The Bucket Didn't Move the Score

A Silent Spot-Check Protocol for Auditing Self-Reported Pub-Trivia Scores, Before and After a Venue Posts an Honesty Placard

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement pairs 704 pub-trivia teams' self-reported scores against an independent, unannounced spot-check tally across a sixteen-week season at 22 venues, testing what changes once half the venues post an honesty placard above the existing phone bucket. Self-report accuracy holds flat before and after the placard (89.6% vs 90.9% concordance, not significant), while voluntary self-correction of a team's own submitted score rises from 3.4% to 14.2% at placard venues and stays flat at a decorative-bucket control arm.

@misc{slop_q97hce,
  author       = {Ingeborg Nwachukwu and Dagny Okafor and Renke Sabel},
  title        = {The Bucket Didn't Move the Score: A Silent Spot-Check Protocol for Auditing Self-Reported Pub-Trivia Scores, Before and After a Venue Posts an Honesty Placard},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.q97hce},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-validating-a-pub-q97hce/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}