“The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) notes with concern the dismissal of Erika McEntarfer as Commissioner of Labor Statistics by US President, Donald Trump, at a time when the global economy is experiencing significant disturbance.
The United Nations’ Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics establishes international professional and scientific standards for the production of official statistics. The RSS, as one of the world’s leading statistical societies and with a membership that includes official statisticians from many countries, is keenly interested in the adherence to these standards across the world to ensure quality and integrity.
Any concerns regarding data or methodology should be independently evaluated to ensure credibility is maintained. The dismissal undermines international trust in US statistics, which has ramifications well beyond policy decisions within the US, with impacts on global confidence in the world economy.
The RSS is against all forms of political interference in the production of official statistics and urges President Trump to ensure that the nonpartisan integrity of the position is retained. Furthermore, reassurance is needed to ensure that statisticians working for federal agencies have confidence to continue producing the objective statistical information that enables those in power to gain the trust of their communities.
These actions are essential to ensure a healthy democracy in the US, and to maintain international credibility in its statistics.”
Archive for academic integrity
A statement from the Royal Statistical Society on the dismissal of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, Dr Erika McEntarfer
Posted in Books, Statistics, University life, Wines with tags @ScientistTrump, academic integrity, Britain, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Donald Trump, federal agencies, official statistics, political interference, Royal Statistical Society, RSS, Trump administration, United Nations, US economy, US politics on August 7, 2025 by xi'anthe academic integrity flow chart
Posted in Kids, pictures, University life with tags academic integrity, academic misconduct, dissertation, flowchart, module leader, plagiarism, simulations, survey, University of Warwick on January 24, 2024 by xi'an
This year, I received a summer project dissertation at Warwick (among several I supervised) that was a direct aggregation of three main papers on the project topic, including advanced simulations that were clearly beyond the reach of a summer project. Especially when the perpetrator only attended a very few supervision sessions among those I proposed.
With the help of a colleague we found rather easily the three papers, which had been rewritten to some extent into the project, while keeping the plan of the originals. And then I later a fourth paper corresponding to the numerical illustrative component of the project, which was the original reason for suspecting foul play. With graphs redrawn! Meaning that a plagiarism detector was only achieving an 18% agreement with the available literature, but still flagging plagiarism as “highly likely.”
I thus referred the case to the colleague in charge of academic integrity in the department. 
And this initiated a very involved process summarised by the attached flowchart… Starting with the academic conduct panel, which also concluded at plagiarism.
