
prove that the author is a prejudiced man and the Science is a discriminatory
journal, but has nothing to do with civic honesty.

------
emilyrou
Please do something real and write your research article according the real
data,now we millions chineses realise how foolish you are and not preciseness
you are.

------
lawskiy
凭啥日本就有自己的文化，中国就没有呢？14亿人口的大国几千年来是靠跪舔你们活下来的？滑天下之大稽¯\\_(ツ)_/¯。在中国做调查之前能不能先搞清楚国情再动手？
1\. 中国人很多人都有邮箱，但这个仅用来注册账号，传送文件，没谁会用这东西交流，大家用微信 2\. 中国的失物招领处几乎不会联系失主，都是等失主自己过来找

------
pmarreck
(Sarcastic comment about China here removed)

~~~
ppod
What is it about Chinese society that makes you say that? Not having a go
here, I legitimately know nothing about it. If stranger-trust is so low, what
societal branches does trust hang on? Is it family, business, political,
local..? Is it mediated through technology like WeChat?

~~~
Symmetry
There were a lot of reports in the Chinese news a while ago about people being
taken in by scammers that pretended to be injured, had the mark help them, and
then claimed that the mark's help proved they had a guilty conscious and was
responsible and owed them monetary reparations.

This sort of came to a head when a small child was run over and many
pedestrians passed without helping.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wang_Yue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wang_Yue)

So I'm imagining many Chinese people might be reluctant to return a wallet in
case it turns out to be some sort of scam.

------
YIHANJ
So this is what a so-called TOP ACADEMIC PAPER does? The authors and editors
are just the same as unscrupulous and boring media reporters, desperate in
flub-dub

------
belong
i thought Science is an academic rigour magazine, now i find it's a
discriminatory one. you know do a intial pilot test in Japan then why don't
you just do the same in China? you know what? it's your arrogance and
prejudice that make you wrong and you'd better correct that mistake and
apologize as soon as possible. it's funny to think that whether do you dare
come to the same conclusion on black

------
111113594
在一个母语非英语国家用英文资料测试诚实程度，联系方式为最不常用的email,且完全不考虑风土人情，得出了诚实程度倒数第一的结论，太荒谬了。我知道有人会翻译这段话，因为你们不是每个人都看得懂中文，就像不是每个中国人都可以读写英文一样。借用一下前面的评论
整个统计无逻辑，毫不严谨，偏见加上无知，双标就是这样。呵呵呵

------
Waynechung
Meaningless researches based on ridiculous method. Articles should be
conducted without any bias and discrimination, if not, then it's all nonsense.

------
itsfallin
Serious dude? This article published out at science?? Do you really know about
Chinese behaviors? Why should call the owner as the index? Serious again??

------
harrywww
That’s so ridiculous about this research.

------
csh1505
The bias has nothing to do with who dropped off at all. The designer of this
experiment should go back and read some books about Asian countries.

------
IRENECHINA
SCIENCE HAS NO BUSINESS WITH SCIENTIFIC

------
JohnnySun
It is a stupid designer, he did not think about the different culture. In
China people do not use mail to contact others, but mobile and wechat.

------
giant-foxxx
It was absolutely nonsense, for that China also has its own culture; Chinese
seldom use e-mail, they only contact each other via WECHAT and QQ!

------
JohnnySun
It is a stupid designer,he did not learn the cultures of these countries. In
China people do not contact others by mail, but mobile and wechat.

------
Ernie1
Your study is ridiculous, most people may not consider these as wallets, and
there are various ways to return, your metric is very unilateral.

------
Ernie1
Too young, too simple. You have bias in report so you will be accused. And I
advise that don't think it raining whenever you hear winds.

