Vera, Adobe Stock Images 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.
In recent years, academic deception and fraud have been proven in quite a few instances. 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.
People will lose confidence in academic research unless universities and scholarly journals take action to restore their integrity. 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.
But, in 2021, a team of researchers (Data Colada) challenged the data on which the “signing first” paper was based. Bazerman was shocked to discover that the Data Colada sleuths were right. When he tried to get to the bottom of this embarrassing situation, two co-authors stonewalled him, and one even filed a lawsuit against Data Colada for defaming her by questioning the reliability of her data. That suit was dismissed and the paper eventually retracted.
All of that shocked and depressed Bazerman, who writes, “This book is being published during a tough time for social science and, more broadly, academia.” His concern is that people will lose confidence in academic research unless universities and scholarly journals take action to restore their integrity.
He has good reason for concern. The “signing first” paper is not a solitary case; there have been quite a few other instances of data manipulation and outright fraud in academic research, and Bazerman discusses them in detail.
Consider, for example, a paper published in 2010 in Psychological Science, in which three psychologists with sterling credentials purported to prove that “power posing” (i.e., taking a bodily stance with one’s arms and legs positioned in a dominant way) has beneficial results for individuals, including increased feelings of power and risk tolerance and decreased stress levels. In short, fake it so you’ll make it. One of the authors gave a TED Talk that has been viewed over 70 million times. The problem is that the paper was based on highly dubious data. One of the authors later disavowed it. (See here for the “power posing” story.)
Perhaps the most (in)famous case of research fraud is that of Dutch professor Diederik Stapel, who published many papers on social psychology and was something of a rock star in the academic world—until he was exposed as a fraud. Bazerman writes, apropos of one of his papers, that “Stapel was confident his hypothesis was true, but the actual data didn’t support it. So Stapel sat at his kitchen table and began typing numbers into his computer that would produce the intended effect.” After initially getting away with that, Stapel stopped doing any research at all, merely fabricating data to support his conclusions. When finally exposed, he admitted everything. (For more on Stapel, go here.)
The proliferation of fraud and deception in research causes Bazerman distress. He writes, “When researchers make up their data, they may publish more easily and gain an unfair advantage as they seek job opportunities and move up the academic ladder.” Undoubtedly that’s true, but Bazerman misses the root of the problem, which is that we have far too many wanna-be professors desperately trying to climb academic ladders in the first place. Because we vastly subsidize higher education generally and academic research, we create the conditions making it inevitable that we will get reams and reams of useless research, some of it fraudulent and much more of it pointless.
We have far too many wanna-be professors desperately trying to climb academic ladders. Prior to the higher-education explosion beginning with the 1965 Higher Education Act, academic research was a small-scale affair. The country had far fewer “research” institutions where the main occupation of faculty members was doing research, and there were far fewer academic departments where up-and-coming professors were obligated to crank out publications if they wanted to get hired and then make tenure. Academic research was done by dedicated scholars pursuing serious lines of inquiry, and submissions were carefully scrutinized.
Because we vastly subsidize higher education, we create the conditions making it inevitable that we will get reams of useless research. But with the big higher-education push starting in 1965, “publish or perish” became a mass phenomenon, and the huge numbers of aspiring academics overwhelmed the system. Hundreds of new journals sprang up, frequently with very lax standards for screening out dubious work. That laxity was hilariously exposed by Alan Sokal in an article stating that gravity is merely a social construct, written in fashionable academic gibberish that fooled the editors into taking it seriously.
Moreover, colleges and universities created many new academic “disciplines” where rigor took a backseat to publishing ideologically correct papers on topics like “implicit bias.” Our institutions were employing an army of professors whose main job was not to teach a body of knowledge but, rather, to produce research in avant-garde fields such as Women’s Studies. The result was an outpouring of extremely dubious scholarship—a prodigious waste of resources.
Here’s an analogy. Suppose that a country, acting on the belief that art is a public good that should be given government support, set up a system to subsidize the production of art. After a time, the country found that it was paying for a huge outpouring of absurd artworks, which it would then spend more money to store in warehouses. (The Dutch actually did that, as we read in this article.) Similarly, suppose that a country, acting on the belief that higher education is a great public boon, decided to subsidize college degrees and academic research. The United States has done that, with predictable results: far more degrees and scholarship than previously but with steadily falling quality.
Professor Reuven Brenner drives the point home in a 2024 Wall Street Journal article entitled “Art Subsidies and U.S. Higher Ed.” Brenner writes, “As the costs of the [Dutch] program increased, the agency asked applicants to prove they had sold $4,000 worth of art privately and to donate up to four works to the government each year. It requires little imagination to design wonderful fraud opportunities for all parties involved with such programs in place—which they did.”
When people have to spend their own money for something—art, education, or anything else—they are usually vigilant to make sure they get their money’s worth. But when the government buys or subsidizes things, quality control declines or even disappears as scammers see easy pickings. Just as the Dutch found themselves awash in junk art due to subsidies, Americans find themselves awash in junk academic research.
Here’s a recent example: a paper by a sociology professor at San Diego State entitled “Skateboarders of Color and the (Co-)Emergence of the DIY Ethos in Skateboarding,” paid for by the people of California.
Bazerman’s concern is that Americans will lose confidence in research unless scholarly journals and universities take steps to restore integrity. His suggestions are good ones that might deter outright fraud but would do nothing to stop the flood of “scholarship” that professors do just because they are expected (and paid) to publish stuff. As his book shows, lots of academic research amounts to nothing more than the leisure-time activity of professors who think up fanciful hypotheses about almost anything, then write up articles purporting to prove them, which are then published in journals that almost nobody reads.
If we want high-quality research, the people who want it should pay for it, not the university and/or the taxpayers. The real solution to the problems of fraudulent and useless research is to do what the Dutch government finally did—stop the subsidies.
George Leef is director of external relations at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.
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George Leef
