Fantasy And Fraud

The Ohio State University has once again been sullied by serious reports of academic misfeasance.  I am relieved that the sins have not sprung from athletic high-jinks or ill-considered tattoos, which once cost the program(s) there dearly.  That said, if the reports of deliberate misconduct turn out to be true, in another arena the NCAA would declare a lack of institutional control and impose sanctions, e.g., loss of scholarships, exclusion from  prestigious academic gatherings, and/or shunning of any faculty involved.  

However matters develop, a search for scapegoats and the selection of a volunteer to be thrown under a passing bus would be critical to the process of a search for the innocent and plaudits for the guilty.

Academia at OSU, and elsewhere, has not experienced wholesale exposure to the run amok virus.  But, professorial glory hounds and researchers seeking heretofore hidden meaning can be lured onto the rocks by the Sirens of acclaim and publication.

In this latest case, a superstar cancer researcher became perhaps over-enamored of his discoveries, and may have permitted a surfeit of PR to compromise either his ethics or his strict attention to detail.  He brought over $80 million into the university, somewhat less than it cost OSU to support his efforts.

The university appeared to be unaware of the numerous complaints and accusations that clung to his work, which contained inaccurate data (and conclusions?) which were also misused by others citing his work.  Right.  And Enron caught Andersen by surprise, too.

In our world of supply chain management, we have a responsibility to distill correct interpretations drawn from our Big Data, to formulate meaning that makes sense in the context of everyday wisdom augmented by other, supporting, research.  We have an obligation to use relevant data, and not draw conclusions from elderly or out of touch, or irrelevant data and information.

For example, a decrease in the number of customer complaints does not mean that we are getting better; it could indicate that customers have given up on registering lack of satisfaction.  And, on-time shipment may not relate in any meaningful way to on-time delivery and arrival.

Guess which measures customers assign meaning to?  Guess how great their tolerance for fantasy, which begins to resemble fraud, might be.

Happily, the scandal at Ohio State did not involve supply chain management or logistics, but that does not excuse us from doing the right thing in the right way in performance analysis.