When Academic Disagreement Becomes Harassment and Persecution | Hacker News Reader

When Academic Disagreement Becomes Harassment and Persecution

stanford.edu

79 pointsadrianhoward35 comments

Bullying in the workplace is a big problem and it turns out that smart people are not exempt from participating.

Kenneth Westhues is a leading expert in the field, having studied the practice extensively, which he calls "mobbing". He has published several papers and books about it.

Some references on the topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying_in_academia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Westhues

http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/mobbing.htm

The game is often played until the selected victim quits, commits suicide, or in some rare cases, snaps and comes to work with a gun.

Let's see what they're fighting about. From Boaler's complaint:

"[...] research evidence that could be used to improve the mathematics achievement of students in the United States and beyond [...]"

From her critics' paper (Bishop, Clopton, Milgram):

"This study makes extremely strong claims for discovery style instruction in mathematics, and consequently has the potential to affect instruction and curriculum throughout the country."

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/combined-evaluations-version3.pdf

Both sides agree that a positive research result has the potential to alter mathematics education in the country. Then the question is: what's true, that Boaler has found a way to substantially improve education, or that her analysis is flawed?

Surely the correct response is more research and preparation of further peer reviewed papers?

Consider the time that has elapsed in this drama. I have found very few schools that, had they achieved the results claimed in Boaler's study, would not make it very public. How can you turn an urban school around, let alone, have it surpass other schools and not broadcast it to the world?

In science, things become fact by proving them again, again, again, and again. Not by doing one study, claiming stupendous success and that be the end of it, as seems the case in education research.

Without the Bishops, Milgrams, and thousands of frustrated parents, who would provide critical review of these studies? There are dozens of NSF studies claiming success, all with a different methods. I have hunted down most of them and none of them appear in the context of high performing mathematics classes. Like honors algebra or AP calculus where the students score 4's and 5's. It seems that in the education research community, especially in the NSF funded scam community, there is an unwritten rule that researchers do not criticize each other. Boaler seems to be pinning her hopes in this letter on that rule.

If you were Boaler and you possessed the secret to turning around the mathematics attainment of low performing urban schools, would you...

A. Continue to produce stellar results at even more schools? B. Spend ten years arguing with Bishop and Milgram?

Bob Hansen

It appears to have been in the semi-public view for quite a long time. Was there ever any action taken?

Other related info:

http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=715422

http://www.nychold.com/rev-bishop-0302.html

      In 2006 Milgram claimed that I had engaged in scientific misconduct.  
      Milgram and Bishop attempted aggressively to identify my research subjects

That's unacceptable. If either of those are true they should be stripped of their titles and degrees.

http://www.nychold.com/rev-bishop-0302.html

Is this the actual bullying or is it something more than this?

This particular article by Bishop is not bullying, it's standard academic criticism and it's very reasonable.

If this is representative of the actual issues, then that seriously changes my opinion of what is going on here.

If this is the worst of it, I strongly recommend that everyone read this book review and decide for themselves if Bishop is a villain who is unfairly bullying another academic.

Stripping people of their titles and degrees merely for incorrectly claiming that one of their peers has engaged in scientific misconduct would have a chilling effect on progress.

If it can be proven that they made those allegations with nothing more than malicious intent, then sure: punish away. But to go after anyone who incorrectly alleges scientific misconduct is an unspeakably terrible idea.

I believe it's the "aggressively tried to identify the research subjects" that probably warrants a more severe punishment. This is a HUGE no-no in research, as research MUST be, for accurate information, anonymous. His attempt to identify them undermines the very most basic level of good research.

This is a HUGE no-no in research, as research MUST be, for accurate information, anonymous.

Are you sure that this is an invariant characteristic of good research? What is the authority for conducting a research project in a manner that doesn't allow another researcher to check the raw data?

To the contrary, these days there are several very responsible researchers who call for much more open access to research data sets (yes, those could protect subject identities at the individual level while still being traceable to a specific site for follow-up) to promote better science.

http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/07/data-detective-makes-hi...

I don't have a bone in this fight, but when sample sizes are approaching N=1, you run the risk of evidence tampering, absent anonymity. You also enable political retaliation (ie, principla X supported Y, pull his funding...or oh look at him slip on a sidewalk...woops). Its credible, given the obvious anonymosity (all around), and the politicization of teachers unions (viz, wisconson, chicago, ect) that this consideration be taken into account. Again, this is not a "political point" (partisan sense) as it is a practical one about Naivete, and what desperate people do when they feel threatened.

If they believed that the research had been misrepresented, then the fastest way to confirmation is to evaluate the actual data. Unmasking the source could be one way to do this.

