I 100% agree that the effect of the fraud was worse than the strip club. However, it's important to keep in mind that laws and consequences are about creating the right forward looking incentives.
Prosecuting someone for violating clear rules on misuse of funds has little downside and doesn't require passing a whole new set of laws. OTOH it's hard to design the right sort of laws to punish this kind of academic fraud.
Would it be a special rule for scientific journals? If not there are free speech issues (usually avoided by normal fraud claims because of the specific intent to gain money under false pretenses). Even then, juries and DAs aren't very familiar with the academic process and it's far too easy to imagine how such laws might be abused -- imagine a conservative DA searching through the work of a climate researcher or a lefty one doing the same re: research calling gender affirming care into question.
Ultimately, I don't think bringing the law into it will be very helpful. The kind of people who commit scientific fraud probably won't be much more detered by the threat of prison than the threat of career death and there is always concern of overbreadth or misapplication.
Having said that I think there are other changes that need to happen I'll mention in another comment.
To clarify, I don't think we need a new law or federal prosecution or prison. It would be good enough if 1) federal funding agencies looked harder for fraud, 2) took action in many more cases to deny future funding, and if 3) universities didn't sweep fraud under the rug (as also seems to have happened with Duke and Dan Ariely).
That would be nice, but I think 1 & 2 are incompatible with 3. Ultimately, universities pay professors (and lend them status) to increase their own status and to bring in research dollars. The more you do 1 & 2 the more incentive universities will have to sweep misconduct under the rug.
Having said that, it's rarely that the fraud starts when the researcher reaches the big name tenured position so maybe it's enough just for universities to look harder for it before they hire!
"Prosecuting someone for violating clear rules on misuse of funds has little downside and doesn't require passing a whole new set of laws. OTOH it's hard to design the right sort of laws to punish this kind of academic fraud... Would it be a special rule for scientific journals?"
It's simply fraud. There aren't new laws that need to be created, though they may need to change some wording in the contracts to make some aspects easier. Fraud is fraud, whether someone lies on their employee timesheet or tells the government they'll be doing X and instead do Y (using deception for personal or financial gain).
More than likely is that it's just a lot easier to prosecute the fraud when someone has to explain flying their family to Cancun or is paying off bills at a strip club. You have to prove intent instead of incompetence, which is harder and more expensive to do, but both should preclude receiving more grants.
Would direct you to arxiv.org if you are looking for math, science, engineering, etc. related research papers. Specific papers are often self published by the authors as well on google scholar, so I'd look a bit deeper if you aren't able to find a paper you want. I have never paid for research, and also did not graduate from college, and have read hundreds of research papers for free online.
Totally agree that we need to address the misuse of academic funds in terms of fraud and misconduct; as you say the waste is not just in the fraudulent research itself, but in the impact it has on the rest of the field - especially when the research is high-profile.
At the recent World Conference on Research Integrity I heard a presentation from Rita Faria, who is an Assistant Professor at the School of Criminology, University of Porto. She's written about research misconduct as a form of white collar crime - https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-73435-4 - bringing a different perspective to the problem, and (hopefully) some useful solutions from existing criminology work in this area.
What I think we do need to change is to create a stronger sense of scientific ethics. Yes, some amount of fraud will happen but part of that fraud I think happens because we've cultivated a sense it's all just a game rather than a kind of service to society and truth.
Perhaps more importantly is creating a sense amoung academics that they have an ethical responsibility to try to contribute to human knowledge. There is plenty of research that happens which isn't technically fraudulent but where the people involved know it's not increasing understanding but do it anyway. Creating a sense that it's not okay to do work knowing it's not helpful would be more important than stronger punishment of the actual fraudsters imo.
I 100% agree that the effect of the fraud was worse than the strip club. However, it's important to keep in mind that laws and consequences are about creating the right forward looking incentives.
Prosecuting someone for violating clear rules on misuse of funds has little downside and doesn't require passing a whole new set of laws. OTOH it's hard to design the right sort of laws to punish this kind of academic fraud.
