#retraction

[deebrisbyfish]

Sometimes, when an idea occurs to me and I want to get it drawn and posted that day, I'll make strips like these where I rough them out and do loose digital pencils. There's something very fun and immediate to these that I find to be creatively satisfying to do on occasion. And, in this case, the reasoning is well explained in the strip itself. I... may NEVER get the hang of Daylight Savings Time.

[comicbookcovers]

Quittin' time, part 3

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Retraction Watch

Published: July 20, 2023

Florida State University last week terminated a criminology professor accused of research misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned, capping a years-long, highly publicized saga the school says has caused almost “catastrophic” damage to its standing.

In a termination letter obtained by Retraction Watch, the university accused the former professor, Eric A. Stewart, of “extreme negligence and incompetence.” It also asserted that, due to Stewart’s actions, “decades of research” once believed “to be at the forefront of” criminology has “been shown to contain numerous erroneous and false narratives.”

“The details of problematic data management, false results, and the numerous publication retractions have negatively affected the discipline on a national level,” FSU Provost James J. Clark wrote in the letter, dated July 13. 

Clark added that the debacle had also affected recruitment of faculty and students and caused the university’s researchers to worry about their chances of getting papers into top journals.

“The damage to the standing of the University and, in particular, the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice and its faculty approaches the catastrophic and may be unalterable,” he wrote.

Stewart, whose work focuses on racial disparities in the criminal justice system, could not be reached for comments. He was hired by FSU in 2007.

The misconduct allegations date back to 2019, when one of Stewart’s coauthors, Justin Pickett, suggested in emails to the university that Stewart had “falsified data and findings.” Pickett grew suspicious of his former collaborator following an email from a “John Smith” outlining problems with five of Stewart’s papers. A 27-page article that Pickett posted to a preprint server later that year detailed his concerns about one of the studies, as we reported at the time. 

All of the five papers, along with a sixth, have since been retracted. 

The decision to terminate Stewart, which he called “arbitrary and capricious” in a long response (with an appendix) to FSU earlier this year, comes after years of bitter feuding. As revealed by dozens of internal documents obtained by Retraction Watch and made public here for the first time, the researcher vehemently defended himself against his critics. At one point he told colleagues in an email (p. 88) that “Justin Pickett has essentially lynched me and my academic character, thereby severely impacting my career, credibility, and professional advancement” — a particularly stinging charge, given that Stewart is Black.

On another occasion, Stewart claimed that the “baseless allegations” against him “serve as a means of harassment, as well as waste time and resources.”

To investigate, FSU conducted three preliminary probes over as many years. While Stewart’s work contained several problems and statistical mistakes, the probes found no clear signs of research misconduct. 

The inquiry committees all recommended against doing a full investigation, a decision that has drawn criticism from Pickett and others. Pickett also argues that the university ignored its own conflict-of-interest rules by appointing two of Stewart’s coauthors to one of the inquiry committees.

While the termination letter stops short of accusing Stewart of research fraud, it does point out that he has not been exonerated:

The misconduct claims were not rejected, but in all inquiries into the matter, there was found to be insufficient evidence to support a full investigation into research misconduct which is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results. 

Reached for comments, Amy Farnum-Patronis, director of News and Digital Communications at FSU, said: “The termination letter speaks for itself. We have nothing to add.”

One problem facing the inquiry committees was that Stewart’s raw data had gone missing. Allegedly, he handed over three data files to the university in July 2019. But the school since lost the files, as one of its lawyers explained in an email this year (p. 90ff) to the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Inspector General, which investigates grant fraud.

However, Stewart later admitted that he had not handed over the raw data to the university as he had not been asked to do so (p. 28)

In addition, the hard drive on which Stewart kept his data crashed in December 2019, he explained in an investigatory interview last year (p. 96ff). He had no backup, he said.

“A data file that is ‘lost’ while it is under investigation is particularly peculiar,” Thomas G. Blomberg, dean of the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at FSU, wrote in a series of comments on Stewart’s statements (p. 110ff). “Three outcomes are potentially possible. First, the data could have been lost (least likely explanation). Second, the data may have never existed. Third, the data existed in some format but were destroyed to prevent others from accessing them.”

Blomberg, who did not respond to a request for comment, also questioned what Stewart described as his “pretty extensive” training in statistics:

If his training in statistical analysis was extensive, then there is no way that he would have created the errors that he did in his studies. Calculating the standard deviation, for example, is something that is taught in middle and high schools and yet he repeatedly miscalculated and/or misreported the standard deviation.

In an overview of Stewart’s research, Blomberg listed 16 studies (p. 106) published over 17 years that all had indicators of “impossible results and erroneous statistics”: 

These were no errors that could be explained away by human error or analytical decisions as they were detected across multiple studies using different data and that employed a variety of methodological and statistical approaches. In short, the problematic indicators were found to be pervasive in his studies, were not confined to just a single problematic indicator, and were detected across a lengthy stretch of his academic career providing compelling documentation of flagrant research incompetence.

