I remember the Watergate thing happening when I was a kid, and I asked my dad, “So, when did you realize that Nixon was a crook?” My dad replied, “1946.” He wasn’t kidding. Nixon being an opportunistic liar was all out there from the very beginning of his career, and indeed this was much discussed in the press. Eventually just about everybody acknowledged it, but it took awhile.
For another example, Theranos: the famed blood-testing company faked a test in 2006, causing one of its chief executives to leave, but it wasn’t until 2018 that the whole thing went down. They stayed afloat for over a decade after the fraud. As John Carreyrou explains in his book, one reason Theranos could keep things going for so long was that they had put-bull lawyers to intimidate people from blowing the whistle.
Another example is that Pizzagate guy from Cornell: some people had noticed major problems in his work, but he managed to dodge all criticism for several years before being caught. Sometimes it seems that the bad stuff is an open secret for a long time before anybody bothers to break it to the world.
Anyway, that brings us to another example, this time brought to my attention by Sean Manning, who forwarded me this news article, “Failing the Test: DNA barcoding brought botanist Steven Newmaster scientific fame and entrepreneurial success. Was it all based on fraud?”, which reports:
In a 43-page allegation letter, sent to UG [the University of Guelph in Canada] in June 2021 and obtained by Science, the researchers—from UG, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, and Stanford University—cited major problems in the study and two others by Newmaster and collaborators. “The data which underpin [the papers] are missing, fraudulent, or plagiarized,” the letter flatly stated. The group also charged that Newmaster “recurrently failed to disclose competing financial interests” in his papers. . . . The accusers include co-authors of two of the suspect papers, who now say they believe Newmaster misled them. . . .
Newmaster did not respond to interview requests or written questions. But in a defense he sent to UG—which Science has also obtained—he denied all charges. “I have never committed data fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or inadequate acknowledgment in the publications as claimed,” Newmaster wrote.
He says he never did it, but:
An investigation by Science found the problems in Newmaster’s work go well beyond the three papers. They include apparent fabrication, data manipulation, and plagiarism in speeches, teaching, biographies, and scholarly writing. A review of thousands of pages of Newmaster’s published papers, conference speeches, slide decks, and training and promotional videos, along with interviews with two dozen current and former colleagues or independent scientists and 16 regulatory or research agencies, revealed a charismatic and eloquent scientist who often exaggerated, fabulized his accomplishments, and presented other researchers’ data as his own.
In all seriousness, I think it’s easier to be “charismatic and eloquent” if, unlike other scientists, you’re not bound by the truth.
His employer did the all-too-familiar institutional failure of trying to minimize the whole thing:
UG, which has been investigating the allegations since August 2021, declined to answer questions about its own investigation or Science’s findings, citing confidentiality rules. Other UG scientists say university administrators repeatedly pressured them to stop questioning Newmaster’s research. UG also dismissed a detailed request for an investigation made by Thompson in 2020. Some now fear university administrators will quash the new accusations in a misguided attempt to protect UG’s and their own reputations, and the university’s share of funds raised by Newmaster. UG declined to comment on those concerns, as well.
But here’s the bit I want to focus on:
This is all coming out now, but it’s not news, or it shouldn’t be. When I say “it’s not news,” I don’t just mean that the paper in question came out in 2013 and we’re only hearing about the problems now—after all, sometimes it takes a long time for people to notice things. Actually, people flagged problems with the paper shortly after it appeared:
A stinging 2013 analysis in HerbalEGram—a journal of the American Botanical Council, a nonprofit research group—claimed many egregious errors and called for a retraction. . . .
UG repeatedly touted Newmaster’s work in press releases and pushed back when that work was challenged. In 2017, Jonathan Newman, then-dean of the College of Biological Sciences, called UG scientists Evgeny Zakharov and Natalia Ivanova into his office for what Zakharov sarcastically calls a “friendly discussion.” The two scientists had indirectly questioned Newmaster’s work at a conference, noting that DNA barcoding alone can’t always reliably identify ingredients in herbal products. Newman admonished them to avoid comments that might sour NHPRA contributors, says Zakharov, who is lab director for the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding. . . .
Newman, now vice president for research at Wilfrid Laurier University, says he connected Newmaster with Herbalife and supported his fundraising. . . . Newmaster has touted Herbalife’s products in promotional materials, effusively praised its cultivation practices after a 2018 visit to a Chinese tea farm, and lauded its efforts “to achieve excellence.” He also came to the company’s defense in 2019, when Indian researchers published a paper in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hepatology about a woman who died from liver failure, which the researchers associated with her use of Herbalife dieting products. In a letter to the editor, Newmaster—who has no medical background—castigated the paper. (Elsevier, the publisher, removed the paper from its website in 2020 after legal threats from Herbalife.).
