Research deception: Harvard’s chief diversity officer and her husband, and they are not alone
Claudine Gay has gotten the most press recently, but there are more allegations of plagiarism at Harvard in the DEI area:
Harvard University’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own husband—according to a complaint filed with the university on Monday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis.
The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston’s thin publication record. In her 2009 dissertation, submitted to the University of Michigan, Charleston quotes or paraphrases nearly a dozen scholars without proper attribution, the complaint alleges. And in her sole peer-reviewed journal article—coauthored with her husband, LaVar Charleston, in 2014—the couple recycle much of a 2012 study published by LaVar Charleston, the deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, framing the old material as new research.
Through that sleight of hand, Sherri Ann Charleston effectively took credit for her husband’s work. The 2014 paper, which was also coauthored with Jerlando Jackson, now the dean of Michigan State University’s College of Education, and appeared in the Journal of Negro Education, has the same methods, findings, and description of survey subjects as the 2012 study, which involved interviews with black computer science students and was first published by the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.
So this involves academics at three universities: Harvard, the University of Wisconsin, and Michigan State. Computer programs can check this sort of thing these days much better than in the past, and my guess is that various sorts of deceptive practices are rampant, and not just in DEI-related areas. For example, in the world of science:
Allegations of research fakery at a leading cancer center have turned a spotlight on scientific integrity and the amateur sleuths uncovering image manipulation in published research.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, announced Jan. 22 it’s requesting retractions and corrections of scientific papers after a British blogger flagged problems in early January.
The blogger, 32-year-old Sholto David, of Pontypridd, Wales, is a scientist-sleuth who detects cut-and-paste image manipulation in published scientific papers. …
California microbiologist Elisabeth Bik, 57, has been sleuthing for a decade. Based on her work, scientific journals have retracted 1,133 articles, corrected 1,017 others and printed 153 expressions of concern, according to a spreadsheet where she tracks what happens after she reports problems. …
… She published an analysis in the American Society for Microbiology in 2016: Of more than 20,000 peer-reviewed papers, nearly 4% had image problems, about half where the manipulation seemed intentional.
It’s not a new phenomenon. For example, Piltdown man was an early example of outright fraud in physical anthropology.
NOTE: I suppose the current Steyn/Mann “hockey stick” defamation trial is relevant. This is a fairly comprehensive discussion of the trial so far.
Research assistants and the lazy unscrupulous scholars who rely on them are prone to plagiarization. This probably accounts for the appearance of plagiarized material in books by scholars such as Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kerns Goodwin, and Alex Haley, among (probably) many others.
I’ve written and published numerous works of historical nonfiction. I did, and still do,all my own research and writing. I’m very very careful and scrupulous in this regard. No one ever helped me — I never used research assistants — and as a result it always took a lot of time and effort to write a non-fiction history book or paper. But I never plagiarized anything. I’m proud of that, and I have nothing but disdain and contempt for Ambrose, Goodwin, and Haley, and their ilk.
In case you were wondering, the pressure group which matters most to the Democratic Party and to the social segments who use the Democratic Party as their electoral vehicle is delineated here.
==
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2024/01/29/auto-draft-224-n608349
==
The pressure group has no name. A descriptive one would be Blacks-Who-Cannot-Pass-Skills-and-Aptitudes-Tests.
I’m more interested in the Steyn/Mann trial. I really want to see what comes out.
That sad thing is that there are black American scholars who are genuinely scholars. This kind of thing might make people look askance at the real thing, since there are fakes n the news.
Also, the academic “publish or perish” environment needs to take some of the blame. You can be knowledgeable in your field and a great teacher, but if you don’t publish enough papers, you can’t keep your job at many institutions.
If you’re tenured, you don’t perish, whether you publish or not.
It’s a real cushy gig.
“That sad thing is that there are black American scholars who are genuinely scholars”
Kate,
The same goes for any black physician under age 50 or so. There’s some good ones, but frankly I’ll never go to one, as one has to assume they got through totally based on their race. Now airline pilots also. DIE is literally going to do that to innocent people.
IrishOtter,
Well, you may not perish, but you will languish for the rest of your career at the assoc. level.
It’s all about money. The great majority in the University system worship Mammon. Proven by their betrayal of academic rigor.
you will languish for the rest of your career at the assoc. level.