Some of these studies are linked to federal grants, according to one of the inquiry reports. That probe concluded that, based on available evidence, “there is little reason to believe the anomalous [standard deviations] are due to research misconduct as opposed to honest error.”

In March, after Stewart received a letter describing the university’s intent to terminate him and he was put on administrative leave, he requested that his case be reviewed by a university peer panel. 

Of the three members of that panel, only one supported his termination. Another recommended less severe punishment, while the third found disciplinary action unwarranted.

In the termination letter, Clark said Stewart had “distorted some important facts” in the information he had shared with the panel, which could have swayed some members in his favor.

In conclusion, Clark wrote, “I do not see how you can teach our students to be ethical researchers or how the results of future research projects conducted by you could be deemed as trustworthy. Therefore, I am proceeding with a termination.”

==

“Justin Pickett has essentially lynched me and my academic character, thereby severely impacting my career, credibility, and professional advancement”

DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

Suddenly Stewart becomes the victim - "how dare you point out my long-term academic fraud?" - with implied racism.

Considering there was federal funding involved, this could even involve legal action.

[random-xpressions]

I must patiently wait till the tidal waves of the moon draws her to my shore...

Random Xpressions

[rustbeltjessie]

Mira Rosenthal, from “The Palinode’s Ethics of Questioning” (Poetry Northwest)

It’s important to differentiate between the kind of retraction or disavowal a palinode performs and the more generalized notion of holding contradictory opinions simultaneously, made the darling of poets by Whitman himself: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” Or, my preferred darling by Czesław Miłosz:

The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will

Yes, we are changeable and fickle and nuanced and haunted, bound to contradict ourselves. But the palinode is more pointed. It has specific work to do.

The palinode’s “I once said…” relates nicely to the broader refutation of poems rooted in “They once said…” Take, for example, W. H. Auden’s “I Am Not a Camera,” which repudiates his earlier poetry as well as Christopher Isherwood’s statement: “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.” Kyle Dargan makes a similar move in his “Palinode, Once Removed” that begins with an epigraph from Richard Wright he wants to refute: “The Negro is America’s metaphor.” And Wisława Szymborska’s poetry often arises out of a preconceived idea turned inside out, such as in her poem “Lot’s Wife” (trans. Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak) that gives us the wife’s perspective. “They say I looked back out of curiosity,” the poem beings. “But I could have had other reasons.”

[watmalik]

Deadpool: I take it all back...the Honda Odyssey fucks hard! *taunts, signalling with two fingers for wolverine to get closer* Too bad you don’t, needle-dick.

Wolverine: Oh, we’re just getting started, bub.

Me:

[jeffs-gamebox]

Retraction: I Done Goofed.

I got mixed up on Creative Commons Licenses the other day. I apologize. The proper license for SRD 5.1 is in fact, CC-BY-4.0.

In my targeted rage against Wizards of the Coast, I quoted the wrong Creative Commons License. The correct License is CC-BY-4.0. Thanks Pteryx on Mastodon for pointing out my error. I’ll watch for things like this more closely going forward. Taken from Wizards of the Coast. Link HERE The article where I misquoted the license by saying it is Share Alike (aka CC-BY-SA) is linked here. There are…

[unsupervisedrat]

RETRACTED NO SOURCE WAS FOUND WITHIN 2 DAYS

i'm glad everyone in the world is so stupid

[elektroskopik]

Dear abusive, sexist POS researcher, I hope that all of your research papers get retracted

[richdadpoor]

CoinDesk Retracts Essays Critical of Chainalysis, Justin Sun

Popular crypto industry news outlet CoinDesk has retracted a pair of opinion articles criticizing the founder of the cryptocurrency TRON and the head of US investigations at Chainalysis, a company specializing in financial analysis and forensics of crypto. CoinDesk claims the articles were removed because they contained “personal attacks” lodged against the two, but one of the authors tells…

[havithreatendub4]

OBOZREVATEL issued a #retraction on the #rumor of Johnny Depp going to #Russia

#Jeanne Du Barry #July 2023 #Stephen Deuters

[knockknockwhosthereartistism]

I see your “Bill and Ford go to therapy together” and I raise you “Ford being the therapist”

[neotrances]

multiple reputable news sources are retracting their statements on supposed rapes and beheadings happening bc of lack of evidence along with literal civilians coming forward and saying it didn’t happen, keep in mind the palestinians have no allies rn, no control in the media, and almost no support from major countries so this isn’t them “sneaking” in propaganda, ur being lied to about people in a literal concentration camp who now have their access to water electricity and food shut off, don’t fall for it

[tenth-sentence]

Even in captivity, the sex of animals is often mistaken, and the consequent "amending" of mating or courtship activity from heterosexual to homosexual sometimes results in elaborate retractions, revisions, and reinterpretations.

"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - Bruce Bagemihl

[midnightfrappe]

i like how he acts scared/shocked and tries to stop you from eating the crafts only to quickly look away and shake his head in disapproval