I am sorry, but I must chime in on this particular statement. As an actual student of public policy (with a BS in Policy Analysis -yes, I know there is an ironic joke there- and a MPA in Public Management and Public Finance come May), this is a completely ridiculous accusation. It is not fraud to consciously and publicly exclude a particular variable from your research as this report apparently did (based on the news article). Fraud in research would be manipulating data, falsifying a methodology, etc. Had the authors purposely led people to assume they did or did not include a variable then you might have a case.
There are perfectly valid reasons for not including tourists in an analysis. For one, these riders come from outside the local accounting domain thus pay none of the state taxes marked for HSR. (Conversely, with federal subsidies, people from outside the accounting domain are contributing tax dollars for no receivable service.) Including tourists does little to justify that a stable population base will support ridership numbers. Comparing Chicago to Orlando, for example, will show that Chicago has a larger permanent ridership base that can provide stable numbers and subsequently user fee revenue. Tourists are also much more cyclical and tend to be more elastic to changes in the economy than resident populations. While migration will occur when a local economy dips, it will not match the decline in tourism (especially if the national economy also declined). Similarly the rebound in the local economy is unlikely to have a direct effect on non-local tourism (except in a case of total urban renewal like Detroit may undergo). I could go on.
Certainly simply justifying the exclusion does not make a study "sound" or "good," but it is not fraud. Every study has bias - methodological and/or natural. The challenge for policy makers and citizens is to rationally evaluate the findings of the study. There may be portions of the analysis that seem incorrect or inadequate. The very same issue you claim is fraud (not including tourism) could be equally easily overstated to justify a project. To some extent, research operates within a bubble that is bust the second it touches the real world. That does not mean, however, that it is not useful or should be cast aside. I applaud the Fed and Florida for evaluating multiple proposals.
