10 ms·

Harvard concluded that a dishonesty expert committed misconduct

264 points by Tomte 3y ago

smcin 3y ago
For excellent ongoing coverage of Francesca Gino and other misconduct cases in academia, esp. behavioral science (such as Dan Ariely), see Pete Judo. Also covers replication failures, data hacking, and much more. [YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeteJudo1 https://www.youtube.com/@PeteJudo1 , https://www.petejudo.com/ https://www.petejudo.com/] Also: DataColada blog [https://datacolada.org/ https://datacolada.org/], who made public the misconduct reported by Gino's graduate student.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- russdill 3y ago
  Paul Sutter's new book seems very timely https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538181614/Rescuing-Science-Restoring-Trust-In-an-Age-of-Doubt https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538181614/Rescuing-Science-Resto...
- hashemian 3y ago
  Thanks for the links. I watched some of his videos where he explained how DataColada did their forensic investigation in data manipulation. What amazes me is how simple was the fraud (or at least the ones reported by Pete!). They basically just opened an excel file, started from the top, changed some random numbers, until they reached the effect they aimed for!!! Really? What about those that can do more sophisticated data manipulation?
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    > Really? What about those that can do more sophisticated data manipulation? They win. They are rewarded with the power to control governments and whole populations, they are feted by the media and they accumulate an army of staunch defenders who Believe The Science. When the true believers find their way onto juries or into the courts, they are able to destroy their opponents lives (see the recent case of Mann vs Steyn, which will certainly be very encouraging and helpful for Gino in her quest to bankrupt her critics).
KingOfCoders 3y ago
I guess she is the expert.
- cloudbonsai 3y ago
  > I guess she is the expert Absolutely. I recommend everyone to look at her publication history on HBS website: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=271812&view=publications https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=271812&... Her featured work is a book titled "Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and Life." One of her most cited paper is "The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest".
  - sitkack 3y ago
    Maybe she wasn't committing fraud, but original research.
    - xkcd-sucks 3y ago
      If enough people read and internalize the fraudulent conclusions via pop science journalism etc., maybe the effect will become measurable enough to replicate the original paper :)
GauntletWizard 3y ago
https://archive.is/6BrOv https://archive.is/6BrOv
jose_zap 3y ago
Researchers should tick a checkbox “I swear I did not hack the data” before submitting a paper to a peer-reviewed journal to prevent this kind of misconduct.
- dtech 3y ago
  Isn't this just basically fraud? I'm sure it's already covered by the existing things you sign, but surprisingly that doesn't stop people who are willing to commit fraud.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    I assume that in this particular case, it's a joke referring to the subject of the study, which involved similar, if even weaker, assurances. In general, this kind of thing is oddly common. It's all over government forms. I just interviewed with a Chinese father who wanted me to spend time with his children providing exposure to English. He asked me whether I had a criminal record. I don't, but if I did, and I chose to lie about it, random Chinese parents would never know the difference. (Though entering China might have been a challenge.) Why ask?
    - gwd 3y ago
      > I don't, but if I did, and I chose to lie about it, random Chinese parents would never know the difference. (Though entering China might have been a challenge.) Why ask? I think you'd be surprised how many people are really bad at lying; or even bad at acting normal when they think they have something to hide, particularly when asked such a question unexpectedly. Sure, some people with a criminal record may be able to lie plausibly when put on the spot, but there are a reasonable number who would give themselves away even if denying it. No real cost, some benefit, so why not ask?
      - thaumasiotes 3y ago
        Well, I sanitized my report of the interview. He actually asked if I had a bad history. I was confused and said I didn't understand. He clarified that he was asking about things like crime. So the element of getting suddenly put on the spot doesn't really apply. That's already about as awkward as communication gets. More importantly, though, I don't think the point is correct to begin with. This is fine: > I think you'd be surprised how many people are really bad at lying; or even bad at acting normal when they think they have something to hide, particularly when asked such a question unexpectedly. But job applicants with criminal records are only going to match this description once or twice. For the rest of their lives, it's not going to be an unexpected question, and they'll have lots of practice in denying their record if that's the way they choose to go. You're just never going to catch anyone out this way.
DominikPeters 3y ago
Direct link to committee report: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24481375/gino-hbs-investigation-committee-report.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24481375/gino-hbs-inv...