------
1805242943
中国也有自己的风俗文化，考虑日本而不考虑中国？什么垃圾报告，赶快倒闭吧您。

------
andreafowler
Bullshit The researcher has no idea of science He needs to study from primary
school again, if he has studied before Full of bullshit

------
bilibili2580
Typical Western politics correct.lol

------
Rickey_7
Typical Western politics correct.lol

------
1805242943
考虑日本的风俗文化，却不考虑中国的？这是什么垃圾学术文刊？赶快倒闭吧您

------
susyy
this study is not objective to Chinese. we are not used to using e-mail, we
prefer to use wechat or other social application. if we pick up a wallet, we
will send it to the police office instead of sending an e-mail. can this be
proved that we are not honesty? you even don't know the Chinese culture and
you are just defaming our reputation.

------
Niiii
Seriously? Released on Science? Anyone else in the world would be capable of
delivering a more reasonable study than this one.

------
Shirley123
Sir，you know nothing about China.

------
giant-foxxx
Chinese only contact with each other via WECHAT and QQ, and they also have
their own culture you discrimination ones!

------
janenius
Researchers may need to redesign this experiment since methods used in this
study are lack of cross-culture validity.

------
semon766
Am I the only one think the ‘wallet’ looks more like a college open day goodie
bag thing than a sane person’s wallet

------
lllll11111
在一个母语非英语国家用英文资料测试诚实程度，联系方式为最不常用的email,且完全不考虑风土人情，得出了诚实程度倒数第一的结论，太荒谬了。我知道有人会翻译这段话，因为你们不是每个人都看得懂中文，就像不是每个中国人都可以读写英文一样。

------
All3nCh
The wrong vision to judge China

------
bigbrother988
Sorry, we don’t use email in China. We will leave stuffs someone lost in
police office or lost and found office

------
Riya_Sinorasl
You say you’re SCIENCE？In such a unbelievable way to do research in an Asian
country with your own culture？

------
zhengchuan
i used the same method of data capture to finish my bachelor thesis in China

------
Susan12306
EXTREMELY UNFAIR to China!!

------
affsm
How can we believe Science when you do not conduct this survey in a scientific
way？That’s a pitty.

------
Nomu_xxx
the methodology is simply a laughing stalk for any educated human being

------
affsm
How can we believe Science when you don't even conduct this survey in a
scientific way？

------
jadon
In China, people do not connect with each other by e-mail. God, are you guys
from ancient?

------
jdjdjj
can't believe this shitty experiment is.design by Science

------
neilv
On smaller scales, this seems to be a popular experiment. I recall hearing, in
the popular press, related experiments on city neighborhoods and university
departments. (Of course, it's fodder for unfair prejudices and jokes about,
e.g., which department disproportionately attracts sociopaths.)

------
Waynechung
Shame on you, Science.

------
zhongguoren
if that is ture，why do so many people working with Chinese？

------
viky1001
The statistical method does not take into account the actual situation in
China.

------
wei5788juan
no deap research is not good research. the reseach like this without logic is
to prove the Press stupid? Anyway, I almost like donot use email privately,
and belive our country police will deal with it well.

