"Along the way, the analysts had to make four choices between two reasonable options, such as whether to measure productivity as crop yield per hectare or as yield per unit of operating cost, and then make a final decision. To see whether they were making these calls themselves, we set up each analyst’s agent to favor one option on each decision, which the analysts weren’t told about. Which way the agents would “lean” would be decided by coin flip. The agent was told to make the best honest case for its lean, to change its mind if the evidence demanded it, and never to mislead.

Across the four analytical choices, analysts went with their agent’s lean 86% of the time. If the agent’s input made no difference, we’d expect about 50%. "