The Goffman Dissertation

It sounds like their lawyer's position on the issue.

Even if you cannot obtain a copy of the dissertation, it could be worth approaching the ASA committee which awarded the prize in 2011: at least they could confirm whether they sighted it, even briefly.
Susan A. Dumais
Susan A. Farrell
Philip Howard
Robert M. O'Brien
Lisa D. Pearce
Wendy D. Roth
Bruce H. Wade
Amy S. Wharton
Guobin Yang
Robert Zussman
https://web.archive.org/web/20111015003704/http://www.asanet.org/about/awards/dissertation.cfm

Alternatively, given that Goffman's supervisor Duneier has declared that he feels confident in the research done for the dissertation, he presumably has a copy that he could lend?

They're in D.C. Perhaps someone can review a submitted copy in person without making a copy? That would certainly answer the intellectual property argument.

Can you not get a copy from her doctoral university? Dissertations are typically kept on file in the library. Or is the problem that it's embargoed for an initial period to allow for book publication?

Might she have submitted the diss to UW when she applied for the job? If so, it might be subject to an open records request.

Mitchell Duneier ought to have a copy. Goffman, too. All of this is astonishing, and Lubet rightly points out that it's become about something much bigger than one unfortunate young scholar tempted into what looks like fabulism. It's about some large sections of academia that are way overdue for an accountability moment.

One dimension that I am not sure Steve emphasized bears considering: while she now claims to not have intended for anyone to get killed, in the book she not only says she wanted someone to die but makes clear – in a fairly lengthy passage discussing the several rides she took with the gun toting "Mike" – that the realization that she felt that way was so intense that it led her to reconsider her situation in life and go to graduate school.

Well, lucky her that she had an exit – unlike her friends in the 'hood.

But the key point is that this weighs heavily in favor of accepting her published memory of her feelings at the time as evidence of her intent. It would certainly be interesting to compare this writing to the dissertation and to her field notes. Both of which should be available. (I have kept my dissertation raw material, notes and interview tapes for more than 20 years.)

I congratulate Professor Lubet for doggedly following up on this potentially bogus dissertation and book. We cannot know what the dissertation says, but no one should employ Ms. Goffman until this controversy is sorted out. He is absolutely right to be skeptical that the story is not fact-based, but fiction.

Obviously, I have not read the book or the dissertation, but, in my opinion, both should be closely examined by a skeptical eye.

ASA should change its policy to only give the dissertation award to dissertations that are publicly available: http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/proposal-rule-change-for-the-american-sociological-association-dissertation-award/

To the above comment, it is also interesting that she said this situation caused her to go to graduate school, meaning that she had conducted this part of the research before Princeton. Mitch Duneier clearly stated in his response that he only vouched for the ethics of the research she conducted at Princeton and that he supervised, though he made clear not to comment on the "research" conducted at Penn.

Regarding ASA, I am not convinced that any committee read this so-called dissertation. It doesn't seem like one was ever written, since it mysteriously cannot be recovered. ASA should at least verify that a dissertation was submitted and read by committee members, who should also come forth and declare that they actually participated in the process of judging dissertations and not handing out awards based upon celebrity.

Someone should bring this issue to the ASA Committee on Professional Ethics:

13.01 Planning and Implementation

(c) In their research, sociologists do not encourage activities or themselves
behave in ways that are health- or life-threatening to research participants or
others.
http://www.asanet.org/images/asa/docs/pdf/CodeofEthics.pdf

I wonder if moving toward a norm of blind manuscript submission for sociology journals (where the editorial board also doesn't know who the author/s are until after a decision is made) wouldn't help? I'd heard that blind submission is becoming more of the norm in law journals, is that correct Steve? I'm sure it's not fool proof, but it does seem like it would help address the conscious or unconscious tendency of certain editors to select articles based, in part, on the author's institutional or nominal prestige. Or, as appears to have been the case with ASR in this instance, to let a manuscript with some rather obvious methodological issues through peer-review without the standard scrutiny.

There never was a dissertation. Princeton accepted the OTR manuscript in lieu of a dissertation, an act that while rare, is not unprecedented in the academy. Why the American Sociological Association awarded "Best Dissertation" to a dissertation that never existed is baffling and requires incestigation.

Another damn sociologist –

Blind submissions are still pretty rare in law (maybe a few of the top journals). And we are continually beaten over the head with that by…social scientists. So, frankly, I'm shocked to learn that sociology journals don't have blind publishing.

