The Possible Falsification Dilemma

“Susan” was serving on her first faculty search committee; her philosophy was “keep your head low and nod politely” while she learned the ins and outs of the process from the inside.

One promising application caught her eye because the applicant listed a Ph.D. from one of her alma mater institutions, a Ph.D. that was completed only a few years after Susan had gotten her M.A.

“Oh,” she thought, “they’ve started a doctoral program! I didn’t know that.” The more she thought about it, the odder that it seemed that she had not heard about it. The entire reason Susan had gone elsewhere to complete her own doctorate was because her M.A. institution did not offer a Ph.D. in her field.

She went to the Internet and looked at the specific department’s Web site and found no mention of a Ph.D. program. She searched the online catalog of the applicant’s current institution and saw the same résumé citation, “Ph.D., Small State University.”

In violation of her “head low” policy, she decided to show this discrepancy to the search-committee chair. Together, they decided to “kick” the application from the pool, but further decided neither to contact the applicant with the reason nor to contact the applicant’s current institution about the discrepancy.

Were they right in their decisions? What might they have done differently?