------
ChristopherJoel
有趣的逻辑，作者真是睿智（手动狗头护体）

~~~
RhaegarTg
啊哈哈哈哈哈哈哈是不是被梓泉叫来的

------
vincentvincent
This research proves the author's prejudice and disrespect of China.

------
vincentvincent
This reserch proves the author's prejudice and disrespect of China.

------
ShenF
Vous êtes des cons!

------
emapandy
SCIENCE is not scientific at all for publishing this kind of bull shit

------
XinyuCen
SCIENCE is not scientific at all for publishing this kind of article

------
1111111111yyy
a ridiculous research about cross cultural behavior that did not give a poop
about cultural factors. To the researchers and SCIENCE： please do not look
down upon your own reputation.

------
rexchen96
来自BB。要创建账号才能留言，不想给这么个智障网站添人气，但回想一下为人家服务器添加烤验助一分力也是好的，于是回来留这么一条言。

------
wang_0932
different countries have their own culture, how to remove the difference to
ensure the result. I don't believe at all. it can be delivered in SCIENCE. is
it science?

------
cassie34
The method is very ridiculous, why this paper can be see there?

------
xiaoxiaoK
我就来问一问，哪里有傲慢与偏见买？

------
Eeeeeelein
Just how Science get this kind of biased work published?

------
sssdddfff
So wired way for Chinese who never find people in email

------
jisper
this article is hilarious and ridiculous

------
mattsucoop
Unbelievable! When did academic research become so lax?

------
XinyuCen
Please, now the SCIENCE is not scientific at all.

------
Nomu_xxx
this is simply bias against Chinese

------
chuchuu
Mate this is rediculous! You guys are racist!

------
Hansz
fake paper,with no regard for the special situation in China.Almost no Chinese
use email.It is out of date.

------
ck8656
stupidest experiment of 2019

------
m9rrrrr
中华人民共和国万岁

------
m9rrrrr
中国万岁！！

------
clareSHA
Science发表这样的论文不是为了科学而是用来吸引眼球的吧？stupid

------
linlan
You don’t know me,why you judge me?

------
AdamWange
that text is ridiculous!

------
joyce9282
Did Trump pay for this article? This article produces no academic value but
would be used as a political weapon against certain country.

When I looked at the methodology, it has tons of thousands of holes. For
example, only contact by email is counted as valid, what about countries that
do not use email frequently? Does the wallet look like a wallet in the
country?

This is so ridiculous that Science is publishing this type of nonsense
research!

------
FHSWar
this is extremely unfair China as a country has its own culture just like
Japan does!

------
Susan12306
WTF?! lower than India ???? BS

------
lilechen
incorrect conclusion

------
jsjja
Nonsense！Shame on Science

------
nicolasito888
shame on science！

------
cellardoor125
WTF

------
sonnyblarney
I don't know why people are so cynical, the results are generally what I would
have imagined.

Most interesting - the $13/$100 difference.

Notice that in the US and UK, the 'return rate' goes way up when there's $100
in the wallet, but when only $13 it's quite low.

In Switzerland and Sweden, it's high even for $13.

I think there might be a difference between 'core conscientiousness' and
'meaningful conscientiousness'.

In Sweden and Switzerland, it's a matter of propriety to 'return the wallet'.
It's appropriate behaviour. They have smaller, tighter communities, you may
even know the person. So they 'just do the right thing' because it doesn't
matter what's in the wallet.

In the US/UK culture the thinking might be $13 - nobody is care, it's not
worth the hassle to report. But as soon as there's money, then it becomes a
material matter of conscientiousness, i.e. 'people will miss $100, it's worth
the effort to report it'.

I think $13 is just not really enough money, not that much different from $0.
It's almost change.

$100 is a nice, meaningful threshold.

Finally, China ... ouch.

Also, the results are perfectly correlated with transparency international
index [1]

It's interesting because it may be that 'corruption' is not just a systematic
issue in governance, but it may be correlated or predicted with even more
basic levels of civic conscientiousness, as measured by tests such as this.

[1]
[https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018](https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018)

~~~
bbs787
I think the contents of the wallet are too much like junk without the money.
Some business cards, a grocery list and a key in a transparent wallet. To me
that's almost as junk as finding some fliers and I might think somebody has
just thrown it away as litter and $13 is like lunch money. So it has to has
$100 so I think "they might want this".

If it was a regular wallet full of useful cards, perhaps some sentimental
things like photos etc. then I'd want to get it back to them regardless of
whether it contained some cash. I think this experiment might work better with
a backpack or a mobile phone.

~~~
woah
The description of the wallet does make it sound like garbage. They probably
should have used a higher quality (if well-worn) wallet in the prevailing
local style. Lots of issues with this study design in general.

~~~
kalleboo
Doesn't that just make the results even more interesting? 60+% of "garbage"
got returned in Sweden! Why would people return garbage?

------
kazinator
Returning a wallet is just "honesty", not "civic honesty".

"Civic honesty" is, oh, finding five dollars and declaring it as income on
your next tax return.

civic: "of or relating to a citizen, a city, citizenship, or community
affairs" (merriam-webster).

~~~
johnfactorial
The study was specifically careful to make the wallet appear to have been lost
by a member of the local community. Returning the wallet is an act of civic
honesty as it relates to helping someone who is essentially a member of the
same community, someone arguably bound by the same social contract as the
person given the "lost" wallet.

