4 ms·

Harvard Probe Finds Honesty Researcher Engaged in Scientific Misconduct

65 points by gnicholas 3y ago

TimSchumann 3y ago
https://archive.md/vyKvo https://archive.md/vyKvo
blinding-streak 3y ago
NPR's Planet Money podcast covered this really well last year: https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190568472/dan-ariely-francesca-gino-harvard-dishonesty-fabricated-data https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190568472/dan-ariely-frances...
readthenotes1 3y ago
Harvard has a brand
- jamesrom 3y ago
  is*
throwaway81523 3y ago
> A Harvard University probe into prominent researcher Francesca Gino found that her work contained manipulated data and recommended that she be fired, according to a voluminous court filing that offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at research misconduct investigations. I thought this was going to be about Dan Ariely, who has been mixed up in a similar controversy, though idk if Ariely's saga has reached a conclusion yet. Added: aha, Ariely is at Duke rather than Harvard. Can't keep track without a scorecard. Added 2: Andrew Gelman blog post from Thursday about the Gino finding: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/
- Sniffnoy 3y ago
  That's just a link to Gelman's blog. You seem to have meant to link to https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/03/14/heres-the-unsealed-report-showing-how-harvard-concluded-that-a-dishonesty-expert-committed-misconduct/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/03/14/heres-the-...
pyrale 3y ago
The inquiry exposing the fraud is really interesting [1]. The bits about excel forensics really leave no space for doubt in that case. [1]: https://datacolada.org/109 https://datacolada.org/109
suddenclarity 3y ago
I haven't followed this case but I found the blog posts doing the initial investigation quite interesting. Not only due to all the errors in the data but also because it gives some insight into how Excel works behind the scenes: https://datacolada.org/109 https://datacolada.org/109 https://datacolada.org/110 https://datacolada.org/110 https://datacolada.org/111 https://datacolada.org/111 https://datacolada.org/112 https://datacolada.org/112 https://datacolada.org/114 https://datacolada.org/114 I'm confused by her suing and her argument in court though. Is her argument that they didn't catch her in front of the computer so someone else might have fauxed the data or is her argument that no data was altered? Because it seems undeniable that the data was altered to align with the hypothesis.
belter 3y ago
I am always fascinated by how you can be smart enough to be a Harvard Academic, and at the same time, stupid enough to falsify your results.
- blagie 3y ago
  That's not how it works. To be a Harvard academic, you need to do high-profile research. That has three components: - Academic ability - Willingness to cheat - Shameless self-promotion Competition is extreme. As a result, someone who is not "strong" on all three axes would need to be truly astronomical on one of them to make it through the hiring filter. This is true for all elite schools. That's why you see groundbreaking result after groundbreaking result from the elites (most of which don't replicate). Things get a lot better for integrity one or two tiers down, but the culture is quickly spreading. Due to my career path, I've had a lot of visibility into the innards of many schools, including Harvard, and the level of research fraud there is high. The cases where it's discovered are rare, and when it is, the vast majority of the time, it's covered up. I can't speak for Harvard directly here, but I can say that the outcome at e.g. MIT when research fraud is discovered by a high-profile researcher is an NDA to everyone who learns about it, rather than a correction or a firing. Coincidentally, similar logic applies to most extremely competitive career paths. If you'd like to know why career executives and senators are mostly crooks, it's because they need to be at the top of their game to get there, in a game-theoretic sense.
  - nequo 3y ago
    If you don’t mind sharing, is your career also in psychology like Gino’s? Or do you mean to say that engineering/CS also has these problems with cheating at elite schools?
    - blagie 3y ago
      My personal field is irrelevant, since my work let me see across fields (for reference, most of my direct work as relevant to this discussion was in the social sciences, though -- that's the project which let me interact with large numbers of academics across institutions and fields). The short answer is that what I saw was the level and means of cheating roughly correlates with the degree to which it is possible. In a lot of engineering papers, if I publish a new material, mechanical structure, or electronic circuit, most people will be able to: (1) tell how it works just by inspection (2) if it's useful, try to use it in an engineered system Cheating would be caught very quickly, at least for any interesting result, so it's much less common than in fields like social sciences. Computer science is in between. There is a growing pile of b-llshit, since a lot of the work is squishy. Something like a user study can certainly be doctored, a data analysis can be p-hunted, and results can be overstated. On the other hand, something like the big-O of a new algorithm isn't something you can really cheat on. There are also fields like [insert minority group] Studies or [insert domain of art / music / literature] Analysis, where it's not so much direct fabrication (since there is no data) as writing papers for an inner circle of mutual adoration. "Research" is mostly around stroking egos of people who make decision around hiring, promotions, publication, and funding. I'm not quite sure how to describe that, since it's not really cheating, but very little new knowledge is generated. Footnote: What's interesting is MIT used to be super-honest in the nineties with computer science research at both AI Lab and LCS (which have since merged into CSAIL). The Media Lab really pioneered (by the standards of the time) b-llshit computer science research. It was a running joke at the Institute. In the decades which passed, the Media Lab stayed roughly where it was, while CSAIL's integrity fell, and now the Media Lab feels much more honest than CSAIL. Footnote 2: This post should be viewed as much more anecdotal than the one before. I have a very high level of confidence making cross-cutting statements as in my original post. Doing field-by-field dives is just personal observations, so this post, I'm responding to your question, but please just take it for what it's worth. It's small n by field-cross-school.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