gwd 3y ago
Reportedly, a lot of people who choose to study psychology are motivated originally to figure out what's going on in their own heads (which they have a sense is not quite normal) [1]. I wonder if there's a similar dynamic with "honesty / ethics": people who lack a native impulse to be honest / ethical and are curious about people who do. [1] See e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39703638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39703638 from yesterday
- beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
  Alternative, and more likely imo, hypothesis is that attaining and maintaining the social (and probably $$$) capital of being a "Harvard Expert" leads to desperation and breaking the rules.
  - gwd 3y ago
    Sure, that might have been the "trigger"; but that's missing the key thing that needs to be explained. If this were dishonesty by someone doing chemistry, it's unlikely that this would have hit the front page of HN. As they say, "Dog bites man isn't a story; man bites dog is." But a priori, you'd expect someone studying honesty* to personally care about honesty, and thus to be less likely to give in to these sorts of pressures. That's the thing that needs to be explained; the "man bites dog" aspect. * EDIT s/honestly/honesty/g;
    - Kamq 3y ago
      > But a priori, you'd expect someone studying honestly to personally care about honestly, and thus to be less likely to give in to these sorts of pressures. I'm not so sure you can automatically assume this. You can definitely assume that the subject interests them. But it's also possible that someone studying honesty/dishonesty might start seeing the subject in academic/technical terms instead of moral terms. Which may give them much less of a disincentive to be dishonest than the average person. Which is to say that repeated studying and analysis of instances where people are dishonest may break down the gut reaction people have to being dishonest.
iforgotpassword 3y ago
It's one of these days where I have to double-check I'm not on a hn-themed the onion. "CEO of data privacy company Onerep.com founded dozens of people-search firms" "Harvard concluded that a dishonesty expert committed misconduct" And depending on the general mood I'm in this is kinda a downer sometimes, like apparently only assholes make it in this world because you cannot compete with others if you have a conscience and they don't. Sorry for this tangent but it's just one of these days somehow. The McDonald's outage at least was good for a quick laugh when I read the "unexpected world's health day" comment.
- vsnf 3y ago
  > you cannot compete with others if you have a conscience and they don't. This is self evidently true, though. A conscience is a constraint on behavior. People without this constraint can accomplish more things. Of course, they may end up suffering for their actions, but it's a surefire way to short-term success, and not unlikely to lead to long-term success as well.
  - trashtester 3y ago
    > This is self evidently true, though. I absolutely disagree. Conscience, empathy, shame and similar emotions/instincts that encourage pro-social behavior would only have developed if it lead to higher reproductive fitness for those who had them compared to those who didn't. For instance, only a very small percentage of people are psychopaths. If we look at the average life outcome for psychopaths, we discover that while some of them may be super-successful, we also find a lot of them as social outcasts or in prison. And if they live in areas like law enforcements, they're also more likely to get killed. I would say the reason should be obvious. People without these guardrails on behavior may get away with anti-social behavior for a time, but eventually people figure them out. This leads to all sorts of active and passive punishment, ranging from difficulty making friends or holding on to a job all the way to life in prison or execution. SOME people may negate the downsides by acting in a super-rational way. But this only works for people who are both highly intelligent and who also have very good impulse control. But for most people, having at least moderate levels of pro-social instincts/emotions will be just as beneficial for themselves as for the people around them.
vouaobrasil 3y ago
The article states that this researcher falsified data. While I rather abhor dishonesty, especially being a former academic myself, one must keep in mind the following: 90% of academia is rotten in the sense that the research being done is being done because the academic path requires some kind of research. This in turn is the case because research groups and departments want to keep themselves alive, and the only way to stay alive is gain funding. Finally, and worst of all, gaining funding has been almost entirely divorced from the usefulness that research has to people. On the counterpoint, I do support basic research and curiosity, which I fundamentally believe has value to societies, but the research being done is hardly out of curiosity. Instead, these perverse incentives have led to an environment where basic curiosity is paradoxically discouraged. The end result is that large portions of academia are filled with useless machines doing useless work. As a result, we're getting these pathological cases. And we can think about this fraud on one more level: don't think that it will necessarily hurt academia....a fraud is necessary every once in a while so that everyone else shines just a little brighter.