Scholars accused of sexual misconduct are cited less after allegations come to light

Scholars accused of sexual misconduct saw a significant decline in citations within three years of public allegations, reveals a new study from the University of California San Diego Rady School of Management.

The study, published in PLOS One, also finds there is no significant citation decrease for scholars accused of scientific misconduct in the same timeframe. It is the first paper to systematically compare the ramifications of sexual and scientific misconduct on the citations of alleged perpetrators.

The study utilized citation data from Web of Science that included 31,941 publications by 30 scholars (15 each) accused of either sexual or scientific misconduct who were compared to 142 non-accused scholars. These scholars span across 18 disciplines in STEM fields and social sciences. 

In addition, the study included a survey of 240 academics to gauge their attitudes toward citing work by researchers accused of sexual and scientific misconduct. The survey results contradicted the Web of Science findings: Academics indicated they would be more likely to cite research from scholars accused of sexual misconduct than from scholars accused of scientific misconduct. This suggests academics might mis-predict their citing behavior or be reluctant to disclose their true preferences.

“Powerful social movements like #MeToo amplified awareness of sexual misconduct across industries, including academia,” said lead author Giulia Maimone, who conducted the research while a graduate student at the Rady School. “We saw some consumers boycotting the music of accused recording artists and realized that while in some contexts it might make sense to penalize the work of individuals accused of immoral behavior, in others, such as science, the issue is not as straightforward.”

She added, “Traditionally, researchers cite a publication for its scientific relevance, not for its authors’ behavior regarding non-scientific matters. So, if scholars used citations purely for their scientific purpose, allegations of sexual misconduct should not impact the accused’s citation rates because these allegations are unrelated to the research’s scientific merit.”

Maimone and coauthors, which include Gil Appel, assistant professor of marketing at the George Washington University School of Business; Craig McKenzie, professor of psychology and management who has a joint appointment with the Rady School and Department of Psychology at UC San Diego; and Ayelet Gneezy, professor of behavioral science and marketing at the Rady School, point to several factors that could contribute to the citation penalty incurred by academics accused of sexual misconduct.

“Researchers may have attempted to distance themselves from individuals accused of reprehensible behaviors—whether consciously or not—or to punish colleagues for their immoral behavior,” they write.

The more a publication is connected with the author accused of sexual misconduct, the less it is cited 

The study found that in instances where a paper had fewer authors—making it more likely to identify the accused author with a publication—the citation penalty incurred by scholars accused of sexual misconduct is significantly larger than that incurred by scholars accused of scientific misconduct.

The study also included a survey of 231 non-academics. Respondents were asked to indicate which misconduct type, sexual or scientific, was more disgusting, deserving of punishment and worse in general. They were also asked to consider that both types can have different degrees of severity–for example, sexual misconduct can range from an unwanted compliment, to sexual assault, and scientific misconduct, which can range from manipulating data on a “harmless” topic, to falsifying medical research which could be severely damaging to patients. The non-academic respondents overwhelmingly indicated sexual misconduct to be worse than scientific misconduct on all dimensions.

“What this tells me is academics are human and might experience a stronger negative reaction when learning about sexual misconduct allegations in comparison to scientific misconduct allegations, which could explain the differential citation penalty we observe in the short term,” said Maimone, who earned her PhD in consumer behavior from the Rady School and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. 

Scholars accused of sexual misconduct did receive a significant citation penalty, both in absolute terms and compared to similar scholars with no accusation

The accused 30 scholars in the study were identified because their cases received comparable attention and detailed online media coverage, as the authors wanted to ensure that the cases were equally known by most scholars. These researchers had at least 200 citations and their accusations all happened in 2017 or earlier.

Each accused scholar was compared to about five scholars (142 total) who are similar professionally, but who had no accusations at the time of data collection. They were matched based on factors like research topic, academic rank, gender and total citations. The authors then analyzed whether being accused of either scientific or sexual misconduct affected how much other researchers cited their work.

They found that scholars accused of sexual misconduct did receive a significant citation penalty, both in absolute terms and compared to similar scholars with no accusations. Scholars accused of scientific misconduct did not incur a significant citation penalty in absolute terms, nor compared to similar researchers with no accusations.

The results were surprising to the authors who note “our findings emerge from considering a relatively short period of time (three years) after the accusations became public. The pattern of results we observed might disappear or even reverse over longer periods of time.” 

Read the full study, “Citation Penalties Following Sexual versus Scientific Misconduct Allegations.”