prior probability

See here, here, and here. I will tackle the tyranny of lockdowns with zero compensation next.

Alternative title: Man bites dog!

Why isn’t data fraud a crime? In a working paper I wrote in 2019, I proposed charging researchers who fabricate data with wire fraud. Here is an excerpt from my 2019 paper (edited by me for clarity):

The literature on data fraud and data fabrication views these bad practices through a purely ethical lens …. This paper, by contrast, will explore the possibility of criminal sanctions against academic researchers who fabricate data. My previous work in this domain (Guerra-Pujol, 2017 [available here, by the way]) explored the possibility of imposing various forms of tort and contract liability for data fraud committed by academic researchers. Building on my previous work, I will explore the possibility of criminal liability when a researcher knowingly fabricates research data in a published paper. In a word, the fabrication of data–the attempt to publish fake data, to be more precise–should be treated as a crime * * * * for it is beyond question that the outright fabrication of data … not only calls into question the integrity of academic accounting; a strong case can also be made that fraudulent research constitutes the crime of wire fraud.

Fast forward to 2021 and this report by Scott Jaschik: “Ex-Dean at Temple Indicted on Charges of Manipulating Rankings.” (Hat tip: Brian Leiter.) In brief, federal prosecutors have charged Moshe Porat (pictured below), the former dean of Temple University’s business school (from 1996 to 2018), with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of wire fraud for submitting fake data to U.S. News & World Report about Temple business school’s online MBA and part-time MBA programs in order to inflate his school’s rankings in the annual U.S. News surveys. (Here is some additional background about this remarkable case, and here is the official announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. If convicted, this disgraced former dean faces up to 25 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.)

Given the problem of fabricated data in science (see, for example, RetractionWatch), who will be next?

My wife, youngest daughter, and I have been watching the new Selena series on Netflix, and in honor of Selena Quintanilla and her family, this week’s Music Monday features a live recording of her first big hit “Dame un beso.” (Had her life not been taken from us, Selena would have been 50 on Friday, April 16.)

Note: I will begin my new series on “Lockean takings” in the next day or two.

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest and reflection, so let’s reflect on this: media bias and social media censorship. Remember when journalists propaganda agents at Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post reported that the Russian military was paying bounties to the Taliban for killing U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan? Wikipedia does. The lamestream media (print, TV, cable, and online) over-hyped this story, while Twitter (and now LinkedIn!) was censoring reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop. (Not to be outdone in the censorship game, Facebook is busy censoring this story as we speak.) Well, now it turns out this entire bounty story was bullshit, after all (see here, for example)! So, what else have they lied to us about?

We heard the latest news from Havana, Cuba: “Raul Castro confirmed Friday he is stepping down as the head of the Communist Party of Cuba, the most powerful position on the island.” As far as I am concerned, however, he and his brother Fidel are criminals who should have been thrown out of power 60 years ago. The Cuban Communist Party has done more harm to more people than anyone else in Cuba’s history …

Alternative Title: No Lockdowns without Just Compensation!

You may remember the case of Shelley Luther, the Dallas beauty salon owner who was thrown in jail for defying a bogus court order shutting down her business during the pandemic. But have you heard of Ana Isabel Castro-Garcia or Brenda Stephanie Mata? Exactly one year and one day ago (April 15, 2020) undercover police agents in Laredo, Texas arrested these two self-employed women for operating clandestine beauty salons from their homes in violation of local coronavirus “lockdown” orders. Although these ladies faced up to 180 days in jail and huge fines, thankfully these bullshit charges were ultimately dropped. The real criminals were the public officials (the undercover police agents, district attorneys, and judges) who attempted to enforce these illegal and un-American “lockdown” orders in the first place. Why were these emergency lockdown orders illegal? That is the subject of my latest paper “Lockean Takings,” which is available here via SSRN. I will begin blogging about the main ideas in this paper next week.

Via Brian Leiter (see here), I just found out that philosopher Ed Gettier has died. (He died on March 23 of this year; here is a short bio.) Professor Gettier’s greatest contribution to philosophy was this three-page paper, published in 1963, which is titled “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” This was one of the few works that Gettier ever published, but it is by all accounts a landmark in the philosophy of knowledge, i.e. more than just a footnote to Plato. Why? Because Gettier’s paper presents two examples (now called “Gettier cases” in his honor) in which a belief that is justified and true still fails to constitute “knowledge” in the philosophical sense of that term. (In brief, this strange state of affairs arises when the reasons for the belief, while justified, turn out to be false.) For my part, I am not sure what to make of such Gettier cases. A few years ago (I don’t recall exactly when), I had vowed to myself to one day study this topic more deeply, as Gettier cases must be relevant somehow to the law of evidence, but someone (Robert Sanger) already beat me to it! See Professor Sanger’s 2018 paper “Gettier in a Court of Law,” via SSRN.

Following up on my “Music Monday” and “Twitter Tuesday” blog posts, I have also decided to begin a new series of blog posts on Wednesdays under the general heading “What could go wrong?” Generally speaking, whenever we try to improve the world in some way, it is always worth asking, What are the most likely “unintended consequences” of our proposed change? What follows is a possible example of this general principle. According to this report by Taylor White (via Undark), the first genetically modified mosquitos will be released in the Florida Keys this spring. The goal of this scientific scheme is to reduce the overall population of mosquitos: “When released [genetically-modified] males breed with wild female mosquitoes, the resulting generation does not survive into adulthood ….” Hey, what could go wrong? Hat tip: @kottke.

Alternative Title: Self-Cancellation Update

When I “self-cancelled” myself from Facebook and Twitter for Lent (see here), little did I realize what a great feeling of unadulterated relief I would feel to stay off social media for good. Instead of wasting ungodly amounts of time scrolling down through an infinite loop of mostly unfiltered bullshit, I can devote myself to more scholarly and humane pursuits. Also, as a matter of principle, I do not like how a public figure like Donald J. Trump has effectively been censored by louses like Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg. President Xi Jinping can use Twitter, but Trump can’t? Please ….