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >Finally, and worst of all, gaining funding has been almost entirely divorced from the usefulness that research has to people. By "usefulness to people" do you mean, essentially, "good for society"? Because I have a hard time believing that funding entities are simply flushing money down the toilet. They must find the research useful to their ends.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    Yes, I mean good for society. They are not flushing money down the toilet: who do you think makes funding decisions? Who do you think reads the funding proposals? Scientists. Scientists are giving money to each other to keep their efforts alive. Scientists don't do things for the good of humankind, they do it for fame and pure intellectual curiosity. Of course, there are benefits to those outside of science: science furthers the growth of technology, but is that really beneficial to us? Yes, we are thrown a bone now and then that is useful such as a vaccine here and there, but the the benefits that actually make life better probably account for 1% of scientific activity these days.
j7ake 3y ago
The sad part about the field is that in the end nobody really cares what science turned out to be fake… because nobody actually cares about the specific results that come out of psychology research.
- tucnak 3y ago
  Microbiology is similarly rife with fraud
  - burnished 3y ago
    How so?
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    At least you can more easily verify an experimental result that takes a million e coli vs one that takes a million depressed people.
  - theGnuMe 3y ago
    Just wait until it's all in AI LLMs... fun times ahead.
- sitkack 3y ago
  That seems like a worse thing, it says something about the field. There are always going to be individuals who do things wrong, or wrong things. But ultimately, it really comes down to how the group behaves and the goals they seek.
- gustavus 3y ago
  Fact of the matter is Psychology is at this point more pseudo than science. The biggest factor impacting the outcome of an experiment in psych is what the researcher conducting the study wants to be true. The whole subject is broken down in this article: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o...
  - 3y ago
fasteo 3y ago
Being an "expert" takes a lot of practice, and it shows.
fsflover 3y ago
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712021
pavlov 3y ago
You become a dishonesty expert by lying for 10,000 hours. There are no workarounds, got to do the work.
DrNosferatu 3y ago
Fake it until you make it!
noneeeed 3y ago
There was an interesting two-part series on the Freakonomics podcast about academic fraud, and it covered this case. It's all incredibly depressing. I really feel for all the junior researchers who end up wasting their time, and often derailing their careers because they followed a path based on other people's academic fraud. https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/academic-fraud/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/academic-fraud/
- 11101010001100 3y ago
  No one should be putting all their eggs in one scientific basket even if the basis ISN'T fraudulent. I see this mistake over and over.
  - noneeeed 3y ago
    I understand where you are coming from, but if you are starting out on a PhD and decide to do research that is branching off from work done by someone like Gino you could spend a long time chasing ghosts and it will be hard for you to turn round and say "I think this is actually BS". Even once you are over that hump you will have quite a few years going from one short-term grant to another, with your ability to get funding being dependent on your previous work. If that has been stymied because you were basing it off dodgy research of other people it could take a long time to build up the kind of record where you get to diversify and some any kind of academic security of freedom.
    - mcv 3y ago
      A friend of mine proved (for his PhD I think) that the thing his entire department was working on was based on bullshit. They weren't happy. That said, putting all your eggs in one basket is often necessary to get anywhere with that basket of research.
      - andoando 3y ago
        What did they disprove? Or at least, what field of study?
barfbagginus 3y ago
As an expert in dishonesty - literally a corporate espionage contractor - I would be very sad if anyone were to actually expect me to not commit misconduct... Things in the academic world are a little different I see. Strange.
_ZeD_ 3y ago
it reminds me of Fullmetal alchemist's Shou Tucker
wtcactus 3y ago
It’s high time we accept that social sciences have nothing scientific about them, and are just a mix of political ideology and astrology. I already said this before and I’ll repeat it. Media constantly portraying social sciences and their findings as actual science, is a big culprit of all this disbelief the masses are showing towards real science (the physical and natural sciences).
- CJefferson 3y ago
  I’m not sure the social sciences are any more scientifically corrupt than the “harder” sciences.
  - orzig 3y ago
    Biology has probably had the most replication scandals of the hard sciences, but if you look back 10 years, there have been several tangible breakthroughs. CRISPR, mRNA vaccines, Cystic Fibrosis treatments, malaria vaccine, and that’s just off the top of my head. So let’s not throw the baby out with a bathwater on Science. I would be interested to see what other peoples comparable list would be for the social sciences – I don’t know enough to say that “absence of evidence is evidence of absence“
