Accusations Of Fraud Research Articles

Gianfrancesco Corradino dall’Aglio and Two Manuscripts of Catullus That He Did Not Invent

Abstract A new edition of the poems of Catullus was published in 1738 in Venice by a young scholar named Gianfrancesco Corradino dall’Aglio. The title and preface promised a revolutionary edition that would surpass all its predecessors and restore the authentic text of Catullus with the help of an excellent early manuscript discovered in Rome. Corradino dall’Aglio’s grandiose claims attracted criticism and he soon came to be accused of having invented his manuscript sources. This article shows that the accusations go back to a misunderstanding by Scipione Maffei, who accused the editor in 1749 of having invented a liber Maffei. In fact the references to that manuscript stem from Achilles Statius’ commentary of 1566. More recently, that manuscript has been identified by Berthold Ullman with BAV, Ott. lat. 1829, that is, the famous codex Romanus of Catullus. But from the late eighteenth century onwards, the accusations of fraud directed against Corradino dall’Aglio centered on the Roman manuscript that is mentioned in his title and preface. This article shows that that manuscript cannot be identified with any surviving manuscript of Catullus, but due to several factors there is no reason to believe that it was invented by Corradino dall’Aglio. The article closes with an examination of the editorial practice of the young scholar, who turns out to have been a conservative editor of Catullus: he often advocated the reading of the manuscripts against the conjectures of earlier editors.

Sources of the Planetary Theories in Fahhād’s ̔Alā ̓ī zīj: Solving a Medieval Case of Intellectual Fraud

According to the anonymous 13th-century Shāmil zīj, Abu ̓l-wafā ̓ al- Būzjānī’s (10 June 940–after 25 May 997) planetary theories were adopted in Ibn al- Fahhād’s 12th-century ̔Alā ̓ī zīj without acknowledgement. This puzzling case of plagiarism, noted by the late Prof. E. S. Kennedy in 1956, is solved by means of a graphical approach, together with some astronomical analysis, in order to (A) visualize the perplexing network of the development of planetary theories in medieval Islam and (B) distinguish the types of relations existing between them. The paper describes the new strategies invented in the Islamic period to modify the available planetary theories in order to reconcile them with the observations, called istidrāk and i ̔tibār, which were different from the standard methods set forth in the Almagest. The accusations of fraud are shown to be unfounded. It is shown that Ibn al-Fahhād’s solar and lunar theories and his precessional rate of 1°/66y are taken from the Mumtaḥan tradition; his theories of Jupiter and Saturn were the results of his modifications of ̔Abd al-Raḥmān al-Khāzinī’s corresponding theories in the Mu ̔tabar zīj (1121 ce) on the basis of the results he achieved from his observations; his theory of Mars was constructed on the basis of his observations, independent of any other available theory; and his theory of Venus is taken directly and faithfully from Khāzinī.

A Fractal View on Losses Attributable to Scams in the Market for Initial Coin Offerings

Analogous to traditional Initial Public Offerings (IPO), Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) represent an emerging channel through which firms can access external funding using the new evolving digital financial market for tokens. However, while ICOs represent an alternative funding channel for startups, the ICO market is essentially unregulated, which creates opportunities for fraud such as ‘ICO scams’. This paper addresses the question as to what the expected losses attributable to scams in the market for ICOs are. Using web scrapping techniques, all ICOs launched between August 2014 and December 2019 were first screened for accusations of fraud, before a novel methodological framework was employed to understand the true costs associated with scams. The findings reveal that 56.80% of ICOs were subject to scams, corresponding to 65.80% of the relevant market capitalization, estimated at USD 15.38 billion. Moreover, it is found that the loss distribution due to scam ICOs is governed by a fractal process. Specifically, the power law exponent for the distribution governing losses due to scam ICOs suggests that the second moment is not defined, rendering the sample mean unstable. Taken together, the results in this paper provide evidence that we have not yet seen the largest loss in the market for ICOs and are supportive of an urgent need for ICO market regulations from governments and regulatory agencies.

