Latest news with #researchintegrity
Daily Mail
26-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Harvard fires professor for fabricating research on dishonesty
Harvard University fired a professor after finding that she fabricated research used in studies on dishonesty. Francesca Gino, a star business professor at the Ivy League, was stripped of her title this past week after Harvard administrators informed business faculty of their decision, GHB reported. An investigation into her work was launched in 2023 after a trio of data bloggers - Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson and Joe Simmons - presented what they said was evidence of academic fraud in four studies co-authored by Gino, noting that they also 'believe that many more Gino-authored papers contain fake data.' Gino was a rising professional at Harvard and her behavioral research studies relating to cheating, lying and dishonesty received widespread media coverage over the past decade. But questions about her work first emerged regarding a 2012 study she co-authored, which purported to show that making people sign an honesty pledge at the beginning of a form, rather than the end, increases honest responses. That study was retracted in 2021 over apparent data fabrication by a different researcher who worked on the project, which cited three separate lab experiments to draw its conclusion. About four years later, an internal investigation found that Gino manipulated data to support her findings in at least four of her studies. The prestigious university said it hadn't stripped a professor of their tenure in decades and did not comment further on the announcement, per The Daily Beast. An investigation into her work was launched in 2023 after a trio of data bloggers presented what they said was evidence of academic fraud in four studies co-authored by Gino When the investigation first took shape in 2023, Gino took to her personal website denying the claims against her. 'There is one thing I know for sure: I did not commit academic fraud. I did not manipulate data to produce a particular result,' it reads. 'I did not falsify data to bolster any result. I did not commit the offense I am accused of. Period.' After accusations started to spread, Gino was placed on administrative leave. The journal Psychological Science also retracted two articles by Gino, saying it had acted on the recommendation of the Research Integrity Office at Harvard Business School (HBS). In both cases, the journal said an independent forensic firm engaged by HBS had discovered 'discrepancies' between the published data sets and earlier data sets from Gino's behavioral experiments. Separately, Harvard requested that the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology withdraw a third study by Gino, and the journal's publishers plan to retract the article in the September 2023 issue, the Financial Times reported. The two studies recently retracted by Psychological Science were a 2015 paper titled 'The Moral Virtue of Authenticity: How Inauthenticity Produces Feelings of Immorality and Impurity' and a 2014 paper titled 'Evil Genius? How Dishonesty Can Lead to Greater Creativity.' The 2020 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which is slated for retraction was titled 'Why Connect? Moral Consequences of Networking with a Promotion or Prevention Focus.' The paper titled 'Evil Genius' involved five separate lab experiments with human volunteers, who were given the opportunity to behave dishonestly by overreporting their performance on various tasks, and then measured on creative tasks. The article purported to demonstrate that 'acting dishonestly leads to greater creativity in subsequent tasks,' according to the original abstract. In August 2023, Gino fired back at the school and went on to file a $25 million lawsuit alleging she was the target of a 'smear campaign.' The 100-page legal filing, submitted to Massachusetts federal court, claimed Harvard and the three data scientist bloggers defamed her with false claims of academic fraud. I want to be very clear: I have never, ever falsified data or engaged in research misconduct of any kind,' Gino said. In her suit, Gino insisted that any anomalies in the spreadsheets may have simply been the result of research assistants entering data manually from paper worksheets, a process naturally prone to human error. Gino's suit went on to accuse Harvard of using an unfair and biased process to investigate the data fraud allegations, saying the university 'ignored exculpatory evidence' and created a new policy for researching academic fraud claims that applied only to her. The suit also accused the school of defamation, breach of contract, bad faith and gender discrimination, claiming that Gino's male colleagues who faced similar accusations were treated completely differently. 'Harvard's complete and utter disregard for evidence, due process and confidentiality should frighten all academic researchers,' Gino's attorney Andrew T. Miltenberg previously told 'The University's lack of integrity in its review process stripped Prof. Gino of her rights, career and reputation – and failed miserably with respect to gender equity,' he added. Once a superstar in the world of behavioral research, Gino had been lavished with awards and press coverage for her buzzy research, and was among Harvard's most highly paid faculty members, raking in an annual salary of more than $1 million. She was featured in a TedX Talk in April 2021, titled: 'The Power of Why: Unlocking a Curious Mind.' Since accusations around her came to light, people started to attack her in the comment section of the YouTube video. 'Why truly is an excellent question. Like "Why did you fake that data?" and "Why do you think it was ok to lie to so many people?,"' one wrote. 'Thanks for this video with a dishonesty expert, who can contribute invaluable practical experience to the subject matter of dishonesty,' said another. Gino was also a keynote speaker at the Bologna Business School's 2018 graduation.
