The researcher supposes a correlation between people giving intentional wrong dot counts for money and hypothetical “moral doctors” whom of course do not “cheat” like the dot counters.

The FALLACY is one of inappropriate analogy because while the doctor knows he will intentionally cause harm for cheating, the dot counters cannot cause any real harm in their cheating.

Another lose for poorly executed experimental psychology, and another win for logical reasoning…

It seems to me that the cheating and so on had less to do with the perception of whether the sunglasses were real or fake, and might have had more to do with expectation pathways having been triggered.

Being given a gift might engender positive emotions and thus result in more honest responses. A “fake” must be a “fake” of something “real” and thus can reasonably be assumed to be of lesser value than the “real.” Being given a gift of implied reduced value may be the cause of the increased tendency to cheat rather than the person feeling like a cheat by wearing the glasses.

Try offering something other than glasses of implied value and something of implied “reduced value” (knock-off, refurb, or slightly imperpect) and see if the results are the same. Then offer something of low perceived value (real but cheap) and something of high perceived value (real and expensive) and measure the results.

A critique of the method and conclusion – not of the hypothesis and results.