As they were not a party to the agreement of anonymity, I think their actions are fine.

If they broke the confidentiality of the test subjects, which is against federal law, then they should be stripped of their positions and degrees for that alone. This is not disagreement, this is law breaking. Their should be a chilling effect on people breaking the privacy of subjects, especially those who are underage.

Disproving research is great and noble. Breaking the privacy of human research on which so many depend and is always a touchy subject could have a huge impact on future human research. Endangering further research is the unspeakably terrible idea.

I am obviously responding only to the "In 2006 Milgram claimed that I had engaged in scientific misconduct" part.

I am not suggesting I approve of any of their actions.

Cool. I agree if they had done the counter studies or worked through channels to analyze the data, all would be fine. Scientific disagreement is scientific.

This type of "I'll pull a bad movie plot" conduct just puts all human-based research in danger or makes it more difficult to get approved.

Governing law for medical research subjects is 45 CFR 46.116, the "Common Rule". It does not state privacy is required in studies.

It states that under informed consent, all test subjects must consent to the research and be given in writing "a statement that the study involves research, an explanation of the purposes of the research and the expected duration of the subject’s participation, a description of the procedures to be followed, and identification of any procedures which are experimental", "a description of any reasonably foreseeable risks or discomforts to the subject", "a description of any benefits to the subject or to others which may reasonably be expected from the research", "a disclosure of appropriate alternative procedures or courses of treatment, if any, that might be advantageous to the subject", "a statement describing the extent, if any, to which confidentiality of records identifying the subject will be maintained", and several other things.

Should Dr. Boaler's "statement describing the extent, if any, to which confidentiality of records identifying the subject will be maintained" assure total confidentiality of individual subjects within the study, then she should maintain it, assuming she is complying with all requirements under the Common Rule. However, this issue of individual medical test subjects does not in any way prevent the identification of the particular facility at which the research was done, nor does it in any way prohibit other researchers from discovering that information on their own.

It is extremely interesting that Dr. Boaler believes her work falls under 45 CFR 46.116 since that means she has retained records documenting that she acquired this written consent and made these disclosures to all her test subjects, in addition to a rather vast number of other requirements that are far above and beyond the normal protocol for testing curriculums in schools. It's curious too given that §46.101(b) of the statute specifically excludes educational studies from the requirements:

> (b) Unless otherwise required by department or agency heads, research activities in which the only involvement of human subjects will be in one or more of the following categories are exempt from this policy:

> (1) Research conducted in established or commonly accepted educational settings, involving normal educational practices, such as (i) research on regular and special education instructional strategies, or (ii) research on the effectiveness of or the comparison among instructional techniques, curricula, or classroom management methods.

There can be no doubt that this exclusion applies to the scope of this study given that it is a classroom study on efficacy of math curriculums.

I'm not surprised by this academic misconduct. I've met many mathematicians who are hostile to teaching methods not of their own invention. I suspect this comes from a belief that superior mathematical ability implies superior empirical judgment, especially on matters of pedagogy; it also may stem from intellectual independence and unfamiliarity with or suspicion of empirical methods in the social sciences. This doesn't stop the opinionators. Sometimes they embarrass themselves in writing. One imbecile wrote in a Springer Undergraduate Text in Mathematics on linear algebra that one should be a fast note taker. The implication was that less than fast note takers would and should be left behind. Another esteemed author of a book on Fourier Analysis wrote that his book was not intended for the struggling student--a gratuitous and fatuous comment.

Mathematicians can definitely be opinionated, but a lot of the problem lies elsewhere. The "suspicion of empirical methods in the social science" is actually pretty well justified, for example the recent replication studies flap in psychology.

In education, I haven't seen any studies showing a marked superiority of a particular teaching method. Sometimes a new idea shows promise, but the effects evaporate when someone else tries it. So Boaler's results were enormously surprising, and it was reasonable to ask for verification. And then it turned into ugly politics.

Look at applications of Sweller's theory of cognitive load. Suspicion of methods of social science in contested areas doesn't justify coming to any conclusion whatsoever on empirical matters of social science in general.

You might be interested in skimming the following paper:

njrp.tamu.edu/2004/PDFs/Collier.pdf

This is a entry-level paper investigating dual-language instruction. These researchers are looking at student outcomes and how dual-language instruction improves those outcomes more than other approaches. It's also not particularly advocating an instructional method that the researchers are claiming ownership of.

The abstract:

"Our longitudinal research findings from one-way and two-way dual language enrichment models of schooling demonstrate the substantial power of this program for enhancing student outcomes and fully closing the achievement gap in second language (L2). Effect sizes for dual language are very large compared to other programs for English learners (ELLs). Dual language schooling also can transform the experience of teachers, administrators, and parents into an inclusive and supportive school community for all. Our research findings of the past 18 years are summarized here, with focus on ELLs’ outcomes in one-way and two-way, 50:50 and 90:10, dual language models, including heritage language programs for students of bilingual and bicultural ancestry who are more proficient in English than in their heritage language."