    - realityfactchex 3y ago
      Here's the thing: even some of the listed items "off the top of your head" as counterexamples are entirely fraudulent. I don't think anybody's trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is entirely serious. But most people have no idea how broad and deep the reach of the hard science integrity problem goes (at least in biology). Not only that, but it's HARD for people to know, and there are with 100% certainty efforts to keep it that way.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    You honestly believe that the social sciences have the same rigor as physics?
bsoles 3y ago
Once they start giving TED talks and such, they are not researchers anymore. They are highly-educated influencers who want to stay in the limelight. And this brings its own set of bad incentives, staying "prolific" and eventually dishonesty being some of them. In the same field, see what is happening with Jordan Peterson.
- homeless_engi 3y ago
  In my experience most/all academics crave a certain type of attention. It is an occupation where you get promoted in part by how famous you are (how many citations your publications have, which conferences you attended, etc.).
deleted 3y ago
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javajosh 3y ago
This is great news for Harvard! It implies that it's taking academic honesty and rigor seriously, and deserves praise for that. Just as police departments deserve praise for firing/suspending/charging bad officers, just as state bars deserve praise for disbarring bad lawyers, we need to see more of this not less. It concerns me that such news is often used as evidence of systemic problems when this sort of news signals the exact opposite. We should be more concerned when there are NO instances of malpractice reported by institutions. This doesn't mean there isn't malpractice, but that the institution has lost the will to enforce its own rules. Reacting to this news negatively provides a perverse incentive to institutions, and should be quelled.
curtis3389 3y ago
This reminds me of Orson Welles' excellent film: F for Fake. It explores art forgery, art experts, and the author of a book about art forgery committing a massive forgery.
ivraatiems 3y ago
So the author of a bestselling book on why breaking the rules can be advantageous... broke the rules? https://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Talent-Pays-Break-Rules/dp/0062694634 https://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Talent-Pays-Break-Rules/dp/0062...
- pknomad 3y ago
  Irony aside… doesn’t that validate the premise?
  - rossdavidh 3y ago
    Well not at the moment, her career is pretty well off track now.
- saghm 3y ago
  They say to write what you know, so they did!
- antegamisou 3y ago
  I think this is a great reason why one should trash all these self-improvement books by grifters with "expensive" credentials (CEO, Ivy League person etc.) and replace them with fiction works of 19th Century American/Russian literature.
gnicholas 3y ago
Discussed concurrently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712021
gotoeleven 3y ago
Harvard will come out on top of all this because they can easily pivot to being a clown college.
neurotech1 3y ago
Archive copy: https://archive.ph/6BrOv https://archive.ph/6BrOv
visarga 3y ago
Plot twist - he was doing his job, it was just a dishonesty experiment. /s
seizethecheese 3y ago
I believe high profile academic fraud to be worse for the world than financial fraud, even. Financial fraud misappropriates one sum of money. Academic fraud can misappropriate massive amounts of resources when decision makers rely on bullshit ideas
stmichel 3y ago
Ethicists and especially bio-ethicists are the least ethical people on Earth. "Happiness experts" are the most miserable people on Earth. etc. etc. etc...
semiquaver 3y ago
https://archive.ph/6BrOv https://archive.ph/6BrOv
seydor 3y ago
The choice of title has an infuriating amount of wasted potential
belter 3y ago
The Wikipedia article also has some nuggets: "In or before 2020, a graduate student named Zoé Ziani developed concerns about the validity of results from a highly publicized paper by Gino about networking. According to Ziani, she was strongly warned by her academic advisers not to criticize Gino, and two members of her dissertation committee refused to approve her thesis unless she deleted criticism of Gino's paper from it"
rhelz 3y ago
Hmmm....her best move might have been to write up the data-fudging she did, but in the form of a proposal to do an experiment, fedex it to herself, and put it, still in a sealed envelope, in a safety deposit box. What was the experiment? What happens when you attempt to deceive your RAs, colleagues, and reviewers about the results of the experiment!! After all, she has a Ph.D. in deceit, whaat else is she supposed to be studying? If and when somebody started to suspect, she could just retrieve the fedex envelope, dated and sealed before the results were submitted to review, as proof that this was just one giant experiment, congratulate everybody that they were doing such a good job at preserving the integrity of the field, etc etc... Frankly, after reading the school's report, I'm amazed that somebody with a Ph.D. in deceit-ology couldn't come up with a better line about how the data was corrupted. Somebody stole my password? Not even my wife would believe that one if she found compromising chats on my phone--and that without benefit of Ph.D.
sizzle 3y ago
Can someone link to the 1300 page ruling?

