Several good historians have reviewed Marshall work, and there is no way he could have interviewed the survey participants he claimed. Whether others since then have bought into his misconclusions does not alter that he fabricated his research.
VFW
"There is no incontrovertible evidence that Marshall ever asked any infantrymen whether they had fired their weapons at the enemy in any interview conducted with any rifle company. That covers those who fought in Europe, and the very small number of prompt after-action interviews we know that he did conduct in the Pacific. None of which necessarily demonstrate his alleged discovery of the ratio of fire.
This means there is no hard evidence for Marshall’s ratio of fire. Marshall seems to have invented his systematic debriefings of those 400-600 rifle companies...Research revealed that on Makin Island in the Pacific,
Marshall’s after-action interviews showed that green troops did not fail to fire, they fired too much...
the news that Marshall had invented his statistics has not stopped historians and journalists from quoting him, and them. Since 1989, however, some military historians noted that Marshall’s ratio of fire is at best doubtful. They include Michael D. Doubler, John C. McManus, Russell W. Glenn and James B. McPherson (writing on the American Civil War)."
That Marshall's research was a complete fabrication (and in fact impossible with his time constraints) was also expressed to me by Hubert van Tuyll, history chair at ASU and author of
Castles, Battles, and Bombs, Feeding the Bear, American's Strategic Future, and
The Netherlands and World War I.
The point is, that American training focusing on high volumes of fire was based on a flawed assumption based on concocted research and errant social theory.
John