Elsevier! Herbalife! It’s fun when our different threads intersect, he said, tripping over Mr. Reagan while reading Proust.
Anyway, to continue with my main thread:
Even as Newmaster’s star was rising, some of his colleagues complained that he made exaggerated claims. . . . In his biography on UG’s website, Newmaster noted a postdoctoral fellowship in “multidimensional matrix mathematics and multivariate analysis” at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, which says it has no record of Newmaster.
“Multidimensional matrix mathematics” . . . that sounds pretty cool, huh?
And:
His CV listed a prestigious Discovery grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for $198,000 over 5 years. NSERC says the grant was $11,500 for 1 year. He claimed a separate NSERC award for $240,000, but it was only worth $40,000.
But that’s a good thing, right? He did all that work but for less than 1/8 the cost!
But again, the key point:
His colleagues complained of other kinds of dishonesty, too. In 2010, several UG scientists say, a student reported that Newmaster had taken large portions of his course materials from internet sites. “I was absolutely floored,” says Wright, who co-taught that course with him. Science obtained a sample of the documents and verified substantial copying and pasting from Wikipedia and elsewhere. When Wright confronted him, Newmaster seemed unperturbed, she says: “I lost hope in him as a scientist at that time.” UG quietly required Newmaster to fix the material, Wright and others say. . . .
The problems were first flagged in 2010, this dude continued doing suspicious things for over a decade, and only now is this coming out! It’s just stunning to me to see how these things are open secrets for soooo long. I’d never heard about this guy, but people had been talking about these problems for quite a while.
Is this a typo?
“they had put-bull lawyers to intimidate people from blowing the whistle.”
Perhaps they are lawyers trained specifically to put bullshit out amongst the masses?
(Although on reflection that’s probably part of the core legal syllabus!)
A “put-bull lawyer” must be a lawyer who specializes in regulations about put options during bull markets.
I know absolutely nothing about DNA barcoding or Steven Newmaster, but Andrew’s remarks begin with castigating Richard Nixon who I voted against as much as possible. However, he was a complicated guy, and unlike Trump, Nixon was very informed, although albeit often, but not always, wrong. His outstanding connection to Trump, in my mind is illustrated by the following from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon%27s_November_1962_press_conference
“The so-called ‘last press conference’ of Richard Nixon took place on November 7, 1962, following his loss to Democratic incumbent Pat Brown in the 1962 California gubernatorial election. Appearing before 100 reporters at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, an embittered Nixon lashed out at the media, proclaiming that ‘you don’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference’.”
Nixon was thus proved wrong again when, after a mere six years, he was elected President in 1968 and then reelected in 1972. From this example of size one–or is it two?–the inescapable conclusion is that we have not seen the last of President Trump.
In regards to the “everybody” knew observation. One thing that Theranos and Bernie Madoff had in common is that they were both touted as failures of their respective arenas. Theronas was a “silicon valley” failure and Madoff was a “wall street” failure.
A closer look shows that’s not quite the case. The big venture capital firms in Silicon Valley seem to have avoided Theranos which had to go after uninformed east coast money. Similarly the main big money wall street investors seem to have avoided Madoff, and he had to go after less informed money as well. In both cases there’s indications this wasn’t accidental. Due diligence was quietly done by expert parties, problems found, and potential Theranos/Madoff investments were just silently dropped.
Detecting problems was vastly easier than informing the world about them.
Consequently, it’s worth paying attention to when “the dog doesn’t bark”. If big claims are being made, but the usual insiders aren’t cashing in, then it’s time to worry.
Anon, your right, wariness of the top insiders is a big red flag. I’d wager these incidents are a lot more common than we realize, people just don’t have the bandwidth to spot them unless something unique happens.
Edward O Thorp was onto Madoff way back in 1991, according to this Forbes piece: https://www.forbes.com/sites/streettalk/2010/04/06/the-card-sharp-who-cottoned-onto-madoffs-fraud-in-1991/?sh=767100184617
It took the most cursory due diligence to spot the fraud:
“Thorp saw that Madoff claimed to have purchased 123 call options on Procter & Gamble shares on April 16, 1991. ‘But only 20 P&G options in total had changed hands that day.’…Even though other observers wondered how he could have handled the trading Madoff claimed, no one ever sought to out him until Markopolos wrote the SEC in 2000.”