Do Shifts in Late-Counted Votes Signal Fraud? Evidence from Bolivia

Shifts in late-counted votes often spark unfounded claims of electoral fraud. These claims exploit the early-count mirage: the expedient illusion that, absent fraud, an early advantage will persist. We characterize the early-count mirage and evaluate associated fraud claims in four disputed elections, focusing on the case of Bolivia in 2019. When late-counted votes delivered a narrow victory for the incumbent, fraud accusations followed—with dramatic political consequences. But we find that the vote-share trend can be explained without invoking fraud and that the allegedly suspicious shift in late-counted votes was actually an artifact of methodological and coding errors on the part of electoral observers. We document similar patterns in the other three cases. The details are context specific, but the core insights are general: time trends from legitimate vote-counting processes are far more varied—and errors in influential analysis far more frequent—than election skeptics allege.

Claiming Union Widowhood: Race, Respectability, and Poverty in the Post-Emancipation South

Brandi Clay Brimmer's Claiming Union Widowhood examines how African American military widows fought to receive federal pensions in the decades after the American Civil War. In her deeply researched and persuasively argued book, Brimmer offers a grassroots view of how Black women asserted their claims to citizenship, civil rights, and “worthy widowhood” in the face of persistent racial and sexual prejudice (1).Brimmer builds on the works of historians who have documented how the Civil War pension system foreshadowed the social welfare programs of the twentieth century. Originating in 1862, with substantial revisions in 1879 and 1890, the pension system commanded up to 45 percent of the federal budget at its apex. Although popular with Union veterans, the pension remained politically contentious throughout the late nineteenth century. As Brimmer notes, though, the federal pension system was not designed with emancipated African Americans in mind. Denied access to legal marriage in slavery, Black widows faced challenges documenting and legitimizing their marital relationships. They also often lacked access to the kind of medical records necessary to document their husband's war wounds. Moreover, Black conceptions of marriage and family did not always fit into the Pension Bureau's narrow definitions. Brimmer argues that African Americans saw marriage as a hallmark of freedom and key component of their claims to citizenship, yet also continued to embrace a malleable understanding of marriage and family, shaped by the brutality of slavery and by the need to mitigate the impact of poverty in freedom. The federal pension provided only very modest payments, but for poor widows, they offered a necessary lifeline.Brimmer's study draws on a close reading of thirteen hundred pension files from Craven County, North Carolina. Occupied by Union forces under Ambrose Burnside in 1862, the city of New Bern and the adjacent community of James City (which grew out of a wartime refugee camp) became sites of intense Black politics and community activism during and after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, it was the epicenter of the “Black Second” congressional district, which elected four African Americans to seven terms until a violent white supremacist campaign in 1898 intimidated and disenfranchised most Black voters. This political and social community provides an important backdrop for the Brimmer's examination of Black military widows.Brimmer's approach allows for the experience of a few individual Black women to come into focus. Using their pension records and other records, Brimmer illuminates the lives of Charlotte Banks, Mary Lee, Louisa Powers, and Fanny Whitney. These women (and dozens others like them) struggled to persuade pension bureaucrats about the legitimacy of their claims and their worthiness to receive modest pension payments. To help them navigate the complex bureaucracy, Black women in New Bern turned to a pair of pension professionals, Edward W. Carpenter and Frederick C. Douglass. Carpenter, a white lawyer, and Douglass, the son of a US Colored Troops widow, helped them craft applications to meet the Pension Bureau's requirements and file appeals when their applicants were denied or their pensions withdrawn. Brimmer emphasizes the role of the broader community in the pension process: friends, neighbors, and veterans provided important testimony to document the widows’ family relationships, their husbands’ military service, and their worthiness for a pension.Black widows faced constant threats that their pensions would be taken away. Fears that the system would be abused dominated the political conversation over the federal pension throughout its history, and Black pensioners faced more than their fair share of fraud accusations. Brimmer documents extensive surveillance of Black women in New Bern by pension agents. If they remarried, had children after the death of their soldier husband, or engaged in behavior that the Pension Bureau officials deemed immoral, they risked losing their pension. Black military widows fought vigorously to preserve their pensions, turning to the broader community to support their claims.In the book's conclusion, Brimmer provocatively draws connections between the struggles of Black women to secure pensions in the late nineteenth century and those faced by military widows and welfare rights activists in the twentieth century. She argues that persistent “racialized gender inequalities and class biases that stigmatized black women” have shaped federal policy and limited Black women's civil rights and citizenship (213).Claiming Union Widowhood is an important contribution that speaks to several significant historiographical conversations. Historians interested in the long history of emancipation, the African American family, the Black military experience, and Civil War veterans would benefit from reading this excellent study. It sheds new light on the relationship between race, gender, and poverty in Reconstruction and afterward that should inspire future research.