~~~
kazinator
Interesting. Last time I returned a lost wallet, it was to New Jersey (I'm on
Canada's West coast, where this was found). People will return wallets from
outside of their community. It seems odd to restrict them that way and then
ascribe the motivation to some "civic" reasoning.

------
chuchuu
Mate this is rediculous!

------
clareSHA
Stupid Science,居然发这种充满偏见的恶心研究。您是传播科学来的还是吸引眼球来的？

------
oracel
动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of
1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle
大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party
system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai
Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎
Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權
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Johannes1900
you are racist,it's not correct and discriminatory.

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S88risingW
The difference between China and Europe are huge.Email is useless in
China.This research is soooooo funny!!!!

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giant-foxxx
It's absolutely nonsense!

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heweiping
What a stupid article！I don't even want to admit it's a research. We use
WeChat much more than email OK？

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fsl870104
仁者见仁智者见智！如果没有充分考察文化差异，单方面、想当然的将检测结果刊登，结果对于受检地区是不尊重的！我对这份检测结果合理性提出异议，对检测目的提出质疑。希望如果还有要把华夏儿女加入的检测，麻烦在检测之前能够去试着走近中国，看一看、听一听。

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nbsci
Please use the 'Real' wallet first. How a reserch use the method look like
primitive society. Cleaning staff just see a trash and clean it

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sciencebullshit
This is ridiculous.The auther knows nothing about China. This is racism!
Science should not accept this kind of paper! What were the reviewers doing?!

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lucermrally
If u respect the diversity, then use wechat or phone number as the contact. No
one in China use Email anymore. It is a ancient tool for uncivilized people.

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amandawritter
The author failed to think through the Chinese habits and cultures, and
ridiculously believe that a small plastic bag filled with English information
would be considered as wallet!

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Johannes1900
you are racist,you have not considered the reality of different nations，it is
not correct and discriminatory.

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Samemm
我认为这个测试存在多处可圈可点的地方。1:就很多中国人而言，实验中用到的所谓钱包更像是可以被回收的东西……2:在国内QQ
微信普及率极高的情况下，邮箱的存在逐渐无意义，用这种已经几乎被淘汰的方式来作为拾金不昧的证据实在是靠不住。3:想要得到真正的测试结果，抽样调查是不足以了解人性的，这需要融入不同的社会中，去观察，去体会，而不是站在一个道德制高点来评判其他社会如何如何。个人理解，如有相同，纯属巧合。

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wechatisbest
are you stupid？people in China do not like using mail. if you leverage
wechat，all the other countries will be the worst！

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l472936620
1\. The sample size is insufficient and the specific sampling method is
controversial; 2. How could SCIENCE journals allows such an imprecise article
to be published? 3. China and Japan should not be treated differently in this
absurd investigation.

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pinxue
阿联：population 9.70M, examples 400 英国：population 65.10M, examples 1132
美国：population 329.25M, examples 1000 中国：population 1384.68M, examples 400 ??
shouldn't be 4000? Japan is special, China is not because it fits the pre-
setting hypothesis. It is racist!

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lynnbest
不好意思，我们不常用邮箱，我们用微信。另外我们捡到东西一般都送到失物招领中心好吗？yes, I know u maybe hardly understand
Chinese, as more than half of People cannot understand English!So why u use
ENGLISH as the testing language?And also Use Email as the only valid
way??Chinese never use email as a daily contacting tools!!

