The ethics of lying, cheating, and stealing with data: A case study

I’ve been following with mild interest the recent news stories on the lawbreaking at the Steven A. Cohen hedge fund, for the silly reason that I gave a paid lecture for them a few years ago. I wasn’t thinking too hard about whether they would be using my wonderful statistical ideas to be more effective at insider trading . . .

Recently Paul Alper sent me an email pointing out that one of the lawbreakers involved is named Gilman—perhaps he’s related to me? Everyone is related to everyone else but I don’t know my relation to this particular guy. I actually have an aunt whose last name is Gilman. Here’s how it happened. A few years after my father was born (but before the birth of his sister), my grandfather changed his name from Gelman to Gilman. The story was that he was tired of people always calling him Gilman so he just changed his name. I’d call that a true commitment to the descriptive approach to linguistics. On the minus side, he gave my father’s older sister Lutheria, middle name Burbank (after the famous agriculturalist). She just always went by Lucy.

Getting back to the hedge fund scandal, Alper writes:

The article is fascinating on many levels: clinical trials, insider trading, failings of the medical profession, pernicious influence of money, need for recognition, mistakes of the elderly.

It does seem like the guy was overpaid. Murray Gell-Mann is probably getting $258,000 a year too, but I think he’s worth it.

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