264 points by Tomte 3y ago

For excellent ongoing coverage of Francesca Gino and other misconduct cases in academia, esp. behavioral science (such as Dan Ariely), see Pete Judo. Also covers replication failures, data hacking, and much more. [YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeteJudo1 https://www.youtube.com/@PeteJudo1 , https://www.petejudo.com/ https://www.petejudo.com/] Also: DataColada blog [https://datacolada.org/ https://datacolada.org/], who made public the misconduct reported by Gino's graduate student.

deleted 3y ago
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russdill 3y ago
Paul Sutter's new book seems very timely https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538181614/Rescuing-Science-Restoring-Trust-In-an-Age-of-Doubt https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538181614/Rescuing-Science-Resto...
hashemian 3y ago
Thanks for the links. I watched some of his videos where he explained how DataColada did their forensic investigation in data manipulation. What amazes me is how simple was the fraud (or at least the ones reported by Pete!). They basically just opened an excel file, started from the top, changed some random numbers, until they reached the effect they aimed for!!! Really? What about those that can do more sophisticated data manipulation?
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  > Really? What about those that can do more sophisticated data manipulation? They win. They are rewarded with the power to control governments and whole populations, they are feted by the media and they accumulate an army of staunch defenders who Believe The Science. When the true believers find their way onto juries or into the courts, they are able to destroy their opponents lives (see the recent case of Mann vs Steyn, which will certainly be very encouraging and helpful for Gino in her quest to bankrupt her critics).

KingOfCoders 3y ago

I guess she is the expert.

cloudbonsai 3y ago
> I guess she is the expert Absolutely. I recommend everyone to look at her publication history on HBS website: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=271812&view=publications https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=271812&... Her featured work is a book titled "Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and Life." One of her most cited paper is "The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest".
- sitkack 3y ago
  Maybe she wasn't committing fraud, but original research.
  - xkcd-sucks 3y ago
    If enough people read and internalize the fraudulent conclusions via pop science journalism etc., maybe the effect will become measurable enough to replicate the original paper :)

GauntletWizard 3y ago

https://archive.is/6BrOv https://archive.is/6BrOv

jose_zap 3y ago

Researchers should tick a checkbox “I swear I did not hack the data” before submitting a paper to a peer-reviewed journal to prevent this kind of misconduct.

dtech 3y ago
Isn't this just basically fraud? I'm sure it's already covered by the existing things you sign, but surprisingly that doesn't stop people who are willing to commit fraud.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  I assume that in this particular case, it's a joke referring to the subject of the study, which involved similar, if even weaker, assurances. In general, this kind of thing is oddly common. It's all over government forms. I just interviewed with a Chinese father who wanted me to spend time with his children providing exposure to English. He asked me whether I had a criminal record. I don't, but if I did, and I chose to lie about it, random Chinese parents would never know the difference. (Though entering China might have been a challenge.) Why ask?
  - gwd 3y ago
    > I don't, but if I did, and I chose to lie about it, random Chinese parents would never know the difference. (Though entering China might have been a challenge.) Why ask? I think you'd be surprised how many people are really bad at lying; or even bad at acting normal when they think they have something to hide, particularly when asked such a question unexpectedly. Sure, some people with a criminal record may be able to lie plausibly when put on the spot, but there are a reasonable number who would give themselves away even if denying it. No real cost, some benefit, so why not ask?
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      Well, I sanitized my report of the interview. He actually asked if I had a bad history. I was confused and said I didn't understand. He clarified that he was asking about things like crime. So the element of getting suddenly put on the spot doesn't really apply. That's already about as awkward as communication gets. More importantly, though, I don't think the point is correct to begin with. This is fine: > I think you'd be surprised how many people are really bad at lying; or even bad at acting normal when they think they have something to hide, particularly when asked such a question unexpectedly. But job applicants with criminal records are only going to match this description once or twice. For the rest of their lives, it's not going to be an unexpected question, and they'll have lots of practice in denying their record if that's the way they choose to go. You're just never going to catch anyone out this way.

