(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) A Florida State University criminology professor, Eric Stewart, has been accused of fabricating data to make racism seem more common and widespread.
His fabrication is so extensive that six of his studies–going back to 2006–have been retracted, and he has left his former post at FSU, the Daily Mail reported.
Stewart denied criticisms of fabrication in the past, but after yet another investigation into his research, it seems that he and the university have decided to part ways, ending his 16-year tenure.
He was called out specifically for a 2011 study by colleague Justin Pickett, another criminologist at the University of Albany with whom he had co-authored that paper.
The two studied whether or not there was a connection between the increase in minority populations and an increase in prison sentences for crimes committed. Stewart concluded that there was indeed a correlation.
According to Pickett, however, the real data collected in the investigation showed no relation between the spike in minority populations and longer criminal sentences for minorities, but Stewart tampered with the evidence to support his thesis.
“The data were also altered–intentionally or unintentionally–in other ways, and those alterations produced the article’s main findings,” Pickett wrote in a subsequent paper.
After reviewing the tampered data, Pickett concluded that “the sample was not just duplicated in the analysis for the published article; the data were also altered, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and those alterations produced the article’s main findings.”
Pickett also noted that “there’s a huge monetary incentive to falsify data and there’s no accountability. If you do this, the probability you’ll get caught is so, so low.”
In response, Stewart, who is white, claimed that Pickett “lynched me and my academic character,” presumably comparing himself to a 19th-century black lynching victim.
