Another academic suspected of plagiarism. Who knew that was such a widespread problem?

Joe Biden appointed to a 15-year term on the fed an “economist” who had never published a peer-reviewed paper on economics. And the papers she did publish (on race), it turns out, at times plagiarized and often recycled language from co-authors’ old work.https://t.co/fy40GaxMv8

— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) April 10, 2024

From the Daily Wire:

Trouble At The Fed: Investigation Into Lisa Cook’s Academic Record Raises Questions

Lisa D. Cook is one of the world’s most powerful economists. She taught economics at Harvard University and Michigan State University and served on the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers before being appointed, in 2022, to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which controls the interest rates and money supply of the United States.

Despite her pedigree, questions have long persisted about her academic record. Her publication history is remarkably thin for a tenured professor, and her published work largely focuses on race activism rather than on rigorous, quantitative economics. Her nomination to the Fed required Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaking vote; by contrast, her predecessor in the seat, Janet Yellen, now Treasury secretary, was confirmed unanimously.

The quality of her scholarship has also received criticism. Her most heralded work, 2014’s “Violence and Economic Activity: Evidence from African American Patents, 1870 to 1940,” examined the number of patents by black inventors in the past, concluding that the number plummeted in 1900 because of lynchings and discrimination. Other researchers soon discovered that the reason for the sudden drop in 1900 was that one of the databases Cook relied on stopped collecting data in that year. The true number of black patents, one subsequent study found, might be as much as 70 times greater than Cook’s figure, effectively debunking the study’s premise.

Cook also seems to have consistently inflated her own credentials. In 2022, investigative journalist Christopher Brunet pointed out that, despite billing herself as a macroeconomist, Cook had never published a peer-reviewed macroeconomics article and had misrepresented her publication history in her CV, claiming that she had published an article in the journal American Economic Review. In truth, the article was published in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, a less prestigious, non-peer-reviewed magazine.

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.