Todd Suomela's Library tagged fraud →  View Popular, Search in Google

"Scientists in the field of social psychology must explore what they can do to prevent fraud in the future. Greater transparency with data, including depositing data in repositories where they can be accessed by other scientists (as is done in some other fields), might have sped up detection of this fraud, and it would certainly make researchers more careful about the analyses that they publish."

science fraud social-science data-curation

"Much of the discussion around this case highlights public misperceptions of libraries and of licensed content. Both Swartz’s supporters and the prosecution have focused on Swartz’s copying of articles, despite the fact that the charges focus on fraud, not theft or copyright violations. His supporters ridiculed the prosecution by suggesting his alleged downloading was like checking “too many” books out of the library. The prosecution repeatedly made reference to Swartz’s actions as “stealing,” despite the fact that the charges they brought against Swartz focus on fraud. Most academic library employees could readily explain to Swartz’s supporters that subscription license terms are often more restrictive than the “First Sale” doctrine that enables library lending, and would probably also point out that most libraries do impose some limits on book borrowing. Similarly, library employees could explain to the prosecution that although Swartz may have acquired copies of millions of JSTOR documents, there was never any erasure or removal of content from JSTOR’s servers, so invoking the rhetoric of “theft” is a bit problematic. "

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fraud shamanism new-age state(Arizona) native-american tradition appropriation culture

economics wall-street expertise fraud deception business business-as-usual information asymmetrical

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The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don't feel real; you don't see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They're crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let's steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy. They're attacking the very definition of property - which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends everyone's claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes tenuous or conditional - when the state simply gives up on the notion of justice - this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from reality.

economics fraud crime wall-street ethics punishment law

"The tea party and the loudest, most strident voices of anti-abortion politics love to flirt with the idea of armed revolution. This is, for the most part, just adolescent foolishness -- a kind of fantasy play-acting that can be summed up in a single word:

Wolveriiiiiines!

By pretending to believe that America is on the verge of collapse into a totalitarian tyranny, they can pretend to themselves that they are the vanguard of a courageous resistance. The Red Dawn fantasy isn't all that different from any other childhood fantasy about what if there were dragons? And what if I was brave and good and strong? And what if I slew the dragon and everybody cheered for me because I was brave and good and strong and I slew the dragon? Wouldn't that be cool?"

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autism medicare fraud vaccine

A now-retracted British study that linked autism to childhood vaccines was an "elaborate fraud" that has done long-lasting damage to public health, a leading medical publication reported Wednesday.

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Some inflammatory suggestions about fraudulent use of "side letters" in the re-insurance industry. Where there's a will to bend the rules there is a way to make money.

accounting aig bailout cds fraud business insurance banking financial-engineering gloom-and-doom wheels-within-wheels rotten-to-the-core

in list: Economic Crisis

One of the odd things about confidence games is that, structurally speaking, there are so few of them—only about as many as there are simple machines. What looks like their near-infinite multiplicity is just a lot of variations on a small number of forms.

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economics crisis banking finance fraud law rating business

in list: Economic Crisis

Particular emphasis on the failure of media to cover or explain the outright fraud by mortgage brokers that contributed to the sub-prime crisis.

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Given my eye-of-the-storm view of the matter, I thought it would be of interest to relate two stories from my long career in structured finance, one that may help explain why, if you asked me in 2004 or 2005, I would have staunchly defended structured finance technology as having real social benefit and why, by a couple of years later, it was clear to anyone looking honestly at the business that something had gone very wrong.

financial-engineering finance crisis 2008 banking fraud

Think of the way almost everyone important missed the warning signs of an impending crisis. How was that possible? How, for example, could Alan Greenspan have declared, just a few years ago, that “the financial system as a whole has become more resilient” — thanks to derivatives, no less? The answer, I believe, is that there’s an innate tendency on the part of even the elite to idolize men who are making a lot of money, and assume that they know what they’re doing.

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Re-read the key phrase: "pay themselves more than their firms are worth and then default on their debt obligations." This has happened en masse in what formerly were investment banks who have now become wards of the state.

finance crisis 2008 capitalism fraud money ceo

The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of THOMAS, the human brain makes us feel good when we help others--this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. "I need your help" is a potent stimulus for action.

con psychology brain social neuroscience fraud

It seems to me that well into Year II of the Panic, the business press is in the process of making the same mistake it made in the run-up to the debacle: focusing on esoteric Wall Street concerns and ignoring the simplest, most basic, but most important one—the breathtaking corruption that overran the U.S. lending industry, including and especially the brand names, and the extent to which Wall Street drove that corruption. Let’s just call it a case of over-sophistication. Its persistence, however, will only impede journalists’ ability to cover this thing going forward.

economics capitalism crisis criticism media news corruption fraud 2008

in list: Economic Crisis