“Languish,” you say?
“Please don’t throw me into the briar patch.”
Kate,
One can be a prolific publisher, even incorporating others research and words; just cite it and attribute it appropriately.
I went to a mediocre High School and even there we were thoroughly instructed on how to properly cite and attribute. At my University, prior to setting foot in a classroom, all Freshman attended an orientation that included instruction on the school’s no tolerance policy regarding plagiarism and we all were required to sign a contract acknowledging our understanding of this, and that expulsion was the likely result if caught violating the policy.
There is no excuse for any College level instructor or researcher not knowing how to properly cite, or failing to properly cite.
Don @ 4:59pm,
Me too! There is the saying, “A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client,” but I’m holding out hope Mark Steyn can pull it off. I will be severely disappointed if he doesn’t make a monkey’s uncle out of Mann in cross examination.
Steyn is such a polymath and has such a quick wit I think he might be able to manage his own legal representation. Especially with the D.C. court’s wheels of justice grinding so exceedingly slow that Steyn has had an inordinate (and inhumane) number of years to prepare.
@ Rufus > “Especially with the D.C. court’s wheels of justice grinding so exceedingly slow that Steyn has had an inordinate (and inhumane) number of years to prepare.”
(a) the case should have been thrown out of court day 1.
(b) IMO the judge knows Mann would lose any kind of fair trial and deliberately put off the showdown in hopes Steyn would go away (or die, as he almost did).
“There is no excuse…”
Oh yes there is: REPARATIONS.
Today.
Tomorrow.
Forever.
All these plagiarists.
All these liars.
But Gay DOES have a point.
Biden is white.
Fauci is white.
Comey is white.
Brennan is white.
Clapper is white.
Hillary is white.
WJC is white.
Obama is HALF-white.
Newsom is white.
Etc. (is white).
The question is: If Biden wants to destroy the country and make a ton of money while doing so, WHY CAN’T PEOPLE OF COLOR?
The question is: If Biden can plagiarize, WHY CAN’T PEOPLE OF COLOR?
The question is: If Biden and his criminal family can be TOTALLY LAWLESS, why can’t POC be allowed to F&*# Up, to steal, to lie, to PLAGIARIZE?
Yer looking for lies? Yer looking for deception? I’ll give you deception (on a scale bigger than can be imagined):
“Who will hold Dr Fauci to account?”—
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/01/30/who-will-hold-dr-fauci-to-account/
H/T Powerline blog.
File under: It’s the zeitgeist, baby…(to protect “OUR Democracy”….)
Another manifestation of “reparations”:
‘ Monitor’s Report In Fraud Case Contains “Factual Inaccuracies”, Is “Disingenuous” Says Trump Attorney’ —
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/monitors-report-fraud-case-contains-factual-inaccuracies-disingenuous-says-trump-attorney
There are those who cannot be criticized.
Who MUST NOT be criticized.
Because…RACISM!!!
…and so therefore can get away with EVERYTHING.
Barry Meislin @ 4:24am,
I know you’re being facetious, but I actually enjoy news stories where POC are getting in on the grift. Gay, Fani Willis, Cori Busch… I think it’s wonderful! Truly.
One often hears* people insisting men have to step aside, white men, whites, Europeans, westerners… And then everything will be all better.
Of course not! It’s the system that is the problem. The system is broken. You can’t swap in people with different extrinsic characteristics and expect different results.
Maybe if we work through this period with women and POC and everyone sees there is no shortage of non-white males anxious, willing and able to exploit the current, disastrous system for their personal gain we can finally get to the point where people are ready to dismantle this idiotic system.
*Will Ferrell is one of the most recent examples of this inanity:
https://youtu.be/tI0moZ6rkwk?si=I5jf533DDd5AF0J9 (It’s worth getting through his brief merchandise push at the beginning to get to the 7 minute mark when he talks about women running his church meetings!)
that orwell line about two legs bad, four legs good or backwards,
Marion Barry was perhaps the apex of this inanity, bowers is the worst until the next turtle, how many terrible mayors in Atlanta, or Chicago, or Philadelphia, the last one shows a little common sense, I mean Tyler Perrys dispeptic twin brother,
I can’t take him seriously,
we thought Villaraigosa was bad, well hold my malt liquor, here comes Karen Bass, people had an option for sane leadership, but they chose poorly, or my paisan, Gascon, I would say he was possessed by the wandering coma
Fidel if it’s clear enough, but he’s been a (redacted) for a long time, Alex Padilla is more of a cipher then Kamala then Barbara Boxer, Pete Wilson was the least worst of the bunch
“deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion”
That there is even a position with that title gives some idea of the many sub-levels of rot in that field.