Sentencing social psychology: Scientific deviance and the diffusion of statistical rules

This article investigates the inquiries and sanctions that followed accusations of fraud directed toward Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel in the early 2010s. Relying on the public reports published by the investigative committees, as well as on interviews conducted with committee members and Stapel’s former students and collaborators, we propose to analyze how this case facilitated the diffusion, in social psychology, of statistical rules that were hitherto unenforced in this field. The Stapel case thus illustrates the regulative role played by statistics in the contemporary scientific field while also demonstrating the appeal of legal modes of dealing with misconduct when it comes to the treatment of scientific deviance. More generally, this article shows how the study of scientific deviance can serve to bring to light symbolic hierarchies that are habitually kept tacit, thus serving as a magnifying glass for the scientific field’s inner processes.

Participation of chiefs in decentralised local governance in Ghana

This article examines the lack of participation of chiefs in Ghana’s decentralised local governance. After analysing data from interviews with 280 respondents, personal observations and relevant literature, the study found that chiefs are core members of neither Ghana’s district assemblies (DAs) nor their subsidiary structures, and have no formal role in local development. Chiefs’ formal exclusion from the current local government system has been attributed to the idea that the chieftaincy institution is at variance with democratic decentralisation. Also, the protracted communal conflicts that have devastated many communities, and the disputes, accusations of fraud and litigation which have characterised land sales and acquisitions in the country, have their roots in chieftaincy rivalries. Nevertheless, given that chieftaincy is entrenched in Ghanaian society, chiefs’ closeness and familiarity with rural people in their area, and their cooperation with DA members to aid the performance of the DAs (albeit with some challenges), the study concludes there is a need to re-examine the current decentralisation policy to enable chiefs’ participation. Options proposed include reserving for chiefs the 30% of DA seats currently nominated by the president; appointing paramount chiefs as ceremonial heads of the DAs with the right of address; or ceding some of the non-representation functions of elected DA members to chiefs in order to support local democracy and development.

PENGARUH KOMPETENSI, INTEGRITAS, OBJEKTIVITAS DAN ETIKA PEMERIKSAAN TERHADAP KUALITAS AUDIT

Audit quality is the result obtained from the audit process in the government and private sectors, especially the inspectorate. Audits relate to the accountability carried out by each institution, both private and government. Accusations of fraud against the auditor profession in the community in conducting audit results process can determine quality audit result. quality audit is carried out to assess that the implementation of the government or the exercise of reign operational activities has been done accourdingly to applicable rules. Science purpose to specify the affect of auditor competence, integrity, objectivity and audit ethics on audit quality. The population in this study were all internal auditors at the Inspectorate of Tabanan Regency and Gianyar Regency, Bali Province and samole by using the saturated sample method or census. The sample method used, namely saturated sample or census with 62 respondents. Using data analysis techniques this multiple linear regression. Based on research result, I can see that overall competency test, integrity, objectivity and audit ethics have a positive effect on the quality of auditors' audits.

Framing the utility and potential pitfalls of relationship and identity DNA testing across United States immigration contexts.