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andreafowler
Bullshit The researcher has no idea of science Full of bullshit

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Kukki
Japan has its own basic condition,so you mean that China don't have?Every
country has different basic condition,how can you sure that your experiments
are fair??Do you have any tightly standard??? IS THIS YOUR SCIENCE CLAIM??? If
you can't be fair,I recommend that you can resign as a scientist.To prevent
science from being stigmatized.Thank you for your cooperation:)

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hyoukakaka
也就是中国人能这么善良了，理解你有文化差异，还给你发邮件，你倒好，不管中国人民有没有文化差异，得出这么个结论？还他妈civic
honesty？一副西方中心主义和种族主义的嘴脸，拜托小王子小公主们收了神通，好好学点文化，别丢人现眼了。这文章是一坨屎。I notice there
were still some Chinese people kindly took your culture in consideration and
actively sent mails. Sadly you guys ignored the cultural difference and made
such a conclusion. I feel nothing but arrogance from Western centralists, or
maybe even racists. Shame on you. Shame on Science. 恶毒的话我就不说了

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iii444uuu
Are you sure you want to contact the owner via email in China in 2019? Do you
know American Civil War is over?

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whitneyw
I really don't think the research method is scientific.It is totally wrong and
absurd.It is not Science but a joke.

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ljmKimi66511
I was totally shock why this kind of racism and stupid paper would published!
Only contains highly Biased data analysis method and ridiculous testing model.
When you try to make such a survey in a country, please at least try to figure
out what relevant data you should use. Firstly, the editors are totally stupid
to use email to reflect so-called “honest”, most of Chinese only use more
efficient and popular app such like We-chat. Moreover, when normal people pick
up a wallet at hotel or street , them would just give it to the lobby or the
police station. Who will send a email to say “ Hey, you lost something come
and get???” How does this process even make sense in a 1.6 billion country?
And Last But Not Least, WTF of saying that Japanese they are test free because
their police station is..??? What are the writers trying to imply???? Totally
shit!

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uridiot
You're really ignorant and terrible. Would you please go away with your
prejudice against China? Can any idiot be a "scholar" now? Do you know how
many people can be misled by an article like yours that doesn't have a
scientific basis?

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linc0214
As a Chinese, I have n ever imagined such a study should have been published
on SCIENCE. HONEST saying, I presume honesty should not be judged by just a
WALLET TEST, this method, obviously in a Chinese view, is more like a child,
out of prejudice, holding a GUN against some specific groups. Not to mention
about the WALLET involved is quite far from common. Wallet we used to see is
in black or brown and made of leather instead of plastic, and Chinese would
hand in the lost wallet to the police station if we can't contact the owner.
Besides, we can't draw a conclusion only from employee's reaction to lost
wallets. If so, this study has no consideration about the population
classification such as age and education level. Lastly, I am obliged to stress
two points. 1, Chinese don't even never use email to contact somebody. 2,
Overwhelming majority of Chinese don't carry a wallet on. Wondering why, go
and ask Jack Ma and Pony Ma.

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Sophia___
good reply

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linc0214
Rpeat:As a Chinese, I have n ever imagined such a study should have been
published on SCIENCE. HONEST saying, I presume honesty should not be judged by
just a WALLET TEST, this method, obviously in a Chinese view, is more like a
child, out of prejudice, holding a GUN against some specific groups. Not to
mention about the WALLET involved is quite far from common. Wallet we used to
see is in black or brown and made of leather instead of plastic, and Chinese
would hand in the lost wallet to the police station if we can't contact the
owner. Besides, we can't draw a conclusion only from employee's reaction to
lost wallets. If so, this study has no consideration about the population
classification such as age and education level. Lastly, I am obliged to stress
two points. 1, Chinese don't even never use email to contact somebody. 2,
Overwhelming majority of Chinese don't carry a wallet on. Wondering why, go
and ask Jack Ma and Pony Ma.

~~~
semon766
Totally agree. I stop using wallet for two years already. For some rare cases
that I need coins, strangers are very kind to me and willing to help. If the
amount is substantial I’ll pay them with WeChat. And usually people are so
kind they just give me their spare changes because everyone has this kind of
headache at some points of time. Besides, there have been a few cases when I
need coins for tube and the kind strangers gave me more than I asked for and
didn’t ask me to pay back. In most parts of China, even parking lots can be
paid with phone. Despite all these, there are so many merits in any living
soul on Earth, I’m wondering if this can EVEN be explained and gauged by
science.