More germane to this discussion, in the paper there are links where the methodology, data collection, and data analysis are discussed in-depth. The authors also call for more specific and follow-up research on "program evaluation research, to refine what particular forms of dual language programs are most effective."

The TL;DR results: "Enrichment dual language schooling closes the academic achievement gap in L2 and in first language (L1) students initially below grade level, and for all categories of students participating in this program."

That's a pretty bold claim, that dual language instruction can bring below grade level student test performance up even for native language speakers.

If we can isolate pedagogies or aspects of dual language instruction that lead to better student outcomes, it would be nice if those approaches could be used in math education.

Thanks for the link. It seems like the bold claim is supported by a ton of data, as it should be. If this was what Boaler was offering, I think she would have a much stronger case. I skimmed some of the papers on Boaler's site as well, and they are almost completely unlike this one. They are full of anecdotes and quotes from students and very little data. To be fair, her study that is cited her later papers is not available on her web page so I have not read it.

I've been following the "math wars" for years, and used to be a regular participant in some of the email lists with messages quoted by other participants in these threads. I've read writings about mathematics education by Boaler and by Milgram, and have used those for preparing the mathematics classes I teach locally, and I have had a lot of email correspondence (mostly on email lists) with Wayne Bishop. I'm amazed that the root page of Boaler's faculty website at Stanford is being used for this kind of writing. I'm trying to get to the bottom of the actual facts involved. For that purpose, I'm sharing this same link among my Facebook friends, who include several innovators in mathematics education.

I appreciate the links that droithomme has shared in this thread. Yes, there is a lot of passion about what should be done to improve mathematics education in the United States, and one of the chief issues of contention is how to gauge the effectiveness of new programs. I'm pretty satisfied with the results of the homeschooling materials I chose for my oldest son (who is now a programmer for a startup). Over the years I've learned a lot from some of the same friends I'm asking for responses to this link. I hope we can puzzle out who is really coming forward with better evidence about what effective mathematics teaching is, because the United States could certainly use better mathematics instruction than it now has.

No rebuttal of concerns in the "paper" except to say that it was improper to identify the schools?

No explanation of why she contacted the police about Wayne?

No explanation of why she apparently thinks hosting a not-peer-reviewed paper online is wrong?

No sympathy from me.

I bet she must be really dissapointed that you have failed to show concern for her in this. Your personal sympathy was probably the one thing she was really counting on. "Where's askimito?", she'll be asking. "I was planning on asking him/her/other to champion my education reforms!", she will then shout, while wondering if how she will possibly get through another day without this fountain of online approval.

Looks like someone else has a very similar complaint:

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?forumID=206&threadID...

Milgram invited me to his office and told me not to talk about my research results in America as American teachers are “too weak” to be able to work in the ways shown to be effective.

If you believe there are harmful truths that should not be published, you don't belong in research. You belong in a PR department. I know exactly what this guy Milgram is getting at: in my experience as a student, progressive methods were occasionally wielded effectively by a few of my best teachers, but most teachers used them to take a break from engaging with the material and puff up the grades of the kids who were struggling. That's no excuse for wanting to hide research that shows innovative methods did work under certain circumstances, especially since research documents what those circumstances were. Anyway, like I said, if you believe there are harmful truths that should not be published, you don't belong in academia. That would disqualify virtually everybody outside the hard sciences, of course, and probably many people inside the hard sciences as well. ("So what if dihydroxomayonnaise isn't an effective twinzoblane above bike pants temperature? If we get distracted by that the field will be set back five years! Dihydroxo-condiment studies needs this grant money!")

It's hard to tell when bullying in academia is just a dramatic word for politics. People fight to entrench certain ideologies and stigmatize others, professors fight over control of departments, careers are threatened or ruined. I knew a girl in college who had her Master's thesis written and practically approved. Then her advisor suddenly left the department, and her advisor's vanquisher told her the paper was unacceptable in toto and had to be rewritten from scratch. My friend had been pondering an academic career, but this made up her mind: she got her MA by examination and decided against graduate school (she got the MA at the same time as her BA.)

