Fake science at Harvard
After watching this video:
I wanted to go deeper and understand about the story behind Francesca Gino.
Academic integrity and falsifying results is a big issue.
The pressure to publish being one of the most used reasons.
I then started to think of a much older video that discusses p-hacking or probability hacking.
Citation hacking and peer review misconduct are other common methods used to, game the system.
In this story, there are 4 main articles discussed from Data Colada.
Cluster Fake
This study found that signing at the top v bottom, lowered the average amount of over-reporting and, halved the average amount of claimed commuting expenses.
But after flagging suspicious data that was entered, the results are no longer significant.
My Class year is Harvard
The second study found that participants desired cleansing products more when arguing against their original views.
But after flagging suspicious data that was entered, the results were no longer significant.
The cheaters are out of order
The third study found that participants who cheated on the coin toss task came up with more uses for newspaper than those that didn't cheat.
Again, after flagging suspicious data that was entered, the results were no longer significant.
Forgetting the words
And to complete the set, the fourth study found that participants felt more impure about the networking event in the prevention condition than in the promotion condition.
Which, after flagging suspicious data that was entered, the results were no longer significant.
Ongoing situation
Francesca made a comment on LinkedIn.
But since then has filed a $25 million defamation lawsuit.
So this is by no means the end.
The wider story
This is but 1 story of many.
Retraction watch shares stories similar to this almost daily.
It doesn't matter the institution, the science, the researcher.
Fake science is out there.
What do you think we should do about?