Should we trust the research published by professors? The scholars who write books and papers have impressive degrees and teach at respected universities, and their work has to undergo rigorous scrutiny before it can be published, so the answer would seem to be that we should. The safeguards against deception and fraud appear strong.
Decades ago, they were strong, but that’s not true today. In recent years, deception and fraud have been proven in quite a few instances. Some of the guilty professors have admitted their wrongdoing, one even confessing that he didn’t have the patience for rigor. Clearly, academic research has changed for the worse.
Professor Max Bazerman of Harvard Business School has done a great public service in writing Inside an Academic Scandal: A Story of Fraud and Betrayal. His book puts people on guard against believing an idea just because it comes in scholarly wrapping. It was inspired by Bazerman’s own experience as a co-author of a paper in which others had falsified data to make the conclusion look strong. Over a period of years, he came to suspect the data behind the paper and sought to have the other authors explain their conduct, which they never did. Besides telling his own lamentable tale, Bazerman recounts many other instances of scholarly fraud, but let’s begin with his story.
In 2012, Bazerman and four co-authors published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which purported to show that people were far more likely to tell the truth on a document for which they had to provide data if they had to first sign and attest to their truthfulness rather than signing afterward. That publication became known as the “signing first” paper, and it led a number of companies, such as auto insurers, to change their procedures in hopes of getting more truthful data from customers.
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