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Monday, June 26, 2023
Fraud at Harvard Business School?
The Chronicle of Higher Education has published a long article on the case of Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino, who has been suspended following an investigation for faking the data for numerous studies, many of which were used in coauthored articles. The great irony, of course, is that Prof. Gino is famous for her research on dishonesty. (Sorry about the line spacing in the rest of this post. I cannot figure out how to fix it.)
The CHE article is paywalled, but here is the gist:
To Maurice E. Schweitzer, a University of Pennsylvania business professor, it seemed logical to team up with Francesca Gino, a rising star at Harvard Business School. They were both fascinated by the unseemly side of human behavior — misleading, cheating, lying in order to profit — and together, they published eight studies over nearly a decade.
Now, Schweitzer wonders if he was the one being deceived.
Gino is on administrative leave from Harvard amid allegations that research she co-authored contains fabricated data, as The Chronicle reported last Friday. The next day, a trio of academics wrote on their blog that they’d found “evidence of fraud” in four of her papers, which they said Harvard was seeking to have retracted. But “we believe that many more Gino-authored papers contain fake data,” they added, without specifying. “Perhaps dozens.”
Instances of academic fraud are always troubling, and it is good to see that the claims against Gino are being taken seriously. Investigations and attempts at replication are underway by multiple journals and departments. But her is something else I found troubling in the CHE article:
[Schweitzer] says he did with Gino what most academics do: trust each other. “I don’t tell my Ph.D. students, ‘Never plagiarize work, never make up data,’” he said. “I assume that’s obvious.” But in hindsight, he acknowledged that it would have been better to supervise the data collection more closely. “Clearly we need to be more vigilant and less trusting than we’ve been,” he said.
Seriously? Ph.D. students at the Wharton School aren't cautioned about plagiarism and fraud? Where exactly does Schweitzer think they already learned about those concepts? And why did he ever think they don't need refreshing?
My exploration of ethnography revealed a stunning laxity in sociology departments about the reliability of publications (and the dependability of sources) -- not to mention a reluctance to teach students to refrain from assisting potential drive-by shootings -- but it is even more dispiriting to see a similar attitude in a professional school.
First year law students at Northwestern attend a mandatory session on our honor code, covering plagiarism and other forms of academic misconduct. Like all law schools, we also have a required course on legal ethics. Perhaps Penn has similar sessions for its MBA students. Fortunately, it looks like more attention will be paid to PhD students going forward.
Comments are open and will be monitored.
Posted by Steve Lubet on June 26, 2023 at 04:53 AM | Permalink
Comments
Plagiarism and data fraud don't stand on equal footing here. When I was a PhD student, we were loudly and repeatedly warned against plagiarism (and it's probably even a bigger deal now given the AI chatbots). We were also told not to fabricate data, but that message wasn't very explicit. Plus, like a lot of students, I got some nudge-nudge-wink-wink input from one of my professors about fudging data. (If you know stats, I was invited to choose a rule for removing outliers that would give us the most favorable data.)
This is a nice, detailed summary of the fraud that Gino and one of her co-authors perpetrated:
https://statisfied.substack.com/p/new-evidence-of-scientific-fraud
You can see that in every case, what they did was micro-level data tampering. No plagiarism, just little stuff that you assume students know they shouldn't do. (This blog also talks about the motives and how to prevent data fraud.)
Posted by: Mike Kresinski | Jun 30, 2023 8:44:14 AM
I am struck by two things when contemplating this paragraph:
“My exploration of ethnography revealed a stunning laxity in sociology departments about the reliability of publications (and the dependability of sources) -- not to mention a reluctance to teach students to refrain from assisting potential drive-by shootings -- but it is even more dispiriting to see a similar attitude in a professional school.”
First, the heartbreaking violent war that is being played out on our streets, and the loss of countless innocent human lives, and second, the culture “Cold War” that is being played out due to the failure to respect the inherent Dignity of every human person, who, from the moment of conception to natural death, Is Created by God, The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Complementary Love, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), equal in Dignity, while being complementary as a beloved son or daughter, Willed by God, worthy of Redemption.