DominikPeters 3y ago

Direct link to committee report: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24481375/gino-hbs-investigation-committee-report.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24481375/gino-hbs-inv...

gwd 3y ago

Reportedly, a lot of people who choose to study psychology are motivated originally to figure out what's going on in their own heads (which they have a sense is not quite normal) [1]. I wonder if there's a similar dynamic with "honesty / ethics": people who lack a native impulse to be honest / ethical and are curious about people who do. [1] See e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39703638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39703638 from yesterday

beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
Alternative, and more likely imo, hypothesis is that attaining and maintaining the social (and probably $$$) capital of being a "Harvard Expert" leads to desperation and breaking the rules.
- gwd 3y ago
  Sure, that might have been the "trigger"; but that's missing the key thing that needs to be explained. If this were dishonesty by someone doing chemistry, it's unlikely that this would have hit the front page of HN. As they say, "Dog bites man isn't a story; man bites dog is." But a priori, you'd expect someone studying honesty* to personally care about honesty, and thus to be less likely to give in to these sorts of pressures. That's the thing that needs to be explained; the "man bites dog" aspect. * EDIT s/honestly/honesty/g;
  - Kamq 3y ago
    > But a priori, you'd expect someone studying honestly to personally care about honestly, and thus to be less likely to give in to these sorts of pressures. I'm not so sure you can automatically assume this. You can definitely assume that the subject interests them. But it's also possible that someone studying honesty/dishonesty might start seeing the subject in academic/technical terms instead of moral terms. Which may give them much less of a disincentive to be dishonest than the average person. Which is to say that repeated studying and analysis of instances where people are dishonest may break down the gut reaction people have to being dishonest.

iforgotpassword 3y ago

It's one of these days where I have to double-check I'm not on a hn-themed the onion. "CEO of data privacy company Onerep.com founded dozens of people-search firms" "Harvard concluded that a dishonesty expert committed misconduct" And depending on the general mood I'm in this is kinda a downer sometimes, like apparently only assholes make it in this world because you cannot compete with others if you have a conscience and they don't. Sorry for this tangent but it's just one of these days somehow. The McDonald's outage at least was good for a quick laugh when I read the "unexpected world's health day" comment.

vsnf 3y ago
> you cannot compete with others if you have a conscience and they don't. This is self evidently true, though. A conscience is a constraint on behavior. People without this constraint can accomplish more things. Of course, they may end up suffering for their actions, but it's a surefire way to short-term success, and not unlikely to lead to long-term success as well.
- trashtester 3y ago
  > This is self evidently true, though. I absolutely disagree. Conscience, empathy, shame and similar emotions/instincts that encourage pro-social behavior would only have developed if it lead to higher reproductive fitness for those who had them compared to those who didn't. For instance, only a very small percentage of people are psychopaths. If we look at the average life outcome for psychopaths, we discover that while some of them may be super-successful, we also find a lot of them as social outcasts or in prison. And if they live in areas like law enforcements, they're also more likely to get killed. I would say the reason should be obvious. People without these guardrails on behavior may get away with anti-social behavior for a time, but eventually people figure them out. This leads to all sorts of active and passive punishment, ranging from difficulty making friends or holding on to a job all the way to life in prison or execution. SOME people may negate the downsides by acting in a super-rational way. But this only works for people who are both highly intelligent and who also have very good impulse control. But for most people, having at least moderate levels of pro-social instincts/emotions will be just as beneficial for themselves as for the people around them.

vouaobrasil 3y ago

The article states that this researcher falsified data. While I rather abhor dishonesty, especially being a former academic myself, one must keep in mind the following: 90% of academia is rotten in the sense that the research being done is being done because the academic path requires some kind of research. This in turn is the case because research groups and departments want to keep themselves alive, and the only way to stay alive is gain funding. Finally, and worst of all, gaining funding has been almost entirely divorced from the usefulness that research has to people. On the counterpoint, I do support basic research and curiosity, which I fundamentally believe has value to societies, but the research being done is hardly out of curiosity. Instead, these perverse incentives have led to an environment where basic curiosity is paradoxically discouraged. The end result is that large portions of academia are filled with useless machines doing useless work. As a result, we're getting these pathological cases. And we can think about this fraud on one more level: don't think that it will necessarily hurt academia....a fraud is necessary every once in a while so that everyone else shines just a little brighter.