By the way, the legal academy response to non-blind submission policy is that there is a low bar to publication, which leads to much more publication, but there's also a lot of tolerance for post-publication critique and comment where most law professors see whatever real "peer review" they will get.

A New York Magazine reporter has Tweeted today (Thursday) that they have "new info" on Goffman and will be publishing something Thursday or Friday.

I'd like to imagine that Princeton takes its reputation for academic integrity & the value of the degrees it grants reasonably seriously, so my instinct is that folks should concentrate their efforts on Princeton, not the ASA: Duneier, the Sociology faculty, the Dean of the Graduate School, President Chris Eisgruber–I think a lot of us on here know the Eisgruber's work & hold it in very high regard.

I think this would benefit from distinguishing several issues.

1. You ask about "ASA's position on this issue"; if you mean its present refusal to provide a copy of the Goffman dissertation, that may be defensible. If the policy is (and was) as the email reported, then it might be breaching its agreement with Goffman and, potentially, others, potentially with legal repercussions. You might inquire as to whether the limited license described was part of an explicit agreement or rather is just the ASA's retrospective view of the arrangement; you might also ask, though it seems needless, whether the ASA would release the dissertation to you if it had the author's permission . . .which would at least establish whether it retained a copy. For all we know, Goffman may have also signed away to her publisher the rights to release the dissertation, or represented that it would not be.

2. If, instead, you mean the general policy of permitting awards to nondisclosed dissertations, it's worth acknowledging that (a) this may have had a legitimate, even if unpersuasive, original rationale (enabling students to submit works without fear that this would inhibit other publication arrangements, and perhaps even permitting that without sunset on the mistaken assumption that the work would eventually be published in a refined form that would obviate need for the original); (b) the ASA might legitimately have viewed itself as more of an ribbon-pinner, providing an incentive for excellent work and providing winners with a credential, and not as the body making pivotal decisions about dissemination, which would instead be the degree-granting institution or the author; (c) you were not alone in raising concerns about this, and that (as noted upthread) there has been an attempt from within sociology to change the ASA policy prospectively. Not everyone is wagon-circling, and ideally the policy will be corrected.

3. To me, the real issue with the dissertation lies with the degree-granting institution not requiring disclosure after a period of several years . . . which would have accommodated any legitimate interest by the author, save in withholding from scrutiny a less mature work. Disclosure is at best a partial solution, as it probably would not yield much in terms of the underlying research, but this is a larger problem in both qualitative and quantitative fields. I'm just not sure what would warrant a perpetual embargo, if that's what happened here.

In general, I think this is an important inquiry, but that we shouldn't expect immediate resolution or be too quick to attribute any perceived foot-dragging or absence of response to an unreasonable disregard of academic values (or a phantom dissertation). When charges are serious, serious delays in responding may be inevitable, and it's probably more important to avoid forgetting about the problem than to secure immediate gratification.

"You ask about "ASA's position on this issue"; if you mean its present refusal to provide a copy of the Goffman dissertation, that may be defensible. If the policy is (and was) as the email reported, then it might be breaching its agreement with Goffman and, potentially, others, potentially with legal repercussions"

Even without legal repercussions it seems inappropriate to share an entry for a scholarship or award with an unrelated individual just because he asked for it. There is nothing particularly scandalous in my last funding application, but I assumed when I submitted it that it would only be seen by the reviewers and I would be annoyed if they just gave it out upon request.

"To me, the real issue with the dissertation lies with the degree-granting institution not requiring disclosure after a period of several years"

Yes, permanent sequestration is very odd.

Two new pieces just out on Goffman, complete with interviews with her, her advisors (in Slate), and (in the NY Mag piece) some of her subjects. To avoid the spam filter, in lieu of URLs, Google Goffman and:

(1) NY Mag, Science of Us, Jesse Singal

(2) Slate, Leon Neyfakh

Nice picture.

Not much of a defense, however.

But, both articles sort of take the position that Alice is such a good person that defending herself would be beneath her goodness.

Legal academics, take note! Perhaps instead of insulting and deriding your critics all these years, all you needed to do is proclaim your goodness, and tell the world that making stuff up is actually a positive virtue according to the norms of your world! Committing crimes? Crimes, schimes. There are no crimes if one is merely experiencing a criminal action in order to "study" it …

Geez. It seem there is no corner of Modern America where the ethics don't stink. Forget the posturing and the academic relativism and bs. Wall Street, Washington, academia, the streets … everywhere … nothing but corruption. And, this whole enterprise was deeply corrupt in a sense that anyone would understand immediately (and NOT for the reasons Lubet has mentioned.)