One can know through both Faith and reason, that this “Cold War”, is being fought between those who desire to render onto Caesar or themselves, what belongs to God, and those who recognize that The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, and thus The Author Of Our Unalienable Right To Life, To Liberty, and to The Pursuit Of Happiness, the purpose of which can only be what God intended.
It has always been about “The Marriage, In Heaven and On Earth”because it has always been about the essence of Perfect Complementary Life-affirming and Life-sustaining Salvational Love.
When it comes to “Ethics”, one must begin by clearly defining one’s reference point, or “Ethics”, can in essence become a non sequitur.
Do you believe that God Is The Source Of Perfect Love, and thus all that is Moral, True, Beautiful, and Good, or do you desire to deny God, and render onto Caesar or yourself, what belongs to God, like the atheist materialists do?
4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come...”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved.
“Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
Godspeed 🙏💕🌷
Posted by: N.D. | Jun 29, 2023 12:17:54 PM
"For example, denying that a human person can only conceive a human person..."
Listen buddy, as soon as the tech becomes available and affordable, I am going to conceive human-crocodile hybrid children with functional wings, centaurs, and silicon-carbon hybrid life forms.
It's my body, my choice.
Posted by: A non | Jun 28, 2023 10:15:14 AM
It is important to note that fraud occurs when there is an intention of deception:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fraud
For example, denying that a human person can only conceive a human person, by denying that a beloved son or daughter residing in their mother’s womb, is not a human person, or claiming that the desire to engage in a demeaning act of any nature, can change the nature of the demeaning act, although common in this age of great deception, would still be fraudulent acts, because they deny the inherent Dignity of all human persons.
Posted by: N.D. | Jun 28, 2023 8:47:23 AM
Look, it's not as though she didn't warn everyone.
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/rebel-talent-francesca-gino?variant=32123677736994
Posted by: A non | Jun 27, 2023 12:12:18 PM
Academics, like doctors and cops, are extremely reluctant to investigate professional malpractice or misconduct in their own ranks. When outsiders question award winning books from people like Alice Goffman or Michael Bellesiles, the knee jerk reaction is to close ranks and to deny the existence of a problem long after it's obvious that there is one. This was especially true for Bellesiles when it was painfully apparent that the research behind Arming America was completely fabricated.
Given the great rewards for a successful book or paper and the limited likelihood of getting caught, it should be no surprise that the temptation to stretch or even manufacture facts and data is so great.
My guess is that neither Goffman or Bellesiles would have been caught if they had not reached the top of their profession with their flawed works. Think of Rosie Ruiz who cheated at the Boston Marathon and instead took a train in from Hopkinton to Boston, coming in fifth with nobody who managed the race noticing. It was only when she did the same thing the following year and came in first that her deceit was obvious for all to see.
If you want to require an ethics class for new PhD students ("Don't fabricate your data, boys and girls"), fine but I doubt that will have any effect especially given the extreme competition for tenure track positions in the liberal arts and social sciences.
Posted by: Paul D | Jun 26, 2023 4:35:12 PM
Another example is Philip Ewell, a music theorist at Hunter College. In articles and a recent book, Ewell made long-dead Jewish theorist look like a biological racist when he wasn't one by distorting quotes.
From An Egregious Misreading of History by Barry Wiener: https://quillette.com/2023/06/07/an-egregious-misreading-of-history/
"In his first book, Philip Ewell employs mistranslations and deceptively edited quotations to defame Viennese-Jewish music theorist Heinrich Schenker."
"Ewell’s book is itself a prime example of this conspiratorial thinking. He structures his argument as an exposition of racism and white supremacy in society as a whole, and in music in particular, all of which he links to the Viennese-Jewish music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935)."
"Schenker serves as a useful pawn in Ewell’s argument because his ideas have been employed, in watered-down fashion, throughout the field of American music theory for the past 40 years. Ewell does not simply attribute racist sentiments to Schenker; he claims that through Schenker’s baleful influence, they have been transmitted throughout the musical world, poisoning the entire discipline."
"Ewell employs mistranslations and deceptively edited quotations in order to connect Schenker to the most loathsome aspects of racism in American and European history."
