{"id":518,"date":"2019-10-10T16:08:09","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T16:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ajhassoc.com\/?p=518"},"modified":"2019-10-10T16:08:15","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T16:08:15","slug":"failures-in-research-ethics-transportation-is-not-immune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajhassoc.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/10\/failures-in-research-ethics-transportation-is-not-immune\/","title":{"rendered":"Failures in Research Ethics, Transportation Is Not Immune"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry\">\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you are a transportation researcher, you absolutely must make\nyourself aware of the scandal currently embroiling the field of academic criminology.\nThrough either deliberate deceit or incomprehensible incompetence a group of\nresearchers (eleven different co-authors, in total) published a series of\narticles with dubious findings from a custom survey.&nbsp; All these articles had a single, common, lead\nauthor at Florida State University who authorized the survey and managed the\ndata analysis.&nbsp; Flaws were detected by an\nanonymous reader, who sent e-mail messages to all co-authors asking for\nclarification.&nbsp; One co-author looked\ncarefully at his own paper and was disturbed enough to request that his paper,\npublished in the leading journal, <em>Criminology<\/em>,\nbe retracted.&nbsp; The paper has not been\nretracted; FSU has not completed its investigation; and the lead author has\ngone silent.&nbsp; The co-author requesting\nthe retraction has been subject to much second guessing as to his motives.&nbsp; A summary of this mess has been published in\nthe <em>Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have refereed many papers with obvious flaws.&nbsp; Most of the flaws appeared to be stupid\nerrors as opposed to blatant fabrication.&nbsp;\nHowever, there are still many other papers where the results are\nimplausible but not obviously wrong.&nbsp; I\nusually ask for clarification in those cases, but a determined author can\nusually convince me and other referees that the analysis was done\ncorrectly.&nbsp; The reward for publishing a\npaper in a respected journal is high, and the risk of being found a fraud is\nlow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Personally, I have never knowingly published erroneous\nresults or participated in a research study where someone else tried to publish\nerroneous results.&nbsp; However, early in my\ncareer I had personal knowledge of a researcher who did not pull an article\nfrom a publication queue after he was told that there was a serious bug in the\nstatistical software he was using.&nbsp; I had\nthe dilemma as to whether to blow the whistle or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A few years ago I was asked to give a speech at a Tau Beta Pi initiation banquet.\u00a0 The subject of the talk was ethics.\u00a0 For this talk I laid out my whistle blower dilemma and then asked the audience (engineering college juniors and seniors, mostly) whether they would blow the whistle.\u00a0 Almost everyone said they would blow.\u00a0 It is easier said than done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This incident occurred about midway in my tenure at General\nMotors Research Labs.&nbsp; (I am blurring\nsome details to hide the identities of those involved.)&nbsp; The lead researcher had some management\nresponsibilities and clout within my department.&nbsp; I will call him Franklin.&nbsp; He was assisted by a junior researcher whom I\nwill call Harry.&nbsp; Harry did much of the\ndata analysis for this research project.&nbsp;\nTheir research was a transportation behavioral study using multinomial logit\nanalysis, and a journal article was well along in the publication process.&nbsp; Now it is important to mention that\npublishing research outside of GM was difficult.&nbsp; A paper must move through multiple steps and\nmanagement layers, taking months.&nbsp; A\nrejection by a journal after all this internal approval work was a blot on the researcher\u2019s\nrecord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Shortly after Franklin submitted the paper for internal\napproval, somebody recommended I could improve my own research results by also\ndoing logit analysis.&nbsp; I borrowed\nFranklin\u2019s and Harry\u2019s software.&nbsp; This\nwas early in the days of logit estimation with maximum likelihood, and the\nsoftware was home brew.&nbsp; I never found\nout who wrote it, but it wasn\u2019t somebody at GM.&nbsp;\nWith my data, I got curious results.&nbsp;\nRegardless of what order I chose, the first independent variable in the\ndataset always was most significant.&nbsp; The\nlast variable was always least significant.&nbsp;\nEvery reordering produced the same pattern.&nbsp; Statistical significance had less to do with the\nnature of the independent variables than the order in which the independent\nvariables was fed to the software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was clear to me that all analyses done previously with\nthis software was bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I decided to tell Franklin about it.&nbsp; Franklin showed no concern whatsoever.&nbsp; When I asked what he intended to do with the\nsubmitted paper, he told me he would do nothing.&nbsp; When I asked him whether they would redo their\nanalysis, he said they would not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I could have taken it further up the line to the department\nhead, but I judged that this was a fight I could not win and probably did not\nwant to win.&nbsp; In a corporate environment,\nthere is little to be gained by publicly undercutting another employee.&nbsp; Franklin was then a friend and ally, and my\nfuture dealings with him would be severely compromised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I know it happens.&nbsp;\nNot often and not initially deliberate, but it happens.&nbsp; Once a paper gets far enough along in the\npublication process it takes a huge amount of integrity and will power to stop\nit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Initially I felt anger at Franklin.&nbsp; The paper temporarily helped Franklin\u2019s\nreputation, but subsequent events, including a restructuring of the department,\nundid any advantage he might have gained.&nbsp;\nI later blamed GM\u2019s culture and management practices more than I blamed\nFranklin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I learned it can be a lot more difficult to blow that\nwhistle than most people think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Epilogue.<\/em>&nbsp; Franklin left GM about a year later.&nbsp; He eventually landed a good research position,\nwhere he remained until his retirement.&nbsp; Harry\nstayed at GM for his whole career.&nbsp; By\nDetroit standards, Harry did quite well for himself.&nbsp; That paper has been cited 29 times, according\nto Google Scholar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Afterword.<\/em>&nbsp; Refereeing a journal paper is a difficult job\nwithout much, if any, reward.&nbsp; Referees are\npretty much the only defense our profession has against poor research.&nbsp; I believe it is the author\u2019s responsibility to\nconvince the referee that the research has been done well.&nbsp; It is also the author\u2019s responsibility to admit\nto mistakes when they happen.&nbsp; Even then,\nerroneous research will still get published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Alan Horowitz,\nWhitefish Bay, October 10, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you are a transportation researcher, you absolutely must make yourself aware of the scandal currently embroiling the field of academic criminology. Through either deliberate deceit or incomprehensible incompetence a group of researchers (eleven different co-authors, in total) published a series of articles with dubious findings from a custom survey.&nbsp; All these articles had a &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-research-philosophy","anons"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Failures in Research Ethics, Transportation Is Not Immune - QRS II Page<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/ajhassoc.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/10\/failures-in-research-ethics-transportation-is-not-immune\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Failures in Research Ethics, Transportation Is Not Immune - QRS II Page\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you are a transportation researcher, you absolutely must make yourself aware of the scandal currently embroiling the field of academic criminology. 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