SummaryGenetic information is increasingly used at US border entry points, but the use of DNA in immigration contexts is not new. DNA testing for verification of identity or relationships for visa and asylum petitions began in the 1980s. Long-standing applications demonstrate both the utility and pitfalls of DNA testing in immigration contexts. Some of these pitfalls are shared with health-related contexts of DNA testing, but the power of government officials to deny immigration benefits, separate families, or make accusations of fraud among a vulnerable population elevates the potential harms, including stigmatization, discrimination, and coerced consent. We conducted semi-structured interviews with professional stakeholders on their understandings of the process of DNA testing, opinions on the role of DNA testing in immigration, and experiences with DNA applications in immigration. From the 22 interviews, we sourced 21 case examples involving DNA testing and supplemented these with 10 case examples provided by the study team. The 31 case examples capture instances of DNA testing for relationship or identity across five immigration contexts. Using the case examples, we developed three overarching utilities and six overarching pitfalls of DNA testing that apply across these immigration contexts. Our framework allows long-standing applications of DNA testing in immigration to inform stakeholders’ approaches to applications in new contexts. As the use of DNA data in immigration contexts expands, its implementation should recognize the utility of DNA data to both migrants and government while guarding against pitfalls that could undermine the human rights and dignity of a vulnerable population.

The Art of Mercato: Buying City-States in Renaissance Tuscany

Abstract Italian communes from 1300–1600 bought and sold numerous towns and castles from Crete (enfeoffed to Venice in 1205) to Arezzo (offered to Florence in 1384) to Tabarka (given as mortgage to a Genoese family in 1540). Despite the popularity of this custom, however, existing scholarship claims Renaissance cities expanded territorially through violent conquests that centralized government finances and promoted militant imperialist discourses. Drawing on case studies of the Florentine purchase of two cities — Lucca (1342) and Pisa (1405) — this article reveals how the buyers of Renaissance cities instead drew upon a vast, little-studied network of private creditors to pay for new lands. The vendibility of space, moreover, helped foster a commercialized ideology of empire. Diarists heralded their city’s superior commerce. Civic leaders tied the good of their communes to keeping its honour and faith with city-sellers. And polemicists stained opponents with accusations of fraud while demoting cities such as Pisa and Lucca to mere merchandise. Buying cities thus allowed Renaissance merchant elites to demonstrate not only their city’s superior material wealth, but also mercantile prowess — their ability to bargain for a good deal (buon mercato).

Las elecciones sindicales de 1982

Las relaciones entre los dos grandes sindicatos en España fluctuaron durante la transición democrática en función de varios factores políticos y de diversas estrategias sindicales, algunas de ellas fundamentadas en la aceptación o el rechazo de los pactos sociales. En el año 1982, la competencia por el voto obrero en las elecciones sindicales fue otro factor que enturbió las relaciones entre UGT y CCOO, dando lugar a una agria polémica sobre las fechas de cómputo electoral, con acusaciones de fraude, y con la negativa de CCOO de reconocer la victoria de UGT. La salida de este ambiente de confrontación fue una sorprendente apuesta de CCOO por la unidad sindical.

Electoral Rulings and Public Trust in African Courts and Elections

On the African continent, where elections are often surrounded by accusations of fraud and manipulation, legal avenues for challenging elections may enhance election integrity and trust in political institutions. Court rulings on electoral petitions have consequences for the distribution of power, but how do they shape public opinion? We theorize and study the way in which court rulings in relation to parliamentary election petitions shape public perceptions of election and judicial legitimacy. Using survey data from the 2016 Zambian election, our results suggest that opposition voters rate quality of elections lower when courts nullify elections. However, judicial legitimacy seems unaffected even for voters in constituencies where the courts have shown independence vis a vis the executive and nulli' fied parliamentary elections won by the governing party.

Inside and Outside the London Stock Exchange: Stockbrokers and Speculation in Late Victorian Britain

The nineteenth-century growth of the London Stock Exchange and the development of the market for stocks and shares are familiar topics of study. This article provides an alternative perspective on them by decentering the London Stock Exchange and focusing instead on the activities of “outside stockbrokers”—those who operated outside the Stock Exchange and its rules. Often regarded as peripheral, these brokers were in fact instrumental in promoting investment and speculation to a mass market. The article examines their innovative methods, and seeks to explain why they were so successful, despite persistent—and sometimes justifiable—accusations of fraud. It suggests how perspectives from the history of consumer society provide fresh insights into the market for financial products. And it underlines the importance of looking outside formal markets by arguing that focusing on “fringe” markets can help scholars to rethink boundaries, relations, and practices in the history of capitalism.

