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Great argument Lessig makes there.

"I've been friends with Gino for more than 10 years. That means that she can't be a fraudster. Trust me, I'm a law professor specializing in fighting institutional corruption"

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Your October '23 post provoked 2 comments that could've been transplanted from LinkedIn, where Gino was defended by a million mini-Lessig's, who fell in love with her through her consulting and TED talking.

I'm re-reading your post now that the court threw out Gino's defamatory suit against Data Colada. I didn't notice your calling out of Duke for its laxity in exposing fraud, and the $112MM settlement that required in 2019. To me, Duke is the academic home of Dan Ariely. Data Colada exposed Ariely's fraudulence first, in 2021, where his contribution to the joint 2012 paper with Gino (and Lazar & 2 others) was shown to be fabricated.

Duke has done NOTHING public since then.

Anyone in the field of Behavioral Economics recognizes DC as purely inspired by a commitment to truth. They primarily post to clear up methodological confusions. Their impeccable civility is matched only by their crystal clarity (& dry humor).

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I thought there were questions about the provenance of files being analyzed for the report. It seems a bit hasty to call it fraud.

I don’t understand why DC just relied on the HBS report and didn’t give her a chance to respond.

I thought Nelson reviewed one of the papers before it was published. Why didn’t he comment on the discrepancies then?

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"there were questions about the provenance of files being analyzed for the report." - Who had questions? Gino's lawyers? Of course. Unfortunately we don't have access to HBS's full report, because they haven't released it (if I had to guess, the reason for this is it would cause further embarrassment if released). We do know however that Harvard hired an independent team to do the forensic investigation of Gino's computers.

"It seems a bit hasty to call it fraud." - have you read DC's articles? Watch this video for a summary of the first 3 cases out of 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Tm3Yx4HWI

"I don’t understand why DC just relied on the HBS report and didn’t give her a chance to respond." DC didn't "rely on the HBS report". DC's analysis stands on it own and was written up before HBS's report. What DC did is they gave Harvard the courtesy of being able to do their own investigation and to take necessary action before they published their findings. Note DC never said Gino was directly at fault for the 4 cases of data manipulation they uncovered, it's a very objective report, making no further inferences.

"I thought Nelson reviewed one of the papers before it was published." -- I haven't heard that. The fraud was detected only after a very careful forensic analysis. It's something that takes much more work than is normally expected in peer review.

Please read the New Yorker article, its a good summary and contains additional revelations about Gino:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/09/they-studied-dishonesty-was-their-work-a-lie

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I think we should scrutinize those who are making the accusations and ensure that their research is in order. It would be interesting to thoroughly examine the accusers, links to Simonsohn, Leif Nelson, Joe Simmons

https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Simonsohn_cv.pdf

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_qszM6EAAAAJ&hl=en

https://oid.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/jsimmo/#research

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Sure, I think everyone should be scrutinized. At the same time, detailed forensic analyses of papers take a lot of time so should be applied only when there is some reason for concern (like "too good to be true" results or failed replications).

Have you noticed any suspicious behavior or red flags from Simonsohn, Nelson, and Simmons?

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