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Inside an Academic Scandal: A Story of Fraud and Betrayal
How fraud in a published paper about honesty roiled the world of social science.
In 2012 Max Bazerman, along with four coauthors, published an influential paper showing that “signing first”—that is, promising to tell the truth before filling out a form—produced greater honesty than signing afterward. In 2021, academic sleuths revealed that two of the experiments in the paper were fraudulent, triggering what would become one of the most significant academic frauds of the twenty-first century.
In Inside an Academic Scandal, Bazerman tells the sobering story of how fraud in a published paper about inducing honesty upended countless academic careers, caused havoc in organizations that had implemented the idea of “signing first,” and undermined faith in academic research and publication.
This vivid account offers an inside look at the replicability crisis in social science today. In intriguing detail, the book explores recent conflicts and transformations underway in the field, considers the role of relationships and trust in enabling fraud in academic research, and describes Bazerman’s own part in the scandal—what he did and didn’t do to stop the fraud in the signing-first paper, what consequences he faced, and what hard lessons he learned in the process.
A compelling story of fraud and betrayal, the book provides a deep and ultimately instructive look at how academic research works—and doesn’t—in social science.
In 2012 Max Bazerman, along with four coauthors, published an influential paper showing that “signing first”—that is, promising to tell the truth before filling out a form—produced greater honesty than signing afterward. In 2021, academic sleuths revealed that two of the experiments in the paper were fraudulent, triggering what would become one of the most significant academic frauds of the twenty-first century.
In Inside an Academic Scandal, Bazerman tells the sobering story of how fraud in a published paper about inducing honesty upended countless academic careers, caused havoc in organizations that had implemented the idea of “signing first,” and undermined faith in academic research and publication.
This vivid account offers an inside look at the replicability crisis in social science today. In intriguing detail, the book explores recent conflicts and transformations underway in the field, considers the role of relationships and trust in enabling fraud in academic research, and describes Bazerman’s own part in the scandal—what he did and didn’t do to stop the fraud in the signing-first paper, what consequences he faced, and what hard lessons he learned in the process.
A compelling story of fraud and betrayal, the book provides a deep and ultimately instructive look at how academic research works—and doesn’t—in social science.
- GenresNonfictionScience
176 pages, Hardcover
Published September 9, 2025
About the author
Max H. Bazerman
61 books138 followersMax H. Bazerman is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and the Co-Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. Max's research focuses on decision making, negotiation, and ethics. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of twenty books and over 200 research articles and chapters. His latest book, The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leader See, is now available from Simon and Schuster.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 5, 2026
I had a lot of ambivalent thoughts reading this short book, describing the fraud uncovered in the academic study, referred to the sign first study. The purported to demonstrate that when people are asked to sign before filling out a form [e.g., insurance claim] as opposed to after completing the form, they are more likely to tell the truth. The study was a collaborative effort of work done by Dan Ariely and Nina Mazar on insurance, and three laboratory studies done by Bazerman [the author of this book] Francesca Gino, and Lisa Shu.
I should note that I was a student [I believe in the mid 1980s] of Bazerman at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and was a big fan of Dan Arliey's book, Predictably Irrational. I had not heard of the accusations of fraud against Arliey or against the sign first study, before coming across an announcement for this book.
I was discomforted throughout reading this book, because of how Bazerman treated Arliey versus Gino, and how excused his role in the fraud while as the same time taking "responsibility" Bazerman claims he was too trusting of his coauthors. Yet as a lead author he was responsible overall. Also it should be noted that Bazerman was on Gino's PhD committee. Gino was found to have committed fraud on dozens of research papers, including 7 Bazerman coauthored. Yet much of the book, especially in the beginning seems focused on Arliey. The author talks about the damage done to coauthors, especially younger scholars, yet he has already gotten 2 books out the the scandal [this is the second]. The profits for this book are going to an organization working to uncover and prevent academic fraud.
The group that uncovered the fraud, Data Colada are rightfully to be celebrated, and are given their due here. The book also does a good job in discussing P-hacking, a way for researchers to mine their data for significant results. I still have a bad taste from Bazerman's approach here.
