You're right they're just reporting their findings, and their stated methodology is to look through the top N words and pick the one they like best. They dug all the way down to the 39th word to find asian:engineer => black:? "killer", when the actual top two associations were "operator" and "jockey" (which also indicate bias, but not the kind the authors wanted). They dug to the 53rd word to find christian:conservative => muslim:? "regressive", when top results were "moderate" and "conservative. It may not be fraudulent, but the methodology is highly motivated, subjective, and introduces more bias than it purports to find.
Yeah I can't disagree with this. I think it's typical to present the highlights of your work though. In this case, the issue seems to be "why do the authors consider 'black:killer' to be a highlight"? It might be racist but it's not academically fraudulent (a strong statement) in my view.
