Oh, the irony! Alleged fraudster Francesca Gino has not only filed a lawsuit against her university for gender discrimination; she is also suing a trio of scholarly bloggers–Uri Simonsohn, Joe Simmons, and Leif Nelson, the academic authors of the “Data Colada” blog who first exposed Gino’s fraudulent research methods–for defamation! (See here, for example, or better yet, download and read Gino’s 100-page complaint for yourself.) Truth is a complete defense to a claim of defamation, but the burden of proof will be on the defendants to prove their allegations of research fraud are true, so we will be following this case very closely. In the meantime, why has no one criminally charged or sued in civil court the putative fraudster herself for her alleged acts of data fraud? By way of example (see here), back in 2015 I proposed extending the common law of fraud to journals and to “social scientists” who publish fake research studies. Simply put, until courts begin imposing legal liability–civil and criminal–on authors and journals for publishing fake studies, we can expect many more cases of data fraud in the future.
prior probability 