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Researcher on rule breaking accused of fraud
Hello,
that is just Dandy. Watching a video on YT I see that a researcher on rule breaking is accused of fraud. Her book: "Rebel Talent".
Well, she did break the rules.
This is too much. There's a YT interview of her called: "Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life". The paper suspected is of 2012. So basically she enjoyed 10 years of impunity (at least now we don't know when this all started) and being at the top of her field.
Finally, it seems she updated her CV in june 2023 (date of the administrative leave from Harvard). She's back on LinkedIn!
She's got the marketing down though.
And this one: she faked data on a research about honesty. This is rich.
I worked at Harvard so this actually reminds me of the professor I had there.
He was also foreigner but from another country. He had many many publications just like her. But it was all quantity and no quality. This guy was a crook of science. He enjoyed driving around in his black Mercedes but I don't think he was a good researcher. When working on grants he had to have someone at his side in front of the computer to help him.
Harvard attracts research-stars-wanna-bes like moths to a flame. So after having seen it from the inside I'm not surprised. At Harvard like everywhere you have the best and the worst. You have the most brilliant scientists of the World, some of the greatest thinkers ever. And you have the people who played the system: they were in a famous lab which opened the door to another famous lab to becoming professor. And since they know how to play the papers game they are still in the game.
But they are neither brilliant scientists nor thinkers nor managers. They are very good at playing the system.
Also at Harvard they make you work like a slave. Either you are slaving away in a good lab or in a bad one. It's not as glamour as it seems. However, some of it is true about the spirit of innovation, the drive to invent, the open-mindedness: that is true. But there are also the many suicides every year at MIT due to the pressure and other not-so-nice sides to this. If you are in research or have done some you know what I'm talking about.
Thank you for sharing this, John!
Yeah, I had heard and read a bit about this case.
Funny indeed how she chose the topic of her own fraud :).
And interesting how she got caught, too: she just overdid it.
Her findings seemed to confirm her own hypothesis a bit too often, and "a bit too convincingly".
Making her life easier wasn't enough: she had to get the fame and recognition of a top talent.
What's even scarier for research is that there may be more Francesca Gino around who just know how to fake a bit better, and may never come to surface.
Yeah that's why it's a great thing when we get caught early in bad behaviour. Otherwise we get an incentive to continue and the consequences become bigger and bigger. So it's a blessing in disguise.