65 points by gnicholas 3y ago

https://archive.md/vyKvo https://archive.md/vyKvo

NPR's Planet Money podcast covered this really well last year: https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190568472/dan-ariely-francesca-gino-harvard-dishonesty-fabricated-data https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190568472/dan-ariely-frances...

readthenotes1 3y ago

Harvard has a brand

jamesrom 3y ago
is*

throwaway81523 3y ago

> A Harvard University probe into prominent researcher Francesca Gino found that her work contained manipulated data and recommended that she be fired, according to a voluminous court filing that offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at research misconduct investigations. I thought this was going to be about Dan Ariely, who has been mixed up in a similar controversy, though idk if Ariely's saga has reached a conclusion yet. Added: aha, Ariely is at Duke rather than Harvard. Can't keep track without a scorecard. Added 2: Andrew Gelman blog post from Thursday about the Gino finding: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/

Sniffnoy 3y ago
That's just a link to Gelman's blog. You seem to have meant to link to https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/03/14/heres-the-unsealed-report-showing-how-harvard-concluded-that-a-dishonesty-expert-committed-misconduct/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/03/14/heres-the-...

pyrale 3y ago

The inquiry exposing the fraud is really interesting [1]. The bits about excel forensics really leave no space for doubt in that case. [1]: https://datacolada.org/109 https://datacolada.org/109

suddenclarity 3y ago

I haven't followed this case but I found the blog posts doing the initial investigation quite interesting. Not only due to all the errors in the data but also because it gives some insight into how Excel works behind the scenes: https://datacolada.org/109 https://datacolada.org/109 https://datacolada.org/110 https://datacolada.org/110 https://datacolada.org/111 https://datacolada.org/111 https://datacolada.org/112 https://datacolada.org/112 https://datacolada.org/114 https://datacolada.org/114 I'm confused by her suing and her argument in court though. Is her argument that they didn't catch her in front of the computer so someone else might have fauxed the data or is her argument that no data was altered? Because it seems undeniable that the data was altered to align with the hypothesis.

belter 3y ago

I am always fascinated by how you can be smart enough to be a Harvard Academic, and at the same time, stupid enough to falsify your results.

blagie 3y ago
That's not how it works. To be a Harvard academic, you need to do high-profile research. That has three components: - Academic ability - Willingness to cheat - Shameless self-promotion Competition is extreme. As a result, someone who is not "strong" on all three axes would need to be truly astronomical on one of them to make it through the hiring filter. This is true for all elite schools. That's why you see groundbreaking result after groundbreaking result from the elites (most of which don't replicate). Things get a lot better for integrity one or two tiers down, but the culture is quickly spreading. Due to my career path, I've had a lot of visibility into the innards of many schools, including Harvard, and the level of research fraud there is high. The cases where it's discovered are rare, and when it is, the vast majority of the time, it's covered up. I can't speak for Harvard directly here, but I can say that the outcome at e.g. MIT when research fraud is discovered by a high-profile researcher is an NDA to everyone who learns about it, rather than a correction or a firing. Coincidentally, similar logic applies to most extremely competitive career paths. If you'd like to know why career executives and senators are mostly crooks, it's because they need to be at the top of their game to get there, in a game-theoretic sense.
- nequo 3y ago
  If you don’t mind sharing, is your career also in psychology like Gino’s? Or do you mean to say that engineering/CS also has these problems with cheating at elite schools?
  - blagie 3y ago
    My personal field is irrelevant, since my work let me see across fields (for reference, most of my direct work as relevant to this discussion was in the social sciences, though -- that's the project which let me interact with large numbers of academics across institutions and fields). The short answer is that what I saw was the level and means of cheating roughly correlates with the degree to which it is possible. In a lot of engineering papers, if I publish a new material, mechanical structure, or electronic circuit, most people will be able to: (1) tell how it works just by inspection (2) if it's useful, try to use it in an engineered system Cheating would be caught very quickly, at least for any interesting result, so it's much less common than in fields like social sciences. Computer science is in between. There is a growing pile of b-llshit, since a lot of the work is squishy. Something like a user study can certainly be doctored, a data analysis can be p-hunted, and results can be overstated. On the other hand, something like the big-O of a new algorithm isn't something you can really cheat on. There are also fields like [insert minority group] Studies or [insert domain of art / music / literature] Analysis, where it's not so much direct fabrication (since there is no data) as writing papers for an inner circle of mutual adoration. "Research" is mostly around stroking egos of people who make decision around hiring, promotions, publication, and funding. I'm not quite sure how to describe that, since it's not really cheating, but very little new knowledge is generated. Footnote: What's interesting is MIT used to be super-honest in the nineties with computer science research at both AI Lab and LCS (which have since merged into CSAIL). The Media Lab really pioneered (by the standards of the time) b-llshit computer science research. It was a running joke at the Institute. In the decades which passed, the Media Lab stayed roughly where it was, while CSAIL's integrity fell, and now the Media Lab feels much more honest than CSAIL. Footnote 2: This post should be viewed as much more anecdotal than the one before. I have a very high level of confidence making cross-cutting statements as in my original post. Doing field-by-field dives is just personal observations, so this post, I'm responding to your question, but please just take it for what it's worth. It's small n by field-cross-school.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]