JACKSONVILLE, FL – Florida State University Provost James Clark sent Dr. Eric Stewart a letter on July 13, 2023 which detailed why the university was firing him after 16 years as a Professor of Criminology at the FSU College of Criminology and Criminal Justice. The four-and-a-half-page letter explained that the reasoning was based on “extreme negligence, incompetence and false results,” according to the New York Post.
The termination was the culmination of a multi-year internal probe into research being done by Dr. Stewart regarding race and its impact in how policing and criminal sentencing is carried out. It turns out, Stewart was fabricating the statistics of these studies to paint white people in America in an unfavorable light. In essence, he stated that public lynching of blacks led whites to prefer longer sentences for black and Hispanic suspects.
The actions of the professor were so egregious that the Provost wrote, “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."
All totaled, doctored findings led to the retraction of six different published reports dating back many years. One such report, entitled “Ethnic Threat and Social Control: Examining Public Support for Judicial Use of Ethnicity in Punishment,” was retracted from the academic journal Criminology in October 2019.
According to the website The College Fix, Stewart argued “that as black and Hispanic populations grew, the surrounding white populations wanted more racially discriminatory sentencing.”
But Justin Pickett, co-author of the report and former graduate assistant to Dr. Stewart, said that the research simply did not back up that argument. While Stewart claimed to have found a “mistake in the data,” Pickett has gone on the record that this was not as simple as researcher error or a calculational problem.
Per the College Fix article: “Scientific fraud occurs all too frequently….and I believe it is the most likely explanation for the data irregularities in the five retracted articles,” Pickett wrote March 2020 in an Econ Journal Watch article, 'The Stewart Retractions: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis.' The retraction notices say honest error, not fraud, is the explanation. Fortunately, if that is true, Dr. Stewart could easily prove it: recreate the original sample that produces the findings in Johnson et al. (2011) and then publicly explain how he did it.”
“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,” criminologist Pickett told the Florida Standard. “There’s too much incentive to fake data and too little oversight.”
Pickett turned out to be the whistleblower on Stewart's manipulative tactics.
But, as part of this investigative process, Stewart alleges that he is the victim, saying in part that Pickett “essentially lynched me and my academic character.”
The Provost’s letter pointed to the skewed research: “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,” Clark wrote.
Clark also stated that the retraction of the six reports led to the university questioning the rest of the work previously done by Stewart.
Stewart joined the Criminology Department in 2007. Prior to his firing, he was being paid $190,000 annually.
The termination was the culmination of a multi-year internal probe into research being done by Dr. Stewart regarding race and its impact in how policing and criminal sentencing is carried out. It turns out, Stewart was fabricating the statistics of these studies to paint white people in America in an unfavorable light. In essence, he stated that public lynching of blacks led whites to prefer longer sentences for black and Hispanic suspects.
The actions of the professor were so egregious that the Provost wrote, “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."
All totaled, doctored findings led to the retraction of six different published reports dating back many years. One such report, entitled “Ethnic Threat and Social Control: Examining Public Support for Judicial Use of Ethnicity in Punishment,” was retracted from the academic journal Criminology in October 2019.
According to the website The College Fix, Stewart argued “that as black and Hispanic populations grew, the surrounding white populations wanted more racially discriminatory sentencing.”
But Justin Pickett, co-author of the report and former graduate assistant to Dr. Stewart, said that the research simply did not back up that argument. While Stewart claimed to have found a “mistake in the data,” Pickett has gone on the record that this was not as simple as researcher error or a calculational problem.
Per the College Fix article: “Scientific fraud occurs all too frequently….and I believe it is the most likely explanation for the data irregularities in the five retracted articles,” Pickett wrote March 2020 in an Econ Journal Watch article, 'The Stewart Retractions: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis.' The retraction notices say honest error, not fraud, is the explanation. Fortunately, if that is true, Dr. Stewart could easily prove it: recreate the original sample that produces the findings in Johnson et al. (2011) and then publicly explain how he did it.”
“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,” criminologist Pickett told the Florida Standard. “There’s too much incentive to fake data and too little oversight.”
Pickett turned out to be the whistleblower on Stewart's manipulative tactics.
But, as part of this investigative process, Stewart alleges that he is the victim, saying in part that Pickett “essentially lynched me and my academic character.”
The Provost’s letter pointed to the skewed research: “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,” Clark wrote.
Clark also stated that the retraction of the six reports led to the university questioning the rest of the work previously done by Stewart.
Stewart joined the Criminology Department in 2007. Prior to his firing, he was being paid $190,000 annually.
For corrections or revisions, click here.
The opinions reflected in this article are not necessarily the opinions of LET
Comments