A Criminologist Accused of Cooking the Books

Re:A Criminologist Accused of Cooking the Books by _edo on Thursday September 26, 2019 @01:25AM (#21078449)

If you look at the author's published papers[0] just about every one involves highly sensitive political and social topics. That means they're likely to be quoted outside of the field where people will say things like "Look, it's scientific it was published in a peer-reviewed journal!"

Young adults have this guy as a professor and they believe that surely their professor knows what he's talking about.

This story is a few months old, the retraction request looks serious[1], and I'm left thinking that either Picket has gone off the rails or this entire field looks awful.

The paper in question has 78 citations and Stewart (the one accused of fabricating data) has 5,712 citations according to Google Scholar.

[0] - http://criminology.fsu.edu/research/type/eric-stewart/ [1] - https://cj.fiu.edu/student-resources/resources-for-graduate-...

edit: this thread of some sociologists discussing this issue is interesting - https://www.socjobrumors.com/topic/co-author-requests-retrac...

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Re:A Criminologist Accused of Cooking the Books by spangry on Thursday September 26, 2019 @02:10AM (#21078668)

Very interesting. Here is a list of the 5 articles from that discussion:

· Johnson, Brian D., Eric A. Stewart, Justin Pickett, and Marc Gertz. (2011) Ethnic threat and social control: Examining public support for judicial use of ethnicity in punishment. Criminology, 49(2), 401-441.

· Stewart, Eric A., Ramiro Martinez, Jr., Eric P. Baumer, and Marc Gertz. (2015) The social context of latino threat and punitive Latino sentiment. Social Problems, 62(1), 69-92.

· Mears, Daniel P., Eric A. Stewart, Patricia Y. Warren, Miltonette O. Craig, and Ashley N. Arnio. (2019) A legacy of lynchings: Perceived black criminal threat among whites. Law & Society Review, 53(2), 487-517.

· Stewart, Eric A., Brian D. Johnson, Patricia Y. Warren, Jordyn L. Rosario, and Cresean Hughes. (2019) The social context of criminal threat, victim race, and punitive black and latino sentiment. Social Problems, 66(2), 194-221.

· Stewart, Eric A., Daniel P. Mears, Patricia Y. Warren, Eric P. Baumer, and Ashley N. Arnio. (2018) Lynchings, racial threat, and whites’ punitive views toward blacks. Criminology, 56(3), 455-480.

All centre around racial issues in the criminal justice context.

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Re:A Criminologist Accused of Cooking the Books by misterdoubt on Thursday September 26, 2019 @09:37AM (#21080759)

The field doesn't look great. But in most corners there is serious concern, e.g., http://grumpy.skardhamar.no/2019/09/25/the-former-flagship-j...

From that post: "I do not have any solutions to the systemic problems here, but improvements should be easy. Criminology as a field has to improve in terms of making data available with full documentation and reproducible code. That would make errors detectable sooner."

Anyone not agreeing with this needs the boot.

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Re:A Criminologist Accused of Cooking the Books by _edo on Thursday September 26, 2019 @11:41AM (#21081988)

I think the field has a cultural problem that's causing their data problem: impact is valued over empiricism.

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Re:A Criminologist Accused of Cooking the Books by EricE on Thursday September 26, 2019 @02:15PM (#21083731)

Sadly this is a predominant trend in Academia. Some would argue it's always been there, but it does seem to be significantly more prevalent and unashamed in it's presentation these days.

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