Dive Brief:

• Two Temple University professors are at the center of an ethics investigation following complaints about their lack of disclosure of funding sources for academic research on prisons.
• Critics of the professors, Simon Hakim and Erwin Blackstone, say they failed to properly disclose that their prison research — which concludes that private prisons save money without sacrificing quality — was funded by the private prison industry.
• The professors and their advocates say their disclosure of funding was adequate, and that disclosure standards for working papers like theirs are less strict than standards for final articles.

Dive Insight:

At issue is whether the professors properly disclosed their ties to the private prison industry in op-ed pieces and a working paper. The ethics investigation is apparently based on complaints by Alex Friedmann, managing editor of Prison Legal News magazine and associate director of an advocacy group for inmates. Friedmann has also criticized the study for not taking into account external or eventual costs from private prisons, such as higher recidivism rates, Insider Higher Ed reported.