is the hawthorne effect real 
while the hawthorne effect is taught in business schools and sociology courses around the world recent scholarship has begun to question its validity according to scientific american out of the first three original experiments only one showed improved productivity the second found no improved productivity and in the third productivity actually worsened what is suspicious is that the sponsors of the study ordered the destruction of all data including everything that had been sent to mit and for no report to be written when the original data finally did resurface several scholars were able to debunk the initial findings 1 additionally modern attempts to replicate the hawthorne effect have been inconclusive 6 only seven out of 40 such studies found any evidence of the effect 1