Wouldn't it be nice if someone in a leadership position in this county could, instead of simply inviting us to hate the other side, inspire this country to clean up its act?

And, btw, the author under attack does indeed seem like a very nice person. How could she know any better in this milieu?

The Slate piece is interesting; haven't read the other yet. It appears that journalism (and yes, even law) has a greater commitment to factual accuracy than sociology (as currently practiced).

Under the regime as described, a dissertation can function like a court document filed under seal, supporting a particular argument or factual thesis. But, as Professor Lubet suggests, that arrangement seems counter to the traditional justification for scholarship: to increase the store of human knowledge and wisdom.

Somewhere else (I think) someone pointed out that, as to an allegation of a crime that Goffman witnessed but was not implicated in, she herself could be subpoenaed, even if she destroyed all her notes. Would she have a privilege? I have not followed all the ins and outs of privilege cases involving journalists like Risen. This doesn't really get at the core of the ethnographic enterprise as described in the Slate piece, but it touches on it.

The articles contradict each other and show there is an easy way to check Goffman's analysis.

Both articles claim her advisor stated that he spoke with a warrant officer with the Philadelphia Police Department. The NY Magazine article claims the warrant officer read "a big chunk of Goffman’s research, discussed her research with Goffman's advisor and mostly endorsed Goffman’s account." The Slate article claims Goffman's advisor tested the plausibility of goffman's claims by running them by "a warrant officer with the Philadelphia Police Department."

Why can't Goffman disclose the name of this warrant officer? If he endorses her account that would settle a great deal.

The stories in Slate and NY Magazine also contradict each other. The Slate story claims its impossible to check Goffman's research because she did such a thorough, effective job of hiding the names of her subjects. In the NY Magazine article, the authors claims he easily and quickly found three of Goffman's subjects.

What's even more incredible about the NY Magazine article is that it claims Goffman met with the author at the behest of her subjects (that he had so easily found from detail in her book). If Goffman was really so concerned about her subjects privacy that she shredded her notes and did not file her dissertation, why would readily meet with the author of a magazine article, thereby confirming that he had actually found the subjects of her research. His notes could easily be subpoena-ed.

I applaud the NY Mag writer for doing some detective work in Philly. I think she did a convincing job of showing that Goffman did in fact spend time with her subjects in the general manner described in the book. However, I am still not convinced that "fact checking" means speaking to a subject's mother and having her vouch for Goffman's credibility. (It's nice to hear, but it doesn't prove that particular passages in the book are 100% accurate.)

Also, the NY Mag writer apparently didn't think to ask if Chuck's mom is getting money from Goffman (who has said that she's sharing proceeds of the paperback sales with 6th Street people.)

I don't know if there is something unusual about this particular dissertation, but dissertations are generally available here: http://www.proquest.com/products-services/pqdtglobal.html

Having skimmed the follow up pieces in Slate and NY Magazine, I imagine there may be an additional reason for the perpetual embargo at Princeton — Goffman's concern that the dissertation might, if publicly available, disclose information about her subjects.

This might have been viewed as a risk either because she had less control over the dissertation contents, she and her advisers did not want to hold its submission hostage to these concerns, or because she was concerned that the dissertation would, if put together with a later book, reveal more. (She might also have looked forward to having three to four years to fine-tune her book MS, or discovered problems with the dissertation's disclosures while later engaged in book editing, but I'm not sure of the timing of the embargo decision.) This would be over and above any concern about preempting her book, which I assume is the more common concern. But it might better explain continuing resistance to releasing the dissertation, particularly given the likelihood that it would now be compared and contrasted to her book to an extraordinary degree — or at least a desire to reserve judgment on that question.

All this is conjecture, and it would be better were it explained. If true, this would still undoubtedly frustrate anyone who would like to exercise independent judgment as to whether disclosure issues were legitimate, but it may be less puzzling. And again, whether this should have given the ASA pause before they issued an award, or was even fully understood by them before issuing the award, or whether they should change their rule going forward, are separate questions . . . but I'd assume they are constrained in this case by their prior agreement.

Could it be that there NEVER EVEN WAS a diss?
Then that ASA award is total utter BS!

By the way, "social" science is not SCIENCE at all.

There is currently pressure being put on ASA to revise their dissertation award policy. Some are calling for Goffman's award to be revoked if she doesn't make her dissertation publicly available. On a related note, I'm surprised that no one has tried to find her undergraduate honors thesis from UPenn. A quick search of the library database yielded no results. But typically these should be available if they have been successfully defended.