Would it be a special rule for scientific journals? If not there are free speech issues (usually avoided by normal fraud claims because of the specific intent to gain money under false pretenses). Even then, juries and DAs aren't very familiar with the academic process and it's far too easy to imagine how such laws might be abused -- imagine a conservative DA searching through the work of a climate researcher or a lefty one doing the same re: research calling gender affirming care into question.
Ultimately, I don't think bringing the law into it will be very helpful. The kind of people who commit scientific fraud probably won't be much more detered by the threat of prison than the threat of career death and there is always concern of overbreadth or misapplication.
Having said that I think there are other changes that need to happen I'll mention in another comment.
To clarify, I don't think we need a new law or federal prosecution or prison. It would be good enough if 1) federal funding agencies looked harder for fraud, 2) took action in many more cases to deny future funding, and if 3) universities didn't sweep fraud under the rug (as also seems to have happened with Duke and Dan Ariely).
That would be nice, but I think 1 & 2 are incompatible with 3. Ultimately, universities pay professors (and lend them status) to increase their own status and to bring in research dollars. The more you do 1 & 2 the more incentive universities will have to sweep misconduct under the rug.
Having said that, it's rarely that the fraud starts when the researcher reaches the big name tenured position so maybe it's enough just for universities to look harder for it before they hire!
"Prosecuting someone for violating clear rules on misuse of funds has little downside and doesn't require passing a whole new set of laws. OTOH it's hard to design the right sort of laws to punish this kind of academic fraud... Would it be a special rule for scientific journals?"
It's simply fraud. There aren't new laws that need to be created, though they may need to change some wording in the contracts to make some aspects easier. Fraud is fraud, whether someone lies on their employee timesheet or tells the government they'll be doing X and instead do Y (using deception for personal or financial gain).
More than likely is that it's just a lot easier to prosecute the fraud when someone has to explain flying their family to Cancun or is paying off bills at a strip club. You have to prove intent instead of incompetence, which is harder and more expensive to do, but both should preclude receiving more grants.
There’s no transparency.
First of all, I can’t even access the majority of research articles, even if I wanted to. They’re all behind publishers’ paywalls.
Second, a lot of these articles appear to be intentionally written badly. Or, at least no thought is given to the audience.
The publishing industry is based on a paper-first model that is hundreds of years old.
Why not an online-first model? Allow comments; hyperlinks…
Substack seems like an appropriate online publishing platform for academics. It even includes a pay wall if we have to have one.
Would direct you to arxiv.org if you are looking for math, science, engineering, etc. related research papers. Specific papers are often self published by the authors as well on google scholar, so I'd look a bit deeper if you aren't able to find a paper you want. I have never paid for research, and also did not graduate from college, and have read hundreds of research papers for free online.
It's all about finding them :)
It is confusing that people totally found committing scientific fraud are not fired immediately.
What's Lesne's first name, and is UMN Univ. of Minnesota?
Yep. The *economics* of academia is that fraud is hidden and ignored.
https://x.com/benlandautaylor/status/1798791105556959381
Totally agree that we need to address the misuse of academic funds in terms of fraud and misconduct; as you say the waste is not just in the fraudulent research itself, but in the impact it has on the rest of the field - especially when the research is high-profile.
At the recent World Conference on Research Integrity I heard a presentation from Rita Faria, who is an Assistant Professor at the School of Criminology, University of Porto. She's written about research misconduct as a form of white collar crime - https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-73435-4 - bringing a different perspective to the problem, and (hopefully) some useful solutions from existing criminology work in this area.
What I think we do need to change is to create a stronger sense of scientific ethics. Yes, some amount of fraud will happen but part of that fraud I think happens because we've cultivated a sense it's all just a game rather than a kind of service to society and truth.
Perhaps more importantly is creating a sense amoung academics that they have an ethical responsibility to try to contribute to human knowledge. There is plenty of research that happens which isn't technically fraudulent but where the people involved know it's not increasing understanding but do it anyway. Creating a sense that it's not okay to do work knowing it's not helpful would be more important than stronger punishment of the actual fraudsters imo.