You can't overlook that one guy in this story had the campus police show up at his home because he said "nuke 'em" with respect to schools of education. This raises two questions. First, by this standard, how many people here have been careful enough with language to avoid police investigation? Second, can you imagine the pressure that must have been put on the police to force them to take time away from their real work because one faculty member wanted to stigmatize another as potentially violent? The other justification for co-opting the police into this dispute was "personal attacks on my work," which doesn't pass the smell test; if you don't distinguish between personal criticisms and criticisms on your work, then you will feel under personal attack all the time. That's a choice. You can separate personal criticism from professional criticism and label the former inappropriate, but if you don't make an effort to distinguish the two, don't come begging for sympathy.

So here we have two groups of academics: each casting aspersions on the others' research; each trying to sabotage the others' careers; one group calling the other dishonest and the other group responding with accusations of bullying and illegal conduct. Both sides have accused the other of subverting academic integrity, by data fabrication on one side and by trying to identify research subjects on the other. I think both sides are doing a splendid job of bullying, no doubt glowing in the self-righteous pleasure of fighting against evil. I think I know which side I would agree with about the research (though it might not be a coincidence that I tend to agree with the one side whose case has been presented to me) but I wouldn't say one side was better than the other just by virtue of being right about the academic point they're fighting over.

EDIT: It was bugging me to have only one side of the story, so I did a quick google search. It isn't much, but perhaps it's better than nothing: http://mathforum.org/kb/servlet/JiveServlet/download/206-116...

I think the safest conclusion here is that we have two people engaged in your usual petty no-holds-barred academic playground fight. I'm prepared to believe that they're both harmless and both completely civilized in any other context. Getting the authorities involved still strikes me as creepy, but they were just campus cops, so I'm prepared to see even that as childish harassment rather than a serious threat.

http://mathforum.org/kb/servlet/JiveServlet/download/206-116...

This version of events you found is extremely interesting and paints a very different picture of the situation.

General background is Boaler published findings from her trial studies that showed miraculous improvements at a low income school that adopted the curriculum she advocates. Bishop was skeptical as it was different from results he had seen, but when asked for more details, Boaler claimed she had to promise the schools anonymity to do the studies and thus the data could not be verified. This claim of anonymity of the school being necessary doesn't make a lot of sense. Anonymity for the students of course, but there is no reason for the schools not to be identified if the study is legit. Bishop's questioning the legitimacy of Boaler's results because of her refusal to publish anything that would enable verification of her remarkable results resulted in her filing harassment complaints against Bishop, a professor at a totally different university. Later Boaler filed complaints that Bishop was "a terrorist", resulting in him being interrogated by police.

He then went and found the identity of the school himself and it turned out that the school went from API 3-6 results to the worst possible result, API 1-1 subsequent to the adoption of Boaler's advocated curriculum, something completely the opposite of her claimed findings. If this is true that this is the same school, then she is clearly engaged in fraud, academic misconduct, stalking, and making false police reports, and is not the victim in this at all, but is actually engaging in conduct bordering on the criminal. If on the other hand this is not the school, the school should be identified so that the claims of significant improvement can be verified. The claim that the school needs anonymity can not be taken seriously.

Does anybody else find this part odd?

"This is an allegation that could have destroyed my career had it been substantiated."

Surely the point here is that the allegations are troubling because they could not be substantiated, not despite that. Had they been substantiated, the authors career would indeed have be be destroyed, but the author would deserve no sympathy and Milgram no criticism.

This is a factual statement that does nothing to reinforce sympathies with the author, unless perhaps you don't read it critically. It seems to me to be an emotional appeal.

Yeah, the allegations are flying fast and thick between these two, and nobody is impressed who doesn't have a political stake in the outcome.

From what I can tell, Jo's work is based on how low socio-economic-status (poor black / latino) students have trouble in standardized exams when there are questions like:

"A cable crew had 120 feet of cable left on a 1000-foot spool after wiring 4 identical new homes. If the spool was full before the homes were wired, which equation could be used to find the length of cable (x) used in each home?".

I think it might be based off a fair amount more than that, she's been publishing since 1993.

Don't know if @wisty or @ktizo is right here, but she's been publishing since 1993 is not a logical argument.

Ok, she's been consistently publishing in academia since 1993 and was asked back to her job at Stanford after leaving to become Marie Curie Chair of Mathematics Education. If her research didn't cover a lot more bases than was suggested, then I don't think she would have held either of those academic positions.

Resort to authority. One of her adversaries is a retired Stanford prof. I'm not taking one side or the other here.

Well, the guy you are referencing has taken no position that we know of here, as far as what we were currently referencing, so I call shenanigans.

She studies how more students can learn Math better. Naturally underperforming students are a special interest.

There are a number of good books. If you are interested, I found Boaler, J. (2009) What’s Math Got To Do With It? How Parents and Teachers Can Help Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject. Penguin: New York to be thought-provoking (I teach math, although at a college level while this book is immediately about a high school level or lower).

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