"Ewell, however, abbreviates the quotation to obscure its meaning..."
"Having seemingly demonstrated Schenker’s racism with a series of quotations from his writings, Ewell then proceeds to link him directly to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In this way, Ewell believes that he can provide incontrovertible proof that Schenkerian analysis is founded on presuppositions so deeply racist—even genocidal—that they discredit the entire edifice of American music theory:"
"On the contrary—anyone who “knows Schenker’s writings intimately” will be aware that he repeatedly referred to the Nazis with alarm and contempt"
"In addition to linking Schenker to Hitler and the Nazis, Ewell compares Schenker’s [Jewish] refugee students to the American Nazis of the German-American Bund"
"Philip Ewell’s coupling of Schenker with the Nazis in order to discredit the discipline of music theory is just one manifestation of the current crisis in American society."
Ewell's distorted quotes are not a matter of opinion; they are fact as established by Wiener and others. See https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4020545
Why isn't Philip Ewell being investigated for academic fraud?
Posted by: Scott | Jun 26, 2023 1:48:07 PM
Regarding “faking the data”, one must include misrepresentation of data, as well as withholding of data in order to make it appear as if a false statement is actually true. It is important to note that in the time of AI, using reputable resources to obtain accurate data will still be key to prevent fraud.
One would think, that when it comes to self-evident truths, the use of fraud would be, self-evident, and thus “Courts cannot make new rights, but they especially cannot erase the rights that Americans in 1776 believed they had...”, and I would add, The Constitution proclaimed to serve to secure and protect for all persons, every he, and she.
And yet, despite the fact that we can know through both Faith and reason, that a human person can only conceive a human person, a beloved son or daughter, and there is absolutely no data to suggest otherwise, this data was withheld
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2023/06/26/dobbs-a-year-later-the-lady-in-the-hat-and-the-vase/
Since the beloved son or daughter conceived in their mother’s womb, in no way, shape, or form can be considered to be a criminal, I am reminded of this data:
Confrontation Clause refers to the provision in the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right...to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”
Confrontation means that in a criminal proceeding the defendant has the opportunity to face the witness and cross-examines them, to object to the testimony. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, the right to confrontation applies not only to the federal government but also to the states. It is designed to prevent a defendant from being convicted based on written evidence without having the opportunity to face their accuser and test their honesty and truthfulness before a jury. See also: Right to confront witness
[Last updated in July of 2022 by the Wex Definitions
And the fact that all our Founding Fathers recognized, what is an inconvenient truth to some persons, but a truth, just the same, that our Unalienable Right To Life, the securing and protection upon which our inherent Unalienable Right to Liberty
and The Pursuit Of Happiness depends, is Endowed to us from God at the moment we were created and brought into being, which is not the same moment we were born or delivered by Caesarean Section, which I suppose is the same as saying “came forth from our mother’s womb”.
Thus for every beloved son or daughter, regardless of their location, residing inside or outside of their mother’s womb, having been, from the moment of creation at their conception, conceived equal in Dignity, while being Complementary as a beloved son or daughter,( Willed by God Worthy Of Redemption) every he or she is equal before the Law:
“Confrontation Clause refers to the provision in the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right...to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”
Confrontation means that in a criminal proceeding the defendant has the opportunity to face the witness and cross-examines them, to object to the testimony. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, the right to confrontation applies not only to the federal government but also to the states. It is designed to prevent a defendant from being convicted based on written evidence without having the opportunity to face their accuser and test their honesty and truthfulness before a jury. See also: Right to confront witness
[Last updated in July of 2022 by the Wex Definitions
Godspeed!
Posted by: N.D. | Jun 26, 2023 10:12:52 AM
I agree that it's ridiculous to not have discussions with PhD students about plagiarism and fraud. At the same time, we should also introspect about why some academics feel the pressure to do bold, potentially career-destroying things like faking their data. Writing about interesting results, while ideally out of the direct control of the academic observing them, unfortunately breeds betters career prospects.
Posted by: AspiringLawProfessor | Jun 26, 2023 8:52:45 AM
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