For Business School’s No. 1 Ranking, Big Asterisk Looms

When a study found that the business school at the University of Missouri at Kansas City boasted the world’s No. 1 program in innovation-management research, officials from the chancellor on down basked publicly in the news.

Now an investigation by The Kansas City Star has cast substantial doubt on that glowing result.

The two authors of the 2011 paper, who were visiting scholars at the school when they did the study, apparently structured it to ensure the top ranking, the newspaper reports. Administrators at the school became aware of objections to the study’s methodology, the Star adds.

“I just think this paper is fatally flawed,” said Ivan Oransky, of the blog Retraction Watch.

A likely motive for the effort, the newspaper says, was to meet the expectations of Henry W. Bloch, the benefactor for whom the school is named.

The university told the Star that it has confidence in the study, which was published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management.

Clarification (7/28/2014, 1 p.m.): This article has been changed to avoid implications that officials of the business school were aware, while the data were being compiled, of how the study was conducted, and that the study was done by the school itself.