Ah Rufus, is America a great country, or what?!
let me consult the magic eightball,
seriously it used to be one, may be again, but there are so many forces working in concert to destroy it, in media in finance in manufacturing as well as the goverment
Barry, the current Administration, Congresscritters, K Street crooks and heads of the DOJ, Military and CIA make Mencken look like a Pollyanna.
Well, something has to give…
But what?
Wuwt has Steyn’ s opening statement. Fabulous.
I have long had a problem with peer reviewing papers-at least in the hard sciences. Reviewing takes time, time the reviewer is not compensated for, at least to my understanding. So what motivation is there to do a good and thorough analysis? And if there are experiments involved who pays for them? All of this argues against peer reviewing. If anyone has information about this please let me know. I do know there is motivation for those who are working on the same subject to review papers and experiments, but that can also make the reviews suspect. If anyone argues integrity I’ll just start laughing.
I’d heard, some years ago, that there are about 22,000 dissertations on Shakespeare.
You’d need a random-word generator with no adjectives to avoid matching some existing sentence. And it’s not likely there are any original thoughts, new views of an old view, left in this universe.
Considering how much work is “out there” in any given subject, absent a genuine discovery of the heretofore genuinely unknown, even the most deliberate effort at originality might echo some other issues.
Probably astronomy and paleoanthropology offer the possibility of discovering the genuinely new. But that’s a struggle, too. See Pattison, “Fossil Men”.
I’d think that, instead of plagiarizing something, quoting and citing it as a way of displaying one’s mad research skills would get you more points and less trouble. Then explain why it fits your thinking. Which it would, anyway, if it were close enough to be worth plagiarizing.
Richard: “Then explain why it fits your thinking.”
Ah, there is the rub… there isn’t any thinking going on. 🙂
I’d heard, some years ago, that there are about 22,000 dissertations on Shakespeare.
–Richard Aubrey
I have a pet theory that academics are, in part, seduced by postmodernism and critical studies because those fields provide opportunities for academics to say something that hasn’t been said many times already and probably better.
Likewise modern art.
Today M., the retired art prof I’ve gotten to know, showed up in my cafe. We had the usual great chat. He started as an avant hippie artist in the 60s New York scene. But he was also a serious thinker and still is — aomewhere close to 80.
We were discussing the decline of literature. He recalled an occasion he met with a student as her faculty advisor. He discovered she had read “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” for her English 102 class. She wasn’t even required to finish the book.
M. kept his dismay to himself, He had seen the writing on the wall for the decline in standards and the increase in forced conformity. He was happy to retire.
@ Richard Aubrey – thanks for the heads up to WUWT.
Here is a direct link to Steyn’s statement, and it truly is a doozy.
Whether the jury will find it — along with the evidence — persuasive is questionable; they are in a DC court, with jurors who have no trouble believing six impossible things before breakfast.
https://www.steynonline.com/14039/opening-statement
Here’s a great Glenn Loury note, first Black Econ professor at Harvard, on how he feels about AA
https://twitter.com/GlennLoury/status/1752790419262312628
On rampant plagiarism, all in the past, “What difference does it make, anyway?”*
They write BS read only by pro-BSers and nobody really cares, not nearly as much as they care about race, sex, orientation. And that the “research” mostly supports the desired narrative.
The luxury beliefs of so many elite are public lies. “Marriage is optional” but most elite are married. “Defund the police” while living in the most crime-free areas, often with private security. “Lower Black IQs have little or no genetic basis” — but most know this is a lie, tho any white who says it is a supremacist.
So many lies from so many elites so often.
Again appreciation to Neo for her truth orientation.
*My memory of Hillary’s defense of lying.
Dominance and Submission is the music in the background, apropos. Blue Oyster Cult.