It's fascinating that a field which studies ethics and cheating has a very high incidence of proven academic fraud. I recently read the just published book, I told you so!: Scientists who were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right by Matt Kaplan. While I had some structural problems with Kaplan's book, I liked its approach better. Rather than focus on personal ethics, it describes the breakdown of the scientific method for a variety of reasons, and how might it be resolved.
I also was put off by Bazerman's virtue signaling with a throw away critique of the current US administration's efforts to hold university's accountable. I still recommend this be read as a good summary of the scandals regarding the sign first study and Gino and Ariely.
I should note that I was a student [I believe in the mid 1980s] of Bazerman at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and was a big fan of Dan Arliey's book, Predictably Irrational. I had not heard of the accusations of fraud against Arliey or against the sign first study, before coming across an announcement for this book.
I was discomforted throughout reading this book, because of how Bazerman treated Arliey versus Gino, and how excused his role in the fraud while as the same time taking "responsibility" Bazerman claims he was too trusting of his coauthors. Yet as a lead author he was responsible overall. Also it should be noted that Bazerman was on Gino's PhD committee. Gino was found to have committed fraud on dozens of research papers, including 7 Bazerman coauthored. Yet much of the book, especially in the beginning seems focused on Arliey. The author talks about the damage done to coauthors, especially younger scholars, yet he has already gotten 2 books out the the scandal [this is the second]. The profits for this book are going to an organization working to uncover and prevent academic fraud.
The group that uncovered the fraud, Data Colada are rightfully to be celebrated, and are given their due here. The book also does a good job in discussing P-hacking, a way for researchers to mine their data for significant results. I still have a bad taste from Bazerman's approach here.
It's fascinating that a field which studies ethics and cheating has a very high incidence of proven academic fraud. I recently read the just published book, I told you so!: Scientists who were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right by Matt Kaplan. While I had some structural problems with Kaplan's book, I liked its approach better. Rather than focus on personal ethics, it describes the breakdown of the scientific method for a variety of reasons, and how might it be resolved.
I also was put off by Bazerman's virtue signaling with a throw away critique of the current US administration's efforts to hold university's accountable. I still recommend this be read as a good summary of the scandals regarding the sign first study and Gino and Ariely.
November 10, 2025
I followed the Francesca Gino scandal quite closely. I read the original Data Colada blogposts, the New Yorker article, the Harvard report, and various secondary material repackaging the above. When this book came out, I decided to read it to get the point of view of a collaborator on one of the most infamous of her papers.
I would say that this didn't reveal a huge amount more than what I'd already read, except about Bazerman's efforts internally to find out more about the data and also to retract the paper once the data was revealed as problematic (he admits that he did not do enough on either of these fronts). If you're looking for a good detective story, I would look back at those primary sources I mentioned, and skip this one.
To Bazerman's credit, the proceeds of this book are going to go to open science initiatives. As noted, he is also candid about his own failings (in a previous book of his that I have not read, he calls it "complicity") in not asking more questions about the fraud. However, my feeling as I read was that he has described his failings in ways such that his fellow academics would give him a pass, so there's potentially a bit of self-dealing there.
As I went through this book, I was reflecting on my own time in academia and how easy it would have been to falsify data. For example, I ran a couple of experiments on Mechanical Turk and downloaded the resultant CSVs from there. But there would have been little to no way for any collaborator of mine to verify that the resultant CSV was indeed the one from MT unless I gave them access to my Amazon account. And I'd like to think if I had put my mind to doctoring data, that I would not have left such a clumsy trail like having the falsified data entered in a different font! On the other hand, the very idea of doctoring the data gives me so much anxiety that even just reading the first few chapters of this rather prosaic account, I could feel my heart rate speed up. And there would never have been any scenario where I would not have shared the data with a co-author upon request, in fact it was always in a shared Dropbox folder before publication and in a public Github repo upon publication. I was pretty astounded that there were researchers who would just let that go.