itsoktocry 3y ago
>Finally, and worst of all, gaining funding has been almost entirely divorced from the usefulness that research has to people. By "usefulness to people" do you mean, essentially, "good for society"? Because I have a hard time believing that funding entities are simply flushing money down the toilet. They must find the research useful to their ends.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  Yes, I mean good for society. They are not flushing money down the toilet: who do you think makes funding decisions? Who do you think reads the funding proposals? Scientists. Scientists are giving money to each other to keep their efforts alive. Scientists don't do things for the good of humankind, they do it for fame and pure intellectual curiosity. Of course, there are benefits to those outside of science: science furthers the growth of technology, but is that really beneficial to us? Yes, we are thrown a bone now and then that is useful such as a vaccine here and there, but the the benefits that actually make life better probably account for 1% of scientific activity these days.

j7ake 3y ago

The sad part about the field is that in the end nobody really cares what science turned out to be fake… because nobody actually cares about the specific results that come out of psychology research.

tucnak 3y ago
Microbiology is similarly rife with fraud
- burnished 3y ago
  How so?
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  At least you can more easily verify an experimental result that takes a million e coli vs one that takes a million depressed people.
- theGnuMe 3y ago
  Just wait until it's all in AI LLMs... fun times ahead.
sitkack 3y ago
That seems like a worse thing, it says something about the field. There are always going to be individuals who do things wrong, or wrong things. But ultimately, it really comes down to how the group behaves and the goals they seek.
gustavus 3y ago
Fact of the matter is Psychology is at this point more pseudo than science. The biggest factor impacting the outcome of an experiment in psych is what the researcher conducting the study wants to be true. The whole subject is broken down in this article: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o...
- 3y ago

fasteo 3y ago

Being an "expert" takes a lot of practice, and it shows.

fsflover 3y ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712021

pavlov 3y ago

You become a dishonesty expert by lying for 10,000 hours. There are no workarounds, got to do the work.

DrNosferatu 3y ago

Fake it until you make it!

noneeeed 3y ago

There was an interesting two-part series on the Freakonomics podcast about academic fraud, and it covered this case. It's all incredibly depressing. I really feel for all the junior researchers who end up wasting their time, and often derailing their careers because they followed a path based on other people's academic fraud. https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/academic-fraud/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/academic-fraud/

11101010001100 3y ago
No one should be putting all their eggs in one scientific basket even if the basis ISN'T fraudulent. I see this mistake over and over.
- noneeeed 3y ago
  I understand where you are coming from, but if you are starting out on a PhD and decide to do research that is branching off from work done by someone like Gino you could spend a long time chasing ghosts and it will be hard for you to turn round and say "I think this is actually BS". Even once you are over that hump you will have quite a few years going from one short-term grant to another, with your ability to get funding being dependent on your previous work. If that has been stymied because you were basing it off dodgy research of other people it could take a long time to build up the kind of record where you get to diversify and some any kind of academic security of freedom.
  - mcv 3y ago
    A friend of mine proved (for his PhD I think) that the thing his entire department was working on was based on bullshit. They weren't happy. That said, putting all your eggs in one basket is often necessary to get anywhere with that basket of research.
    - andoando 3y ago
      What did they disprove? Or at least, what field of study?

barfbagginus 3y ago

As an expert in dishonesty - literally a corporate espionage contractor - I would be very sad if anyone were to actually expect me to not commit misconduct... Things in the academic world are a little different I see. Strange.

_ZeD_ 3y ago

it reminds me of Fullmetal alchemist's Shou Tucker

wtcactus 3y ago

It’s high time we accept that social sciences have nothing scientific about them, and are just a mix of political ideology and astrology. I already said this before and I’ll repeat it. Media constantly portraying social sciences and their findings as actual science, is a big culprit of all this disbelief the masses are showing towards real science (the physical and natural sciences).

CJefferson 3y ago
I’m not sure the social sciences are any more scientifically corrupt than the “harder” sciences.
- orzig 3y ago
  Biology has probably had the most replication scandals of the hard sciences, but if you look back 10 years, there have been several tangible breakthroughs. CRISPR, mRNA vaccines, Cystic Fibrosis treatments, malaria vaccine, and that’s just off the top of my head. So let’s not throw the baby out with a bathwater on Science. I would be interested to see what other peoples comparable list would be for the social sciences – I don’t know enough to say that “absence of evidence is evidence of absence“
  - realityfactchex 3y ago
    Here's the thing: even some of the listed items "off the top of your head" as counterexamples are entirely fraudulent. I don't think anybody's trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is entirely serious. But most people have no idea how broad and deep the reach of the hard science integrity problem goes (at least in biology). Not only that, but it's HARD for people to know, and there are with 100% certainty efforts to keep it that way.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  You honestly believe that the social sciences have the same rigor as physics?

