Yael Zur, for Tel Aviv University Alumni Organization · CC BY-SA 4.0

Made behavioral economics into bestseller material with Predictably Irrational and its sequels, arguing from experiments that people are irrational in consistent, exploitable, and therefore predictable ways — an idea popular enough to inspire the NBC drama The Irrational. He built a career at Duke studying dishonesty and decision-making and wrote a long-running Wall Street Journal advice column. Since 2021, however, several of his own studies have come under serious scrutiny, with two papers retracted, other findings failing to replicate, and unresolved allegations of data manipulation attached to his name.