Nepotism is a widespread problem in Italian academic institutions, according to a statistical analysis of professors' last names. The study — which examined a database of more than 61,000 tenured professors from 94 institutions across 370 subdisciplines — found that the diversity of last names was lower than would be expected from unbiased hirings (S. Allesina PLoS ONE 6, e21160; 2011). Study author Stefano Allesina, an Italian ecologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, says the index probably underestimates the incidence of nepotism because it identifies the problem only in father–child and sibling relationships. Allesina says he accounted for unrelated people with the same last names.