bsoles 3y ago

Once they start giving TED talks and such, they are not researchers anymore. They are highly-educated influencers who want to stay in the limelight. And this brings its own set of bad incentives, staying "prolific" and eventually dishonesty being some of them. In the same field, see what is happening with Jordan Peterson.

homeless_engi 3y ago
In my experience most/all academics crave a certain type of attention. It is an occupation where you get promoted in part by how famous you are (how many citations your publications have, which conferences you attended, etc.).

deleted 3y ago

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javajosh 3y ago

This is great news for Harvard! It implies that it's taking academic honesty and rigor seriously, and deserves praise for that. Just as police departments deserve praise for firing/suspending/charging bad officers, just as state bars deserve praise for disbarring bad lawyers, we need to see more of this not less. It concerns me that such news is often used as evidence of systemic problems when this sort of news signals the exact opposite. We should be more concerned when there are NO instances of malpractice reported by institutions. This doesn't mean there isn't malpractice, but that the institution has lost the will to enforce its own rules. Reacting to this news negatively provides a perverse incentive to institutions, and should be quelled.

curtis3389 3y ago

This reminds me of Orson Welles' excellent film: F for Fake. It explores art forgery, art experts, and the author of a book about art forgery committing a massive forgery.

ivraatiems 3y ago

So the author of a bestselling book on why breaking the rules can be advantageous... broke the rules? https://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Talent-Pays-Break-Rules/dp/0062694634 https://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Talent-Pays-Break-Rules/dp/0062...

pknomad 3y ago
Irony aside… doesn’t that validate the premise?
- rossdavidh 3y ago
  Well not at the moment, her career is pretty well off track now.
saghm 3y ago
They say to write what you know, so they did!
antegamisou 3y ago
I think this is a great reason why one should trash all these self-improvement books by grifters with "expensive" credentials (CEO, Ivy League person etc.) and replace them with fiction works of 19th Century American/Russian literature.

gnicholas 3y ago

Discussed concurrently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712021

gotoeleven 3y ago

Harvard will come out on top of all this because they can easily pivot to being a clown college.

neurotech1 3y ago

Archive copy: https://archive.ph/6BrOv https://archive.ph/6BrOv

visarga 3y ago

Plot twist - he was doing his job, it was just a dishonesty experiment. /s

seizethecheese 3y ago

I believe high profile academic fraud to be worse for the world than financial fraud, even. Financial fraud misappropriates one sum of money. Academic fraud can misappropriate massive amounts of resources when decision makers rely on bullshit ideas

stmichel 3y ago

Ethicists and especially bio-ethicists are the least ethical people on Earth. "Happiness experts" are the most miserable people on Earth. etc. etc. etc...

semiquaver 3y ago

https://archive.ph/6BrOv https://archive.ph/6BrOv

seydor 3y ago

The choice of title has an infuriating amount of wasted potential

belter 3y ago

The Wikipedia article also has some nuggets: "In or before 2020, a graduate student named Zoé Ziani developed concerns about the validity of results from a highly publicized paper by Gino about networking. According to Ziani, she was strongly warned by her academic advisers not to criticize Gino, and two members of her dissertation committee refused to approve her thesis unless she deleted criticism of Gino's paper from it"

rhelz 3y ago

Hmmm....her best move might have been to write up the data-fudging she did, but in the form of a proposal to do an experiment, fedex it to herself, and put it, still in a sealed envelope, in a safety deposit box. What was the experiment? What happens when you attempt to deceive your RAs, colleagues, and reviewers about the results of the experiment!! After all, she has a Ph.D. in deceit, whaat else is she supposed to be studying? If and when somebody started to suspect, she could just retrieve the fedex envelope, dated and sealed before the results were submitted to review, as proof that this was just one giant experiment, congratulate everybody that they were doing such a good job at preserving the integrity of the field, etc etc... Frankly, after reading the school's report, I'm amazed that somebody with a Ph.D. in deceit-ology couldn't come up with a better line about how the data was corrupted. Somebody stole my password? Not even my wife would believe that one if she found compromising chats on my phone--and that without benefit of Ph.D.

sizzle 3y ago

Can someone link to the 1300 page ruling?