Many people nowadays have gotten ahead in their professional – chiefly academic – careers by claiming to be Native American, or black, or Latinx. But the fakery in academe goes beyond faked identities. It also extends to university research. A recent scandal arose over the “racism studies” by Florida State criminology professor Eric Stewart. More on this can be found here: “Fraudulent Studies Withdrawn as Professor Is Caught Faking the Racism Narrative,” by Matt Margolis, PJ Media, April 13, 2023:
…It turns out that years of racism studies by Florida State University criminology professor Eric Stewart have been determined to be fraudulent, forcing him to leave his cushy $190,000-per-year job.
Six of Stewart’s studies have been retracted. Stewart himself has been on leave from the college since mid-March because a new investigation into his work drew attention to years of allegations that he manipulated sample sizes to produce results that made America appear more racist.
Stewart was first accused of falsifying data by Justin Pickett, a University of Albany criminology professor who co-authored a report on race and crime with Stewart in 2011,” reports the New York Post. “In the study, the criminologists were looking to test if the public was increasingly demanding longer sentences for black and Hispanic criminals as those minority populations grew. In his 2019 complaint, Pickett said that their findings showed no relationship between the growth of minority groups and the severity of criminal sentences handed to them.”
Stewart was first accused of falsifying data by someone very familiar with his studies. This is Professor Justin Pickett, who had been Stewart’s collaborator on a study about race and crime that appeared in 2011. In that report, written jointly by Stewart and Pickett, they had concluded in a draft that there was “no relationship between the growth of minority groups” and “the severity of criminal sentences,” thus disproving the original hypothesis that the larger those minority populations – blacks and Hispanics – grew, the more severe the sentences meted out. But when the paper appeared in published form, it concluded the very opposite of what was in the draft version. Stewart had made great efforts to manipulate and distort, and even fake, the data, to prove the opposite: that there was “a relationship between the growth in the black and Hispanic populations” and the severity of the punishments imposed on black and Hispanic defendants. Pickett, his coauthor on the 2011 paper, knew where Stewart’s manipulation of the data was to be found and he shared his concerns with the journal Criminologist, where the article had appeared, asking that they retract the paper.
Pickett claimed that the published paper contained manipulated data so as to suggest a correlation, despite contradictory results. He stated that sample sizes were expanded, and data was cherry-picked to achieve the desired outcome. Pickett’s complaint and four other complaints about papers by Stewart were disregarded by the committee at Florida State University, where Stewart was a highly paid tenured professor. Two members of the committee had co-authored papers with Stewart and were ill-inclined to question their former collaborator’s use of data and conclusions on studies he had conducted. The committee found insufficient proof of fraud and ended the investigation. However, a new allegation surfaced in June 2020, shortly after Stewart accused Pickett of damaging his academic reputation.
What is truly unsettling about this is that a study that disproves systemic racism should be a cause for celebration. But Stewart’s prioritization of narrative over truth has me [Matt Margolis, author of the piece in PJ Media] wondering how many of his fraudulent studies were referenced by policymakers and those in positions of influence to further fuel the “racist America” agenda. And how many other studies with falsified data are out there?
No one denies that racism still exists, but why do those who insist it’s a bigger problem than it really is need to falsify data or stage bogus hate crimes in order to generate evidence?
When Pickett made his detailed charges about the data manipulation by Stewart in the 2011 paper they had coauthored, Stewart did not even try to answer those charges by defending his collection and analysis of the data. Instead, he responded with charges of racism; he described his treatment by Pickett as a “lynching.”
Stewart had a $190,000-a-year position at FSU, but suddenly disappeared from the university in the middle of March, before the academic year ended, after working there for 16 years.
Pickett noted that the original, untampered data showed that there was no relationship between the growth of minority groups and the severity of criminal sentences handed to them. Stewart then changed the data so that it “proved” what he wanted it to prove. Pickett, alarmed at this violation of scholarly standards, published his own paper pointing out issues in their joint paper, some of which he said were introduced just before publication.
“The data were also altered – intentionally or unintentionally – in other ways, and those alterations produced the article’s main findings,” Pickett wrote.
Among other inaccuracies, he pointed out that in their article, it was claimed that their study was based on 1,184 respondents, but that there were actually only 500. It also hand-picked data from 91 counties as opposed to including the full 326.
Pickett’s detailed letter to the editors of the journal Criminology listed eight ways that Stewart had manipulated and altered the data, both by falsely claiming there had been many more respondents than had actually been the case, and by removing data that contradicted what he was hellbent on concluding.
“There is only one possible conclusion from reanalyzing the data I have: 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,” wrote Pickett. He adds that when he brought the issues to Stewart’s attention and asked for specific data, he was ignored for four months.
In mid-March, after six of his papers had had to be retracted, Eric Stewart no longer bothered to declare himself the victim of an academic lynching. Panic stricken, he realized there was nothing to do but flee. And that’s what he did. He quit his job and disappeared from the campus. No one has apparently seen him since. He won’t be returning to Florida State, and I don’t think there is any other university that at this point would hire him. His permanent removal from academic life is a fitting end to his fakery. Perhaps Professor Pickett could be lured away from the University of Albany to fill the sudden vacancy in the criminology department at sunny Florida State.
Paul Poole says
Looks like Eric Stewart is still listed on the FSU website as an active professor.
Walter Schumm says
I think his dismissal is still under appeal. He has enough legit publications, I think his lawyers could argue that he should be demoted to associate professor rather than being let go.
somehistory says
Students can be failed and expelled for dishonesty. This creep, stewart, should have been expelled and made to repay his salary from the years when he falsified data.
he is rather stupid too, to call being found out as a liar a ‘lynching.” Lynching hurts a lot more, and one can’t just flee and hide when the going gets tough. The end result is a world apart.
Hoi Polloi says
The Racism Industrial Complex must be perpetuated at all cost.
Walter Schumm says
You might want to see my published article in the journal Publications that shows how bad the fraud was. I have submitted a follow-up paper that shows that upwards of 90% of his quantitative papers were probably made up.
Schneider George says
I wonder if Stewart was using the racist math or the non-racist math to achieve his results.
Walter Schumm says
He was actually using hand calculated math (see article in Publications).