Hi, I'm Matt Turner, the editor in chief of business at Insider. Welcome back to Insider Today's Sunday edition, a roundup of some of our top stories.
On the agenda today: |
- A Harvard professor was accused of faking data — and some people say it highlights a bigger problem in behavioral science.
- Morgan Stanley's next CEO is likely to be Ted Pick, a hard-charging "deal junkie."
- Big Pharma rakes in $215 billion a year in America —and pays almost no taxes.
- Stack Overflow's decline shows the future of free online data in an AI world.
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But first: You could get $40,000 to build a tiny home in your backyard. — Matt Turner |
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DISPATCH Tiny homes are a big deal |
Arantza Pena Popo/Insider |
Ever considered putting up a tiny home in your backyard? The most recent California budget includes a $50 million fund to encourage homeowners to build accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, in their backyard. The guidelines for this new ADU grant program aren't set, but a previous program in the state handed out grants up to $40,000. It's easy to look at these tiny homes as undersized gimmicks, but there are real use cases. Take Joyce Higashi, a San Jose homeowner who built an ADU in her backyard. She now rents out her 500-square-foot abode for $3,000 per month to traveling nurses. Katie Sandoval Clark, a non-profit exec, split the cost of a retirement home with an ADU in the backyard with her mother. Maggie and John Randolph run a senior-living center in New Hampshire, and are building a tiny home village so employees can afford to live where they work. Others are leaning on tiny homes to house homeless veterans. You can even buy ADUs on Amazon. The program in California is another example of cities and states using novel approaches to encourage construction of smaller houses. Denver changed its zoning laws to make ADU construction easier, allowing two story units in some parts of the city. Austin's city council approved a resolution that cuts the minimum lot size for a single-family home by half. The housing market is a huge source of economic anxiety. Tiny homes won't fix that, but innovation in zoning and construction, taken with recent data pointing to a surge in residential construction, offer reasons for hope. |
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THIS WEEK'S TOP READS Harvard professor's empire crumbles |
Karl Maasdam; Lawrence D. Thornton/Archive Photos/Getty Images; Rebecca Zisser/Insider |
Francesca Gino met many of the requirements to be considered a superstar in behavioral science. Best-selling books? Check. Thousands of social-media followers? Check. Tenure at Harvard? Check. On the back of this success, she built a million-dollar empire.
But that empire is crumbling. Gino was placed on administrative leave following an investigation into allegations that she falsified research data. Now she's suing Harvard and several bloggers who accused her of fraud for $25 million, saying they "worked together to destroy my career and reputation." Researchers in behavioral science told Insider that Gino's fall from grace highlighted a wider problem in the field: a clout-chasing culture that pits professors against each other in a mad dash to publish the next "Freakonomics." Scholars are now eying whose downfall could be next. Read more. Also read: |
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Morgan Stanley succession |
Ted Pick. Arantza Pena Popo/Insider |
Who's next in line to succeed James Gorman and run one of the largest financial firms in the world? Even five years ago, that was a question with a straightforward answer: Ted Pick. The Morgan Stanley copresident has spent his entire career at the bank — and he's come to represent the firm's legacy businesses and perhaps even old-school Wall Street itself, Insider's Hayley Cuccinello writes. But while Pick remains the frontrunner, his fellow copresident, Andy Saperstein, represents a real threat to his bid for the throne. Our full profile on Ted Pick. |
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Big Pharma's big tax dodge |
Something isn't adding up with Big Pharma. Americans pay the highest prices in the world, so it stands to reason the US's big pharmaceutical companies should earn far more in the US than they earn elsewhere.
But the corporate disclosures of America's large pharmaceutical companies indicate they made very little in profits in the US — in some cases they reported making nothing at all. Of their $100 billion combined profit, a paltry $10 billion came from their US operations. What's going on?
As Brad Setser and Tess Turner write for Insider: "Tax avoidance, of course." We explored how they do it. |
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Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar. Stack Overflow |
OpenAI released the world's most powerful AI model in March. A few weeks later, Stack Overflow's CEO spotted a worrying trend: traffic to the Q&A website for software coders had begun to slip. Welcome to the future of the internet in an AI world. Online communities like Stack Overflow and Wikipedia thrived as hubs for people to share information freely. Now they're being pillaged by tech companies prowling for human data to train their large language models. And with less incentive for people to go online and answer questions, the human data that AI needs for training will wither — and the quality of these models could degrade. Inside Stack Overflow's plan for survival. |
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THIS WEEK'S QUOTE "Almost anything goes — I don't think I've ever seen anyone wear a suit or tie." |
— Jasmine Hyman, 23, a commerce producer and writer in New York City, on the dress code at her office. From Doc Martens to pocket squares, see what 11 Gen Z workers are wearing to the office this summer. |
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ICYMI More of this week's top reads: |
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P.S. We're working behind the scenes to revamp Insider Today. Got some thoughts you want to share? Fill out our quick, five-question survey. |
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