Juliana Schroeder was one of Francesca Gino's peers and launched an intense effort to verify the papers in question. Regarding her and the field at large: It's no shock that there is deep rot in...
Juliana Schroeder was one of Francesca Gino's peers and launched an intense effort to verify the papers in question. Regarding her and the field at large:
In October 2023, a former graduate student who had helped tip off the team of bloggers to Gino’s possible fraud wrote her own “post mortem” on the case. It paints Schroeder as exceptional among her peers: a professor who “sent a clear signal to the scientific community that she is taking this scandal seriously.” Several others echoed this assessment, saying that ever since the news broke, Schroeder has been relentless—heroic, even—in her efforts to correct the record.
But if Schroeder planned to extinguish any doubts that remained, she may have aimed too high. More than a year since all of this began, the evidence of fraud has only multiplied. The rot in business schools runs much deeper than almost anyone had guessed, and the blame is unnervingly widespread. In the end, even Schroeder would become a suspect.
It's no shock that there is deep rot in business schools; one only has to look at what MBAs have wrought in the real world and the thick disdain people hold for them.
I'm not at all surprised that research students, like Ms. Brooks at Wharton, make up data. Based on my own high school experiences, it's completely believable that smart, tired students take shortcuts and make things up as long as its convincing enough to 'get the grade', so to speak. As one who tried to do things the right way even if it meant a worse score, I was continually frustrated by such behavior.
A highlighted quote in the article, from Uri Simonsohn, goes, "It’s embarrassing how few protections we have against fraud and how easy it has been to fool us."
It's remarkable how well that statement applies to modern society. A large swath of the population is absolutely fooled, not trying too hard to find truth or verify, because it would mean grappling with inconvenient realities. When this phenomenon is discussed with regard to the world outside academia, it's said that this is a result of lack of education. Yet here we have highly educated people falling susceptible to the same sorts of problems.
Ambitious students, researchers, and business people are united by that ambition and are willing to forego rigor and ethics if it gives them an edge. In a cutthroat world where the incentives are for an exceedingly few at the top, some will do anything to stand out and reap rewards. How can they be expected to put in much work or great risk for vanishing returns?
There are no doubt concerns specific to academia and publishing, but they are symptoms of more fundamental forces that, terminally unchecked, are rending society apart.
Yeah at this point I just assume the vast majority of research is doctored or faked. Making publish or perish a doctrine and mixing it with the INSANE volume of "research" that is done, and giving...
Yeah at this point I just assume the vast majority of research is doctored or faked.
Making publish or perish a doctrine and mixing it with the INSANE volume of "research" that is done, and giving almost no incentive to double check or replicate, while having literally life changing incentive to on the other side, is of course going to lead to this kind of nonsense.
Anything that isn't a hard science (where fuck you replicate it can't be hand waved, and it's STILL a problem there) is going to suffer hard from this, and I think a lot of terrible decisions will be seen as driven by outright fraudulent science taken as fact.
We've honestly entered another age of myth. Be it "this guy on twitter" or "i saw a paper in blah!", they've both got about as much weight these days until repeatedly proven. And sadly when the replication fails miserably, or the data turns out to be faked (p hacking is such a huge issue), it's already too late and you've got a pyramid of nonsense already rolling.
And that's just the stuff people are willing to call out. There's plenty of "3rd rail" research where saying "hey uh...turns out this widely held belief on something politically volatile might not be correct" is career ending.
I have some hope in that debunking work is starting to become a source of reputation in and of itself. What we need though, is significant federal funding for replication. If everybody’s work has...
I have some hope in that debunking work is starting to become a source of reputation in and of itself. What we need though, is significant federal funding for replication. If everybody’s work has a real risk of being randomly selected for replication and thereby exposure, the incentive for fraud will diminish.
Very interesting article. It's hard to say whether it seems likely that Schroeder intentionally tampered with the data; obviously the author thinks it's likely, but I hardly see any smoking gun...
Very interesting article. It's hard to say whether it seems likely that Schroeder intentionally tampered with the data; obviously the author thinks it's likely, but I hardly see any smoking gun and so it's hard to assess how much of the allusion/innuendo that makes shroeder seem suspicious is being colored by the author.
Juliana Schroeder was one of Francesca Gino's peers and launched an intense effort to verify the papers in question. Regarding her and the field at large:
It's no shock that there is deep rot in business schools; one only has to look at what MBAs have wrought in the real world and the thick disdain people hold for them.
I'm not at all surprised that research students, like Ms. Brooks at Wharton, make up data. Based on my own high school experiences, it's completely believable that smart, tired students take shortcuts and make things up as long as its convincing enough to 'get the grade', so to speak. As one who tried to do things the right way even if it meant a worse score, I was continually frustrated by such behavior.
A highlighted quote in the article, from Uri Simonsohn, goes, "It’s embarrassing how few protections we have against fraud and how easy it has been to fool us."
It's remarkable how well that statement applies to modern society. A large swath of the population is absolutely fooled, not trying too hard to find truth or verify, because it would mean grappling with inconvenient realities. When this phenomenon is discussed with regard to the world outside academia, it's said that this is a result of lack of education. Yet here we have highly educated people falling susceptible to the same sorts of problems.
Ambitious students, researchers, and business people are united by that ambition and are willing to forego rigor and ethics if it gives them an edge. In a cutthroat world where the incentives are for an exceedingly few at the top, some will do anything to stand out and reap rewards. How can they be expected to put in much work or great risk for vanishing returns?
There are no doubt concerns specific to academia and publishing, but they are symptoms of more fundamental forces that, terminally unchecked, are rending society apart.
Yeah at this point I just assume the vast majority of research is doctored or faked.
Making publish or perish a doctrine and mixing it with the INSANE volume of "research" that is done, and giving almost no incentive to double check or replicate, while having literally life changing incentive to on the other side, is of course going to lead to this kind of nonsense.
Anything that isn't a hard science (where fuck you replicate it can't be hand waved, and it's STILL a problem there) is going to suffer hard from this, and I think a lot of terrible decisions will be seen as driven by outright fraudulent science taken as fact.
We've honestly entered another age of myth. Be it "this guy on twitter" or "i saw a paper in blah!", they've both got about as much weight these days until repeatedly proven. And sadly when the replication fails miserably, or the data turns out to be faked (p hacking is such a huge issue), it's already too late and you've got a pyramid of nonsense already rolling.
And that's just the stuff people are willing to call out. There's plenty of "3rd rail" research where saying "hey uh...turns out this widely held belief on something politically volatile might not be correct" is career ending.
I have some hope in that debunking work is starting to become a source of reputation in and of itself. What we need though, is significant federal funding for replication. If everybody’s work has a real risk of being randomly selected for replication and thereby exposure, the incentive for fraud will diminish.
Archive of the article
Very interesting article. It's hard to say whether it seems likely that Schroeder intentionally tampered with the data; obviously the author thinks it's likely, but I hardly see any smoking gun and so it's hard to assess how much of the allusion/innuendo that makes shroeder seem suspicious is being colored by the author.