Francesca Gino

[J_B_]

Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings (Published 2023)

Questions about a widely cited paper are the latest to be raised about methods used in behavioral research.

www.nytimes.com

The link is to an article about a Harvard Professor named Francesca Gino who was a celebrated researcher in Behavioral Sciences. She is now being accused of faking much of her research.

My question: Is the fact that she was caught an indication that the system is working to vet published research, or is it an indication the system is broken?

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings (Published 2023)

Questions about a widely cited paper are the latest to be raised about methods used in behavioral research.

www.nytimes.com

The link is to an article about a Harvard Professor named Francesca Gino who was a celebrated researcher in Behavioral Sciences. She is now being accused of faking much of her research.

My question: Is the fact that she was caught an indication that the system is working to vet published research, or is it an indication the system is broken?

Depends on how she was caught. I can't read the article without subscribing and/or paying. If other academics in her field called her out then the system works. If youtubers did it, then that probably points to a defficiency.

 

[juvenissun]

Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings (Published 2023)

Questions about a widely cited paper are the latest to be raised about methods used in behavioral research.

www.nytimes.com

The link is to an article about a Harvard Professor named Francesca Gino who was a celebrated researcher in Behavioral Sciences. She is now being accused of faking much of her research.

My question: Is the fact that she was caught an indication that the system is working to vet published research, or is it an indication the system is broken?

It indicates anything you like to see.
I can see that her researches are still valuable, if the topics are my concern.
I can also see the academia is a junk, if I am not in it.

 

[J_B_]

Depends on how she was caught. I can't read the article without subscribing and/or paying. If other academics in her field called her out then the system works. If youtubers did it, then that probably points to a defficiency.

I also had an "it depends" reaction. It could be seen as a short term failure of those who approved publication, but she was caught by people from her field, so in the end you could say the system worked. It also seems that if it's just one person, the system is still OK, but if it were found to be widespread you could say the system is broken.

 

[sjastro]

The peer review is doing its job as the retraction rate is very small.

The average retraction rate is 2-4 per 10,000 papers of which a smaller percentage is due to unethical reasons.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Financial Times article:

Harvard withdraws papers in dishonesty expert scandal​

The journal Psychological Science last week published retractions following what it described as a recommendation from the Research Integrity Office of Harvard Business School, after “an independent forensic firm engaged by the HBS revealed discrepancies between the published data” and the original data, text for both retractions said.

The two statements also contain the first substantive response by lawyers for Gino, who has refused repeated requests to comment. Her HBS profile was recently altered to indicate that she is on administrative leave.

Many of Gino’s co-authors have joined an informal network called the Many Co-authors Project to identify if there are other cases of allegedly manipulated data, according to the digital magazine Behavioral Scientist.

--

The fact that she was caught shows that the error-correction built into the scientific method is not omniscient, but is working.

(I'd say a bigger problem (perhaps particularly in the softer sciences) is that there are seldom programs to replicate studies, making the process less likely to uncover erroneous (or faked) conclusions.)

 

[J_B_]

(I'd say a bigger problem (perhaps particularly in the softer sciences) is that there are seldom programs to replicate studies, making the process less likely to uncover erroneous (or faked) conclusions.)

True. Given the expense required to replicate studies in contemporary science, it's not surprising that it doesn't occur. The accompanying problem when replication is rare is rushing to broadly implement the conclusions too soon. I saw some comments from people in the field about how disturbing this case is because they had done just that - moved forward with programs that assumed Gino's findings were correct.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Harvard revokes tenure from professor famous for ethics studies, first time in (at least) 80 years​

Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School, has been battling allegations of data fraud for years.