Do Shifts in Late-Counted Votes Signal Fraud? Evidence From Bolivia

Surprising trends in late-counted votes can spark conflict. When late-counted votes led to a narrow incumbent victory in Bolivia last year, fraud accusations followed—with dramatic political consequences. We study the pro-incumbent shift in vote share as the tally progressed, finding that we can explain it without invoking fraud. Two observable characteristics, rurality and region, account for most of the trend. And what looked like a late-breaking surge in the incumbent’s vote share—which electoral observers presented as evidence of foul play—was actually an artifact of methodological and coding errors. Our findings underscore the importance of documenting innocuous explanations for differences between early- and late-counted votes.

Hostile, Benevolent, and Ambivalent Ableism: Contemporary Manifestations

AbstractDisabled people experience ableism in many forms from the seemingly benevolent to the blatantly hostile, and more ambivalent or mixed forms (e.g., paternalistic/condescending and jealous/envy). Rooted in historic and contemporary frameworks, this study explores the experiences of an international sample of disabled people (N =185) using six open‐ended questions to assess some of the manifestations of ableism documented in the literature. We found that experiences with paternalistic forms of ableism were among the most pervasive followed by inspirational, hostile, envious, and dehumanizing forms while fears of becoming disabled or “catching” disability were less commonly reported. Furthermore, some forms of ableism (e.g., infantilization, unwanted help, and invasions of privacy) were more common among those with visible impairments whereas invalidation and accusations of fraud were more common among those with less apparent conditions. Implications for policies related to hate crimes, health care, and media representations are discussed along with directions for future research.

On Principals and Agency: Reassembling Trust in Indian Ocean Commerce

AbstractThe role of trust in long-distance trade has been a topic of inquiry and debate among economists, sociologists, and historians. Much of this literature hinges on the social, legal, and economic structures that undergird, if not obviate, the concept of trust. This article draws on assemblage theory to suggest that trust in Indian Ocean trade is better understood as a key component of a commercial assemblage. Laws or social mores are not external to but rather enrolled within an assemblage constituted by people, commodities, profits, and “feelings,” as well as judicial systems. This conceptualization of trust is demonstrated through a close analysis of one trading relationship between a Somali merchant and an Indian merchant based in Aden and trading in the Idrisi Emirate of Asir. They established a partnership to exploit elevated prices in Asir during the First World War. After several months of trading, accusations of fraud and embezzling unraveled the partnership and entangled both men in years of legal battles. By tracing the changing socio-material assemblage of this partnership, the article demonstrates how trust should be understood as a dynamic and contingent factor in the operation of commercial agency.

Fathers as Frauds: On the Criminalization of Fathers in the Parental Leave for Fathers Program in Israel

The criminalization of poverty, the process in which recipients of social security benefits are construed as frauds, is a well-documented phenomenon. Two aspects of this process are the use of stereotypes as a tool in fraud accusations and the targeting of marginalized populations. In this article, I wish to expand the gendered discussion of this phenomenon to men by examining the process of the construction of Israeli fathers wishing to take parental leave as welfare frauds. I will claim that this process is based on gendered assumptions that deny the possibility of fathers wishing to care for their children. The program that allows fathers to share parental leave experiences a high reported rate of fraud by fathers claiming parental leave benefits. However, analysis shows that the evidence does not support these reports and that claims on fraud and abuse are the result of a tendentious interpretation of the data by bureaucrats. This tendentiousness is based, I argue, on implicit assumptions about the nature of men. As this case shows, criminalization of benefit recipients can be targeted at nonmarginalized or even privileged groups. This sheds new light both on the criminalization process and on the workings of the gendered power structure.

