2024-01-11
1 小时 14 分钟Some of the biggest names in behavioral science stand accused of faking their results. Last year, an astonishing 10,000 research papers were retracted. We talk to whistleblowers, reformers, and a co-author who got caught up in the chaos. (Part 1 of 2)
Just over a year ago, Francesca Gino was.
There's really no other way of putting it.
She was a superstar, an academic superstar, at least.
She was at the center of everything, being a prestigious faculty member at Harvard and all of her public speaking and her books.
Her reputation was perfect.
She was synonymous with the highest levels of research in organizational behavior.
She's just a giant in the field.
The field in which Gino is a giant, where her reputation was perfect, is variously called behavioral science or decision science or organizational psychology, according to her website.
At the Harvard Business School, where she has been a professor of business administration, Gino's research focuses on why people make the decisions they do at work and how leaders and employees can have more productive, creative, and fulfilling lives.
Who wouldn't want that?
Gino became a superstar by publishing a great number of research papers in academic journals as well as a couple of books.
Her latest is called rebel why it pays to break the rules at work and in life.
She produced the kind of camera ready research that plays perfectly into the virtuous circle of academic superstars.
A journal article is amplified by the publisher or university into the mainstream media, which feeds a headline to all the firms and institutions who are eager to exploit the next behavioral science insight.
And this in turn generates an even greater appetite for more useful research.
The academic who is capable of steadily producing such work is treated almost like an oracle.
There are TED talks to be given, books to be written, consulting jobs to be had.
Francesca Gino, for instance, gave talks or consulted for Google, Disney, Walmart, for the US Air Force, army and Navy, and many more.
But thats all over for now.
In July of 2023, Harvard Business School, responding to an analysis by academic whistleblowers, investigated Gino's work and found that she had intentionally, knowingly or recklessly committed research misconduct.