The two fundamental governing principles are 1) that its much easier to establish that a business, a person, or an argument waves red flags than to communicate that to and convince the public, and 2) that there is much more money and fame in bunking than debunking, and a heavy cost to debunking (because the hucker or hucksters and many of their victims are motivated to push back). The wise (or at least *homines economici*) see that, investigate claims which seem to be too good to be true, quietly warn friends about what they find, and move on.
Well, it’s also that there’s no financial incentive to inform the public. If you are good at spotting bad investments, you sell that information to paying customers. Why hand out freebies?
Sean,
Whats more incredible is that no one before Thorp tried to even spend 10 minutes looking up transaction records to see if Madoff was doing what he claimed. Social proof is a powerful drug (for groupthink).
Chetan: remember availability bias. We don’t know how many people looked into Bernie Madoff’s operations, found something specific to be dubious of (aside from the general observation “that looks too good to be true”), and quietly put their or their employer’s money elsewhere. Most people save “I was suspicious of that investment and lo and behold the founder is facing charges for fraud” for parties and conversations, they don’t try to get it in the news (or they try once, and then they spend the next 20 years moving their projects forward not trying to get that one swindler charged).
“If you are good at spotting bad investments, you sell that information to paying customers. Why hand out freebies?”
Potential investors aren’t interested in proving fraud. It’s a waste of time figuring out exactly what’s wrong. Your goal is to find a sound investment. Finding the exact problem in a bad company doesn’t help you find a good one. Also fraudulent claims of fraud from short sellers are becoming more common. One of my biggest and most profitable holdings was attacked by short sellers with fraud claims. I had no inside information but I held my position which turned into a 10x gainer and the fraud claims quietly disappeared within a few months.
Where there’s smoke, there’s a forest fire. I know nothing about DNA coding but the story is deeply disturbing. The university investigating panel did acquit him in June. No surprise, and perhaps in some legal sense the evidence was not sufficient to find him guilty. But the fact that most of the worrying evidence has disappeared – things like misrepresenting his academic history, incorrect reporting of grant amounts, etc (and it is a long etc list) – should weigh heavily. When inaccuracies are exposed, even if they are incorrect or mis-characterized – the proper response is not to remove them. One instance perhaps, but multiple instances is inexcusable. In too many of these cases, the accusations simply result in the removal of the questioned material. In fact, Newmaster’s profile at the University of Guelph says quite little now that so much questioned material has been removed. The pattern of removal extends beyond his university website to the other sites detailed in the Science article linked above.
I think this makes Wansink look almost reputable. And even more money seems to be at stake in this story. It isn’t hard to understand why the University of Guelph would want to protect his (and their) reputation. But I don’t see any tenable defense. Even if he did none of the things he is accused of (and I find that hard to believe, given all the evidence that currently exists), the removal of questioned material and silence from so many complicit entities should be sufficient for some type of academic malpractice at a minimum.
Do you think there will be any real reputational damage?
My impression of Nixon began with the Kennedy-Nixon debate. It was later said that most people who saw the debate on TV thought Kennedy won, and most people who heard it on a radio thought Nixon had won, and that the difference was due to Nixon’s “five o’clock shadow” (late-day beard stubble). I didn’t notice a five o’clock shadow, what I noticed was by far a more obvious feature, his shifty, beady, rapidly-blinking eyes. I think the people who saw it on TV had more information.
On the other hand, Nixon beat McGovern (a genuine hero in WWII) by a landslide. Anyone who was paying attention knew what Trump was also. I guess it is the “he’s a SOB but he’s our SOB” syndrome. I hope someday we outgrow it.
‘“he’s a SOB but he’s our SOB” syndrome.’
Why shouldn’t that be so? Why should people vote for candidates who’s views are strongly opposed to their own? *That* is what would be stupid. How many pro-choice people would vote for a pro-life candidate because the pro-choice candidate had a reputation as a crook? ZERO! I doubt anyone would. I’d say most people believe – almost surely accurately – that all politicians are crooks and liars to some extent. The question is not one of if but how much. That makes it easier to vote for someone that has a poor reputation. And in fact in the case of Trump I’d bet more people gave up their ideology to oppose him than is usually the case (Andrew? Any data on that?).
And how does voting for crooks work out in practice?
I agreed with Bill Clinton on many issues, but could not vote for him in 1996, when I heard he was renting the Lincoln Bedroom to donors.
Politics seems to be all about campaign donations now, but there are still some people I trust, such as Elizabeth Warren.
