Two people claiming to be UCLA economics faculty have published an article in Higher Education Quarterly which one of the mythbusters at Powerline blog says is a hoax. Keep in mind this is the blog that exposed the fraud committed on CBS about George W Bush's National Guard service.
If this was so obvious to Powerline, why couldn't the editors at Higher Education Quarterly figure it out?
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/11/latest-academic-hoax-is-a-doozy.php
The first author certainly exists, whether they are at UCLA or not I do not know. Randy Eller also certainly existed and was involved in charitable foundations however died in 2014. It is possible a foundation was set up in his name, so that part is plausible although not confirmed.
If this were fake, what exactly is the joke. Does the author of this blog even understand the difference between affiliation and being faculty. This may well be the work of a couple of grad students who wouldn't be listed as faculty. To me it looks like the blog post was written without doing even a half hearted google search and they then jumped to conclusions and ran with the story without any thorough fact checking. A few minutes on google will confirm the facts I've listed here.
The first author certainly exists, whether they are at UCLA or not I do not know. Randy Eller also certainly existed and was involved in charitable foundations however died in 2014. It is possible a foundation was set up in his name, so that part is plausible although not confirmed.
If this were fake, what exactly is the joke. Does the author of this blog even understand the difference between affiliation and being faculty. This may well be the work of a couple of grad students who wouldn't be listed as faculty. To me it looks like the blog post was written without doing even a half hearted google search and they then jumped to conclusions and ran with the story without any thorough fact checking. A few minutes on google will confirm the facts I've listed here.
What led you to conclude that the first author definitely exists?
The blogger seems to have trouble comprehending the abstract, which says right-wing money moves colleges left, not right. In any event, just based on the abstract, it's not clear what the hoax is trying to accomplish.
What? The abstract doesn't say that at all:
receiving funding from right-wing sources has not only a statistically significant positive effect on perceived pressure to promote “right-wing” causes and candidates, but the effect size is large to very large.
Very much in the spirit of the previous sokal hoaxes. It’s showing a conclusion ("right wing bad!") that the editors are pre-determined to believe, while any reasonable person would see through it immediately. Imagine thinking that there is right wing pressure in academia for hiring, let alone that the effect is "very large."
A pay to play journal publishing garbage isn’t exactly an indictment of peer review. Heck, determined fraud is very hard to detect. What’s the ranking of the journal? How embarrassed should people be? How easy would it be to pick up the fraud?
Very much in the spirit of the previous sokal hoaxes. It’s showing a conclusion ("right wing bad!") that the editors are pre-determined to believe, while any reasonable person would see through it immediately. Imagine thinking that there is right wing pressure in academia for hiring, let alone that the effect is "very large."
I mean, I don’t know this field, but if it is a Wiley journal, then it isn’t pay to play.
Yeah. And it has an impact factor in the 2’s. I mean if it’s an “A” then the entire field should be embarrassed. Even people at a good field journal should be embarrassed. But if it’s filler, I’m not surprised something fake got through people just don’t look closely
So in the 2nd to last paragraph of the intro the paper says it doesn’t measure corruption per se and whether it’s results generalize is an open question.
In the next paragraph it says their results can be expected to generalize and should be of interest to anyone concerned with institutional corruption.
Worse yet, it says they contacted faculty in econ, poli sci, and philosophy by email and that ** 83.2 %** of faculty responded and fully participated. There is zero chance their response rate was that high. If there is anything that makes me doubt this paper, this is it.
Lol, it also says:
“Subject recruitment took place anonymously. Our survey program randomly emailed a subset of faculty and staff from each list, but we, the authors, do not have a record of who was emailed or responded. Thus, our survey responses cannot be traced back to any particular faculty or staff member…”
Then it says:
“To incentivize responses, we told respondents we would allocate 5 $100 Amazon gift cards at random. Rewards we given anonymously.”
Kind of hard to send Amazon gift cards to people you have no record of actually responding. And what kind of study can’t tell you who responded or even was contacted??
Cloud research can distribute gift cards anonymously through their panel services but yeah your points are right, it’s like the reviewers didn’t even read the paper
Lol, it also says:
“Subject recruitment took place anonymously. Our survey program randomly emailed a subset of faculty and staff from each list, but we, the authors, do not have a record of who was emailed or responded. Thus, our survey responses cannot be traced back to any particular faculty or staff member…”
Then it says:
“To incentivize responses, we told respondents we would allocate 5 $100 Amazon gift cards at random. Rewards we given anonymously.”
Kind of hard to send Amazon gift cards to people you have no record of actually responding. And what kind of study can’t tell you who responded or even was contacted??