CBC
09-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
N.J. firm made misleading websites in names of multiple Canadians and an alleged CRA scammer
If his Google Scholar profile is to be believed, Louis Arriola is a prolific scientist, having contributed to more than 700 scholarly articles about a wide range of unrelated disciplines from economics to advanced nanotechnology. According to the profile, he contributed to a PhD dissertation on the automotive industry before he turned nine years old. While the papers appear to be real, Arriola's contribution to the research is questionable. His name does not appear on the original publication in the 20 most recent entries on his profile and a university professor credited on more than 100 of the papers confirmed Arriola was not involved. An investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate has found that Arriola is among more than 100 people, including multiple Canadians, with a similar pattern of spam and false web content surrounding them. Website registration records, online advertising data and connections between fake social media profiles indicate that pattern points to a New Jersey reputation management firm called David Rosenberg of Lakewood, N.J., who operates advertises on his LinkedIn page that he can "delete online negative info fast," and that "by creating new and relevant content," his company is able to push negative online information "further down the search results in Google, Yahoo and Bing." A LinkedIn post from Rosenberg states that only seven per cent of people go beyond the first page of search results. "This meant that for reputation management, if we pushed down a negative to the third page," he wrote, "almost no one would see it." In Arriola's case, looking beyond the first page of results and searching public records databases shows a long history of legal troubles. An affidavit from an employee of the Canada Revenue Agency, submitted to Federal Court in 2020, says that Arriola was the operator of a "paper company" with "no real business activity" involved in a tax "scheme" that saw the agency pay out $63 million in what it called "illegitimate" refunds. Arriola also was convicted in 2009 in California for a telecom-related fraud and has been named in civil lawsuits in multiple U.S. states that were pursuing him and companies he controlled for money that was loaned and allegedly never paid back. His Google Scholar profile is one part of an interconnected cloud of misleading and spam websites. Blog posts about him link to an artist profile advertising stock images as his "work," as well as accounts at video sharing platforms and a website containing his name — — which has connections to Rosenberg of The Fifth Estate has attempted to contact Arriola in multiple ways over the past two years but has received no response. For this story, contact was attempted via a LinkedIn profile that was recently active. A good deal of the information about Arriola available online is true, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. For instance, on his IMDB profile, he is listed as executive producer for the 2019 film Rambo: Last Blood, a fact supported by the appearance of his name in the end credits of the film. "The whole point here is to confuse people, confuse people about the truth in relation to this particular person," said Ahmed Al-Rawi, director of The Disinformation Project at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. "As consumers of information, as readers, as users of the internet, the expectation is to factually understand the world around us," Al-Rawi said. "If what we are ending up reading about is fake, we will have the wrong impression about what is around us, about the world, about the people we think we know." IP address connections was made available online by a server with a specific IP address, like a street address for the internet. The Fifth Estate sent a message to a phone number associated with David Rosenberg of asking if he was in control of the approximately 140 websites hosted at the same address as Within a week, all but 19 of those 140 sites, including Arriola's, were scattered to a variety of new IP addresses. Many had been at that original IP address for multiple years. Website registration records show that 14 of the 140 sites previously listed Rosenberg as registrant or administrator. Those records were made anonymous in 2018, around the same time that Rosenberg's name was removed from his own website — Many of the websites at the IP address followed a similar pattern, with the first and last name of the person the website was about in the URL. A phone call to the number associated with Rosenberg was answered by a man who declined to identify himself. "I think you have the wrong number," he said during the 25-second call and hung up. A lawyer claiming to represent Rosenberg contacted The Fifth Estate, noting that he was in possession of questions sent via text message to that same phone number. Since that phone call, neither the lawyer nor Rosenberg have responded to subsequent questions or correspondence. On the internet, "you can make up things and create a facade, create a whole world in order to mislead people or create a certain type of reality," Al-Rawi said. Artist profiles emerge online In 2023, Dr. David Gerber, a gynecologist in midtown Toronto, was stated to have"engaged in disgraceful, dishonourable or unprofessional conduct with respect to 10 patients" by Ontario's physician regulator. As the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario was investigating patient complaints about Gerber and pursuing action against him, artist profiles in his name began appearing online. They claimed to show photographs, created by him, some even offering to sell the pictures at a specific price. However, the works were not his, and appear to be part of a network of internet content created by Rosenberg. A number of the photos on Gerber's art profile also appear on a blog at — a website that was hosted at the IP address linked to Rosenberg. "After investigation, Dr. Gerber has learned that [a search engine optimization firm] in the U.S. who he retained from mid-2022 until August 2023, had without his knowledge, authorization or consent, created the sites," a lawyer for Gerber said in response to questions. "Mr. Rosenberg was recommended to Dr. Gerber by a friend," the lawyer added in a subsequent email, stating that the physician "knew nothing of Mr. Rosenberg or any of his businesses prior to this referral." While was taken down following initial questions about it to Gerber, the site appears to have been reactivated when it was moved away from the Rosenberg-connected IP address. "Mr. Rosenberg is no longer responding to Dr. Gerber's communications to him," Gerber's lawyer said. "In respect of the websites and web pages and posts," he said, "they all constitute a form of impersonation, of which Dr. Gerber is the subject." "Dr. Gerber is not," he added, responsible for "any website mill or the publication of disinformation" or "the use of spam or false and misleading content." Other Canadians who had websites at that address include a Calgary orthodontist who admitted to taking payment for treatments and then not completing them and two finance professionals who ran into issues with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A communications firm contacted The Fifth Estate regarding questions to those financiers, Marc Bistricer and Paul Zogala of Murchinson Ltd. In regard to Rosenberg and they said that "we have checked our vendor invoices during the time period you suggested and neither Murchinson nor the individuals in question ever hired this firm." They declined to respond to further questions. Bistricer, Zogala and Gerber each have profiles on the art sharing website Those profiles include "work" that is not their own and links to a variety of spam social media profiles. Behance users can post their own work, and follow the work of other artists they are interested in. Bistricer, Zogala and Gerber's work is followed by a nearly identical list of more than 50 accounts. Their shared followers include five accounts that are variations on the name Mark Tompkins, as well as accounts for Jay Grieg, J. Grieg and Jason Allen Grieg. Twelve of their shared followers are individuals who themselves had websites at the IP address The Fifth Estate asked Rosenberg about.
