Research anomalies in criminology: How serious? How extensive over time? And who was responsible?

Schumm, Walter R.; Crawford, Duane W.; Lockett, Lorenza; Al‐Rashed, Abdullah A.A.A.; Ateeq, Asma bin

doi:10.1080/08989621.2023.2241127

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 122 publications

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“…Some of the results obtained might have been due to random chance, even when the results were statistically significant, as remains true for all statistical testing. Future research might well examine the entire corpus of research by Dr. Stewart or other co-authors to determine if similar patterns would be found [20]. Other types of anomalies seen in the retracted articles [7,10] should be investigated further.…”

Section: Limitations and Directions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 90%

Assessing last decimal digits in retracted research articles: accounting for missing zeroes

R. Schumm

2023

Sociology

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The cumulative nature of knowledge in science in general and for social science in particular depends on research being conducted with integrity, with fraudulent research being one of the most harmful of questionable research practices. It has been observed that, in some fabricated research, there has been a deficit of zeroes in the last digits of regression results. In research, authored by Dr. Eric Stewart, that has been retracted, there appears to have been a paucity of zeroes as last digits in his regression results. Eight hypotheses were tested to re-examine the relative lack of zeroes and possible increases in ones or nines as last digits. Some support was found for all hypotheses. It appears that in Stewart's retracted research, not only were zeroes underrepresented as terminal digits in regression coefficients, but that ones and nines were more frequently detected as terminal digits, in roughly equal proportions. Furthermore, the increased proportions of ones and nines was found to be highly correlated with other anomalies in the same retracted articles, possibly indicative of fabrication of the results in the retracted articles. Further research in this area might use symbolic interaction theory or justification theory to guide our developing knowledge about this type of questionable research practice.

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Section: Limitations and Directions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 90%

Assessing last decimal digits in retracted research articles: accounting for missing zeroes

R. Schumm

2023

Sociology

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“…Methodological and practical sources of the replication crisis in criminology have been discussed in depth (see Chin et al 2023;Pridemore et al 2018;Schumm et al 2023;Sweeten 2020;Wooditch et al 2020); we focus on the theoretical sources. Niemeyer et al's (2022) simulations examining possible contributions of weak theory to the field's burgeoning credibility crisis represented the first effort by criminologists to link longstanding theoretical concerns in criminology with false-positive research findings.…”

Section: Credibility Crisis In Criminologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexibility in Variable Operationalization in Social Disorganizartion Theory: A Pilot Study

Proctor, Ph.D.,

Bostrom,

Ducate

et al. 2024

CrimRxiv

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Like other social sciences, criminology is experiencing a theory crisis as part of a larger replication crisis.Niemeyer and colleagues (2022) estimate the impact of weak criminological theory on false positive findings using the Ioannidis equation and find that likely at least 90% of findings are false positives. Weak criminological theory directly contributes to a methods-based crisis of flexible operationalization and poor reproducibility of findings. To better quantify the problem, we calculate the index of qualitative variation (IQV) for theoretical constructs in a sample of social disorganization empirical tests. The IQV empirically demonstrates the extent of researcher degrees of freedom through flexibility of theoretical constructs. It accounts for both the number of categories of operationalizations used for each construct and the distribution of use across those operationalizations. We found that the IQV for poverty, racial and ethnic heterogeneity, and residential stability were extremely high in our sample with values ranging from 0.84 to 0.99. This empirically identifies a theoretical contributor to the reproducibility crisis in criminology. We discuss the troubling implications of high theoretical flexibility for social disorganization theory and for broader replication efforts.

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Forecasting the Economic Crisis of Sri Lanka: Application of Machine Learning Algorithms for Time Series Data

Raj,

Kumarasankaralingam,

Balamurugan

et al. 2024

Procedia Computer Science

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Research anomalies in criminology: How serious? How extensive over time? And who was responsible?

Cited by 3 publications

References 122 publications

Assessing last decimal digits in retracted research articles: accounting for missing zeroes

Assessing last decimal digits in retracted research articles: accounting for missing zeroes

Flexibility in Variable Operationalization in Social Disorganizartion Theory: A Pilot Study

Forecasting the Economic Crisis of Sri Lanka: Application of Machine Learning Algorithms for Time Series Data

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