Elan Corporation Turnaround

The case begins with newly appointed chairman and interim CEO Garo Armen dwelling on the significant issues that Elan Corporation, an Irish pharmaceutical company, faces. Its share price has plummeted 96% after accusations of accounting fraud and the discontinuation of an important clinical trial due to the drug's severe side effects. As a result, Elan faces insolvency. About $2 billion in debt that could no longer be satisfied in stock will soon mature, and there are questions regarding the company's structure and various operating concerns. Armen is also concerned about the ethical consequences of the company's failing and thus not being able to develop potentially life-saving medicines. Armen must decide what the nature of Elan should be moving forward and what strategy it should adopt. The operational and financial issues discussed in the case are complicated by Elan's status as an Irish company with significant international operations. The case closes with Armen reflecting on the decisions he has made—which students should critique and suggest alternatives to—as well as an open decision on choosing a successor CEO.1. Crafting a vision and strategy for a newly streamlined organization and implementation 2. Balancing the complexities of an international corporation in a turnaround situation 3. Quantitatively identifying the probability, advantages, and disadvantages of bankruptcy 4. Succession planning decision making 5. Responding to fraud accusations 6. Managing a distressed workforce and retaining key employees

An Epigenetic Perspective on the Midwife Toad Experiments of Paul Kammerer (1880-1926).

Paul Kammerer was the most outstanding neo-Lamarckian experimentalist of the early 20th century. He reported spectacular results in the midwife toad, including crosses of environmentally modified toads with normal toads, where acquired traits were inherited in Mendelian fashion. Accusations of fraud generated a great scandal, ending with Kammerer's suicide. Controversy reignited in the 1970s, when journalist Arthur Koestler argued against these accusations. Since then, others have argued that Kammerer's results, even if real, were not groundbreaking and could be explained by somatic plasticity, inadvertent selection, or conventional genetics. More recently, epigenetics has uncovered mechanisms by which inheritance can respond directly to environmental change, inviting a reanalysis of Kammerer's descriptions. Previous arguments for mere somatic plasticity have ignored the description of experiments showing heritable germ line modification. Alleged inadvertent selection associated with egg mortality can be discarded, since mortality decreased in a single generation, upon repeated exposures. The challenging implications did not escape the attention of Kammerer's noted contemporary, William Bateson, but he reacted with disbelief, thus encouraging fraud accusations. Nowadays, formerly puzzling phenomena can be explained by epigenetic mechanisms. Importantly, Kammerer described parent-of-origin effects, an effect of parental sex on dominance. Epigenetic mechanisms underlie these effects in genomic imprinting and experiments of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. In the early 20th century, researchers had no reason to link them with the inheritance of acquired traits. Thus, the parent-of-origin effects in Kammerer's experiments specifically suggest authenticity. Ultimate proof should come from renewed experimentation. To encourage further research, we present a model of possible epigenetic mechanisms.

Haeckel and levels of development

This paper differentiates between four levels of behavioural development (according to Schmidt, 1972): phylogeny, anthropogeny, ontogeny and actualgeny. This categorization helps to provide an understanding of multidisciplinary developmental science. Haeckel’s recapitulation theory states that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, linking evolution theory and ontogeny. However, Haeckel’s depictions of embryonal phases, which were intended to prove that phylogeny is repeated during embryonal development, are not tenable—at least not in the sense that he proposed, namely, that phylogeny is the mechanical cause of ontogeny. Accusations of fraud concerning Haeckel’s depictions and others are discussed and given a nuanced reading. However, the conclusion must still be that Haeckel’s recapitulation theory is not tenable The theory was, however, the main catalyst behind the creation of developmental psychology as an academic discipline. Haeckel and his recapitulation theory are clearly present in the works of founding fathers such as Hall, Baldwin and Piaget. It is not an exaggeration to state that developmental psychology could not have come into existence without it. Recapitulation theory connected developmental psychology with biology and the observation methods leading to baby biographies; and it offered an excuse for the gentlemen who conducted research in the nineteenth century to study children: for the children were the source of learning about phylogeny and evolution. Nowadays recapitulation theory does not play a role in developmental science. Comparisons of levels of behavioural development mainly take place for heuristic reasons, as in the ethology-developmental psychology relationship (De Waal, 1982, 2005, 2013).