Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Stats Science

More Business School Researchers Accused of Fabricated Findings (msn.com) 30

June, 2023: "Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings."

November, 2024: "The Business-School Scandal That Just Keeps Getting Bigger." A senior editor at the Atlantic raises the possibility of systemic dishonesty-rewarding incentives where "a study must be even flashier than all the other flashy findings if its authors want to stand out," writing that "More than a year since all of this began, the evidence of fraud has only multiplied."

And the suspect isn't just Francesca Gino, a Harvard Business School professor. One person deeply affected by all this is Gino's co-author, a business school professor from the University of California at Berkeley — Juliana Schroeder — who launched an audit of all 138 studies conducted by Francesca Gino (called "The Many Coauthors Project"): Gino was accused of faking numbers in four published papers. Just days into her digging, Schroeder uncovered another paper that appeared to be affected — and it was one that she herself had helped write... The other main contributor was Alison Wood Brooks, a young professor and colleague of Gino's at Harvard Business School.... If Brooks did conduct this work and oversee its data, then Schroeder's audit had produced a dire twist. The Many Co-Authors Project was meant to suss out Gino's suspect work, and quarantine it from the rest... But now, to all appearances, Schroeder had uncovered crooked data that apparently weren't linked to Gino.... Like so many other scientific scandals, the one Schroeder had identified quickly sank into a swamp of closed-door reviews and taciturn committees. Schroeder says that Harvard Business School declined to investigate her evidence of data-tampering, citing a policy of not responding to allegations made more than six years after the misconduct is said to have occurred...

In the course of scouting out the edges of the cheating scandal in her field, Schroeder had uncovered yet another case of seeming science fraud. And this time, she'd blown the whistle on herself. That stunning revelation, unaccompanied by any posts on social media, had arrived in a muffled update to the Many Co-Authors Project website. Schroeder announced that she'd found "an issue" with one more paper that she'd produced with Gino... [Schroeder] said that the source of the error wasn't her. Her research assistants on the project may have caused the problem; Schroeder wonders if they got confused...

What feels out of reach is not so much the truth of any set of allegations, but their consequences. Gino has been placed on administrative leave, but in many other instances of suspected fraud, nothing happens. Both Brooks and Schroeder appear to be untouched. "The problem is that journal editors and institutions can be more concerned with their own prestige and reputation than finding out the truth," Dennis Tourish, at the University of Sussex Business School, told me. "It can be easier to hope that this all just goes away and blows over and that somebody else will deal with it...." [Tourish also published a 2019 book decrying "Fraud, Deception and Meaningless Research," which the article notes "cites a study finding that more than a third of surveyed editors at management journals say they've encountered fabricated or falsified data."] Maybe the situation in her field would eventually improve, [Schroeder] said. "The optimistic point is, in the long arc of things, we'll self-correct, even if we have no incentive to retract or take responsibility."

"Do you believe that?" I asked.

"On my optimistic days, I believe it."

"Is today an optimistic day?"

"Not really."

More Business School Researchers Accused of Fabricated Findings

Comments Filter:
  • Wow, what a horribly written article. I tried to wade through it but it's nonsense. "Gino was accused of faking numbers in four published papers. Just days into her digging, Schroeder uncovered another paper that appeared to be affected — and it was one that she herself had helped write..." Punctuation is a thing. Long dashes and ellipses to end sentences aren't. Don't get me started on the grammatical issues. How does one "fake" numbers? Either it's a number or it's not. I've seen better mater
    • How does one "fake" numbers? Either it's a number or it's not.

      Faking data or as they can be referred to as numbers.

      The top examples of accounting fraud are making up sales numbers, hiding debts, making fake transactions, or manipulating financial reports.

      • by swsuehr ( 612400 )
        But the numbers are real, are they not? The summary specifically states that Gino was accused of faking numbers. But Gino did not use fake numbers. Gino used real numbers that did not represent real data. "Gino was accused of manipulating data" is much more descriptive of what actually occurred.
        • I'm going to say this in the nicest way possible, go apply to the NYT or whatever publication published it. You can write the stories anyway you want.
          As an added bonus, you'll be on the internet a lot less.
        • Hello Claude: Please give come examples of metonymy involving 'numbers' - e.g 'faking numbers'

          Let me explore some examples and uses of metonymy involving "numbers":
          Metonymy with "numbers" often involves using the word "numbers" to represent broader concepts related to data, statistics, finances, or mathematical calculations. Some common examples:
          "The numbers don't lie" - referring to statistical evidence or data as a whole
          "Faking/cooking/massaging the numbers" - representing fraudulent accounting or dishone

        • by sjames ( 1099 )

          So what about imaginary numbers?

    • Grammar Nazi!!!
    • > Long dashes and ellipses to end sentences aren't [a thing].

      Um, ellipses to end sentences are very much a thing. They show the editor omitted the end of a longer sentence.

      That would be me -- the editor. (There's only one ellipse in the original article, so if you're complaining about multiple sentence-ending ellipses, I'm the one to complain to.) I trimmed a 6,500-word article into a Slashdot post.

      That's going to require some ellipses.
      • by swsuehr ( 612400 )
        Which style manual does Slashdot use? The rampant use of ellipses in this summary does not help to convey a coherent meaning. I would think that the summary could have been shortened and conveyed the original intent of the author in a more meaningful way without the use of ellipses. The reader could then obtain more information from the original article, if they chose to do so.
        • > Which style manual does Slashdot use?

          Are you asking me, "Which style manual suggests the use of an ellipse to indicate deleted text"? Um, all of them. :)

          Maybe you just didn't realize they were indicating omitted text when you first read the paragraph? I can honestly see how that could make it confusing to read. Maybe you found all those ellipses off-putting, and that gave you a bad reaction to the paragraph's other punctuation too? (Including both places where it used dashes.)

          But the only
  • Only $99,000.00 per semester. Free grifter briefcase and complimentary fedora with signup. Ten percent off with NDA and family member hostage! Void where prohibited, FBI agents not eligible without proof of Republican Party membership!
      • Asshole confirmed.
    • MIT is now free for most students: https://www.cbsnews.com/boston... [cbsnews.com]
  • Truth has no commercial value. No one has any real (commercial) interest in exposing academic fraud. To the contrary their are only costs for exposing fraud. Why would we expect higher education to value finding it. More importantly, who would pay for it?
    • Truth has no commercial value .... Why would we expect higher education to value finding it

      Meta: to demonstrate they're motivated by ...drumroll... *truth*. Isn't pursuit of truth the underlying theme of education ?

  • My guess is much of this is due to overwhelming pressure on students/grad students to produce results so they can graduate/get their Ph.D. Publish or perish for the professors also plays a big role. Change the system to reduce the pressure and the quality of research will go up. It's not rocket science, it's obvious. Instead of threatening them with sticks, give them carrots. You can't beat new ideas out of people, it instead encourages people to subvert your empire.
    • Carrots alone does not work. See also CEO pay linked to company performance,. What is needed is both a carrot and a stick. The CEO equivalent would be, if the company does badly the CEO loses his house and/or personally pays for company debt.
  • A senior editor at the Atlantic raises the possibility of systemic dishonesty-rewarding incentives where "a study must be even flashier than all the other flashy findings if its authors want to stand out,"

    Isn't the whole of society a system which rewards dishonesty? Any overarching attempt to constrain behaviour disadvantages those who follow the rules for the good of the whole (*); those who want to keep their options open and their freedom intact must then add backlog items such as:
    * cover up

Sentient plasmoids are a gas.

Working...