Other thoughts:
1) The European universities come off a lot better than the American universities, which cling to silence perhaps in fear of legal issues. (Potential connection to the new Dan Wang book about America being run by lawyers and therefore not as dynamic as it could be?)
2) MAJOR POINT: Dan Ariely really should also be gone from academia, and SHAME on Duke that he's not.
3) The proposals at the end of the book (which don't come from Bazerman but are being adopted in the field) seem common-sensical and I hope they will be widely adopted in other fields as well.
4) However, I think that a determined and more sophisticated fraudster could still potentially succeed, and all this comes down to incentives. Bazerman doesn't really talk much about this, but psychologists at business schools get paid an awful lot, much more than professors in regular psychology departments at universities (he does nod to this when saying that Gino was one of the top 5 best paid employees at Harvard). Thus professors in the behavioural economics field have much more incentive to embellish their own reputations than professors in, say, linguistics (my field). Not saying that a linguist would never falsify their data, but the upside is much bigger in this field, and maybe that's why so many examples (including the Dutch one he discusses at length) come from it.
Is there a way to balance the salaries of psychologists in and outside of business schools? Probably not very easily. But while that is true, I think this particular subfield will always be in more danger.
I would say that this didn't reveal a huge amount more than what I'd already read, except about Bazerman's efforts internally to find out more about the data and also to retract the paper once the data was revealed as problematic (he admits that he did not do enough on either of these fronts). If you're looking for a good detective story, I would look back at those primary sources I mentioned, and skip this one.
To Bazerman's credit, the proceeds of this book are going to go to open science initiatives. As noted, he is also candid about his own failings (in a previous book of his that I have not read, he calls it "complicity") in not asking more questions about the fraud. However, my feeling as I read was that he has described his failings in ways such that his fellow academics would give him a pass, so there's potentially a bit of self-dealing there.
As I went through this book, I was reflecting on my own time in academia and how easy it would have been to falsify data. For example, I ran a couple of experiments on Mechanical Turk and downloaded the resultant CSVs from there. But there would have been little to no way for any collaborator of mine to verify that the resultant CSV was indeed the one from MT unless I gave them access to my Amazon account. And I'd like to think if I had put my mind to doctoring data, that I would not have left such a clumsy trail like having the falsified data entered in a different font! On the other hand, the very idea of doctoring the data gives me so much anxiety that even just reading the first few chapters of this rather prosaic account, I could feel my heart rate speed up. And there would never have been any scenario where I would not have shared the data with a co-author upon request, in fact it was always in a shared Dropbox folder before publication and in a public Github repo upon publication. I was pretty astounded that there were researchers who would just let that go.
Other thoughts:
1) The European universities come off a lot better than the American universities, which cling to silence perhaps in fear of legal issues. (Potential connection to the new Dan Wang book about America being run by lawyers and therefore not as dynamic as it could be?)
2) MAJOR POINT: Dan Ariely really should also be gone from academia, and SHAME on Duke that he's not.
3) The proposals at the end of the book (which don't come from Bazerman but are being adopted in the field) seem common-sensical and I hope they will be widely adopted in other fields as well.
4) However, I think that a determined and more sophisticated fraudster could still potentially succeed, and all this comes down to incentives. Bazerman doesn't really talk much about this, but psychologists at business schools get paid an awful lot, much more than professors in regular psychology departments at universities (he does nod to this when saying that Gino was one of the top 5 best paid employees at Harvard). Thus professors in the behavioural economics field have much more incentive to embellish their own reputations than professors in, say, linguistics (my field). Not saying that a linguist would never falsify their data, but the upside is much bigger in this field, and maybe that's why so many examples (including the Dutch one he discusses at length) come from it.
Is there a way to balance the salaries of psychologists in and outside of business schools? Probably not very easily. But while that is true, I think this particular subfield will always be in more danger.
September 27, 2025
A fascinating, candid, and transparent examination into the promise and challenges facing the social sciences in 2025. I learned a lot about the scientific method and the way big bureaucracies (and also highly successful individuals) work when their reputation is on the line. It was also a real page turner. At 160 pages, it's a fast, thrilling and thought-provoking read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews