It's important to note that this study focuses on data from 15-year-olds taking a math test.
I assert that drawing broad conclusions based on that sample is suspect and may be, in fact, bullshit itself.
This is perfectly fine. Not all fields have the luxury of perfectly controlled lab experiments. If we applied the methodological discipline of experimental physics to social sciences, we might as well give up now.
In the abstract they say:
"Despite this being a well-known and widespread social phenomenon, relatively few large-scale empirical studies have been conducted into this issue. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by examining teenagers’ propensity to claim expertise in three mathematics constructs that do not really exist."
"we find substantial differences in young people’s tendency to bullshit across countries, genders and socio-economic groups"
"Together this provides important new insight into who bullshitters are and the type of survey responses that they provide."
In the conclusions they say:
"There are of course limitations to this study, and many issues on the topic of bullshitting that remain unexplored. First, the PISA data analysed are cross-sectional rather than longitudinal. We therefore do not know whether bullshitting is a stable trait that can be consistently observed for an individual over time, or if it is something that changes with age (and the factors associated with such change)."
Their strongest claim appears to be: "Despite these limitations, we believe this paper has started to open an important new area of social science research"
Bullshit!
The authors wrote an article entitled "Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives?"
That's the title of the piece. Not "some possibly generalizable observations about the behavior of 15 year olds"
Sure, the paper's contents contain the massive CAVEAT EMPTORs, but that's exactly how bullshit works in academic writing.
Bold titles, sweeping statements in introductions and conclusions. But enough profuse caveats sprinkled around that you can always say to anyone who takes a closer look "no see I mentioned exactly what I meant on page N"...
As an American, I am so disgusted by lies that I refused to bullshit my kids about Santa Claus. I informed them that it was utter bullshit but that they were not to ever tell other kids the truth because that was between them and their parents. It really gave my kids an entirely different perspective on American culture and the mass insanity (however benign it is considered) that entire cultures can adopt as the status quo.
Personally I felt that weaving an absurd yarn about something so important for the overall culture in general and for the kids in particular was only going to damage my credibility with my kids later when they finally learned the truth, that truth being that I had foisted a ridiculous lie upon them since before they could remember.
It is my conclusion that the vast majority of what people consider their precious traditions are nothing more than excuses to continue to act badly in the face of a lack of critical thinking.
It's a recognized problem in psychology that much research is the study of college undergrads, because they're available for free. More recently, there's the use of Mechanical Turk for studies, which means the population studied is people really desperate to work for peanuts.
Now a study of job applicants... that would be more interesting.