A criminology professor at Florida State University suddenly left his $190,000-a-year position and had his research papers retracted after being accused of fudging data to make racism seem more common.
Criminology Professor Eric Stewart has had six of his research papers retracted, some of which date as far back as 2006, amid allegations that he fabricated their results by selectively altering sample sizes.
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These allegations have not come all at once. Each study that he’s retracted has been independently discovered to be fraudulent. Stewart has denied the allegations; after the sixth incident with a sixth study in 2020, an FSU committee reconvened to address his record and findings. Since last month, Stewart has been absent, marking the end of a years-long investigation and, likely, his career.
Stewart was first accused of falsifying data in 2019 by Justing Pickett, who co-authored a 2011 study with Stewart.
The study tested if racial prejudice led to a desire for harsher sentencing of racial minorities. Stewart’s published finding supported this idea, claiming that as black and Hispanic populations grew, so did the appetite for discriminatory sentencing. However, Pickett discovered this was not the case.
Pickett detailed the various issues with the study’s sample size construction, often counting individuals twice and underrepresenting the number of counties respondents were spread across.
“Subsequently, I examined my limited files and found evidence that we: 1) included hundreds of duplicates, 2) underreported the number of counties, and 3) somehow added another 316 respondents right before publication (and over a year after the survey was conducted) without changing nearly any of the reported statistic…… The article reports 1,184 respondents, but actually there are 500. 2) The article reports 91 counties, but actually there are 326. 3”
Pickett went so far as to say that disparities of this magnitude are mathematically “impossible,” implying intentional alteration.
In light of this, the initial conclusions of the study cannot be trusted. If anything, the opposite is likely true.
Aside from sample size issues, Pickett noted that “data were also altered—intentionally or unintentionally—in other ways, and those alterations produced the article’s main findings.”
When Pickett brought this to Stewart’s attention, he and his co-authors stalled handing over the raw data for roughly four months, claiming that not having time to explain himself would be unfair.
Two of Stewarts’s co-authors sat on the three-person inquiry board. They refused to ask for the data itself, violating FSU’s conflict of interest policy and skipping steps in the proceedings, leading to Pickett’s efforts.
Stewart has played the victim, suggesting the inquiries are race-motivated without sufficient evidence.
Ironic.
“For some reason, data thugs are after me. It seems very personal,” Mr. Stewart said in a series of texts. “All of the blame is being directed at me.”
In an email, he even told school administrators that Pickett “essentially lynched me and my academic character,” an allegation takes on greater seriousness because Mr. Stewart is black.
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The committee did not move forward with an investigation despite Pickett’s analysis of the evidence, who was convinced that his “findings suggest that the five articles were likely fraudulent, several co-authors acted with negligence bordering on complicity after learning about the data irregularities, and the editors violated the ethical standards advanced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).”
But, with the retraction of a sixth article in 2020, the committee finally began investigating. They did not come up short, as Stewart went missing in March, and a replacement is now looming as the investigation nears an end.
But Pickett also revealed that the issue is deeper, systemic, and not limited to Stewart.
“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. There’s too much incentive to fake data and too little oversight.”
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