Thanks to The Washington Post for breaking the story: Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, who look like a couple of nice, clean-cut guys, have been wallowing in the “seamier side of academia,” where “lying, cheating, and occasionally stealing,” are shockingly common.
That revelation comes in a profile by Fred Barbash, who reports that Marcus, Oransky, and their blog Retraction Watch have shown how important–and how intriguing–academic misconduct can be. And all this, Barbash writes, in “a blog which, by all rights, should be dry and boring, like its name.”
Instead, Barbash finds stories on Retraction Watch such as this one, with which he begins:
A prominent accounting professor was accused by his university of fabricating data for a journal article on accounting fraud, of all things, and then destroying the evidence stored on his computer. Investigators at Bentley University in Massachusetts said in a report issued July 21 that his “whole body” of work while at Bentley must be considered “suspect” and recommended that academic journals review some 50 of his published papers. His lawyer says he’s innocent but according to investigators, he provided no information to dispute the charges.
“Through tips, scouring academic literature and government investigations from places like the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Research Integrity, they’ve managed to corner the market on first sightings of academic wrongdoing,” Barbash writes.
Oransky and Marcus tell Barbash that they are finding far more stories than they can cover. And “they are confident, based on what they’ve seen and continue to hear, that behind some of the otherwise ‘routine’ retractions are stories that are anything but routine.”
It’s a lesson in good reporting. Take a walk on the seamier side–especially if nobody has preceded you–and you’re likely to find a few good stories. Maybe more than a few.
-Paul Raeburn
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