The data for a landmark study on “honesty” was made up. That’s dishonest. We’re supposed to trust the science, they tell us. How do we trust the scientists when they pull dirty tricks like this? That, conservatives say, is exactly the difference between “climate change” and the weather. “Normalizing” the numbers to make them fit the model is generally frowned on but happens way too often.
Dishonest data about honesty
This wasn’t some freshly minted Ph.D. caught fudging data on an obscure little study. Harvard Business School’s Francesca Gino is a “prominent” behavioral scientist. Her studies on honesty are regarded as setting the standards. Now, she’s under fire for “allegedly fabricating papers that she worked on.”
The Ivy League indoctrination center was especially shocked to learn the professor made test results up as she went along, for a study focused on honest behavior. “Gino has been honored as one of the top 40 Business Professors under 40 and has notched numerous awards.”
They took action drastic enough to update her web page at the business school over. It now notes that she’s “been placed on leave.” That must have happened quite recently because she was still giving lectures in mid-May. Nobody in her field imagined she cooked up her own data. No wonder she’s the recognized expert.
After reading about the whole academic scandal that is going on these days with Francesca Gino and Harvard, I must say that I’m quite surprised that it took anyone 8 years to suspect that a paper like this would have cooked data. pic.twitter.com/S3XNGs3Yo6
— Ferdinand McResearch, PhD (@robustnesscheck) June 21, 2023
Gino “has published 135 articles since 2007.” The accusations against Gino caused major “reverberations in the academic community,” because she has “so many collaborators, so many articles.” Basically, “a leading scholar in the field.”
Professor Gino’s data doctoring came to light in a blog run by three behavioral scientists. DataColada alleges “fraud in four academic papers that Gino co-authored.”
They took their evidence to Harvard administrators, all the way back in the fall of 2021. They had proof “tied to a 2012 paper and another three papers she was a part of.”
More honesty at the top
The paper released in 2012 “relied on three separate studies, including one that Gino spearheaded.” It concluded, based on the bad data, that “people who fill out tax forms or insurance documents are more honest if they attest to the truth of their responses at the top of the page instead of the bottom.”
It’s bullcrap but it sounded good and now it’s the standard theory.
It’s not like instead of actually going out and doing the studies, Gino made up the results on her own, “including one focused on honest behavior.” What happened is the studies were done but data which didn’t fit the theory got “altered.”
Academic fraud has run rampant …
Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino is reportedly on administrative leave with the university amid a review of alleged fraud within her body of research https://t.co/bdmPV1YirZ
— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) June 22, 2023
The honesty study started with “100 participants to complete a worksheet of 20 puzzles, and for every puzzle cracked they would get $1.” They were later asked to submit a form “saying how much money they earned from the puzzle-solving.” It was set up to lead them to believe cheating wouldn’t get caught.
The researchers knew exactly how many puzzles each participant got right but the participants didn’t know that and turned in a figure. All the subjects had to sign a statement saying the amount they were claiming is correct. Half signed at the bottom while the other half signed up top.
After Gino fudged the figures, the study concluded that “participants were more truthful if they attested to the accuracy of their responses at the top of the form, and not the bottom.” Three real scientists, Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson and Joseph Simmons “came to the conclusion that some of the data had been tampered with.“