“And how does voting for crooks work out in practice?”
Well you don’t have to vote. I mean you could write in G. Washington – he told his pop about the cherry tree and all – but he’s dead.
Work out for whom? The voter or the candidate?
If the former, how does voting for anyone work out in practice?
If the latter, it worked out just fine for Bill, he was reelected, as well as by proxy for Hillary, she became a senator, secretary of state, and the Democrats presidential election candidate. And had she been the candidate in 2008, she would have won, she, not McCain, was the big loser in the election.
When did you realize Bill and Hillary Clinton are crooks?
Johan:
I guess it was when I heard about that deal where they had the $1,000 investment and made $100,000. That sounded pretty fishy to me. Ummm, let me check wikipedia . . . here it is!
There was a thread on that issue at I think “Crooked Timber” in which people, I think including Faustusnotes pushed back, especially on the “one in 31 trillion” odds estimate at a time when many people made much more in that same market over the same time period. (Might be worth a look at that analysis.) If I recall correctly, that statement was taken down from the Wikipedia article but has been added back. Also, “invested $1000 to make $100,000” is misleading; had trades failed she would have lost as much as she made.
All the trades are public record, and no laws were broken except for a late tax payment. The Clintons are not my favorite politicians and I could not vote for Bill in 1996, but I’ve seen a lot worse.
I’ve always wondered whether that saga would be viewed differently today with the emergence of “meme stocks” and people doing extremely risky options trades on Robinhood and posting about it on social media. You can go on reddit on any given day and find people posting about trades with comparable gains (and losses). Heck, some of them are probably even related to politicians!
Andrew: I like it! Did you try bringing that up with liberals when Hillary was running for president? When I in 2008 had the audacity (sic) to mention Obama’s less that savory associates, I had one liberal literally scream in my face that I have no right to have an opinion on Obama since I am not a US citizen. He screamed, I laughed.
JimV: That no laws were supposedly broken and that you have seen a lot worse does not uncrook them. This is but one drop in the Clinton Crook Ocean.
Hey, I made more than a 100x gain on an investment, but I didn’t have any insider information and nobody did me any favors! I just got lucky. (I bought some shares in Apple in 2001, and sold most of them in 2018. They were up 140x or something like that. Oh, if only I had bought 10 times as many shares as I did. Or twice as many. Or ten percent more.)
Perhaps because of my experience, I don’t think a 100x gain _alone_ is fishy, but if you throw in the fact that Clinton was getting advice from an industry insider it does start to smell a bit. Plus my 140x gain took 17 years whereas hers was, what, a few months I think.
Yes, getting a 100x gain on a company that went from modest sized to the largest company in the world over that period seems much less suspicious! Even if you had done it on a shorter time frame, say by buying call options on Tesla, people would chalk it up to having picked out a strong performing company. After all, those sorts of tech company stock appreciations underlie the fortunes of some of the richest people in the world, so it feels plausible.
On the other hand, a non-expert making a big profit on commodities futures trading inevitably sounds fishier. It’s an alternative investment class that feels much more opaque, especially in that era.
‘Newmaster noted a postdoctoral fellowship in “multidimensional matrix mathematics and multivariate analysis” ‘
Whoa, way ahead of the unidimensional matrix mathematics people for sure.
“it’s easier to be “charismatic and eloquent” if, unlike other scientists, you’re not bound by the truth.”
Or like the Wansink lecture you linked to way back, where there wasn’t actually any data at all – OK, one chart with no numbers on the axis! – creative freedom for sure! – and everyone was laughing at his jokes about Big Food based on his “research”; or his mysterious refilling soup bowl apparatus that looked like a wash basin bolted to a countertop that had been pulled out of a barn!
But like you said recently: it’s not what’s unknown that’s scary. It’s what’s right in the open.
“Multidimensional matrix mathematics” I loved that. He did a post-doc in linear algebra. People need to have their BS detectors upgraded.
Math 240! :)
The ridiculous parts of the Wansink story that I think differentiates it from any others that I can think of is that he wasn’t really caught (in my mind), he exposed himself.
He literally blogged about how one of his post-docs refused to use his brilliant data, but his grad student got a bunch (5?) papers out of it. I encourage readers who enjoy statistics to find a copy on the wayback machine and read the entire blog along with all the comments. Judging from his responses, Wansink literally didn’t understand that statistics he was using.
Right, I think the way he presented this story about the two trainees as some kind of lesson about the value of hard work/tenacity is also what helped make the story go viral. That really increased the sense of outrage!