In 1993, Marilyn Harvey, who at the time was Ranjit Chandra’s research assistant, came forward to say that a paper by Chandra reported research that didn’t happen. Memorial University conducted an investigation that failed to confirm her (very courageous) allegation. About that investigation, Ranjit Chandra’s Wikipedia entry says the following:
The vice-presidents were unable to secure the data, and, as a consequence, were unable to verify research fraud conclusively.
Huh? Harvey’s claim was that the data didn’t exist!
This sentence was written by Peter S. Morris, Director of Public Affairs at Memorial. I emailed Morris to try to find out how it could make sense. Presumably it made sense to Morris. Alas, Morris would not explain it. He did say that to prove research fraud — in Chandra’s case, the fraud of making up data — you need the data. You read that correctly: To prove that someone has made up data you need to have the data, Morris asserted. He wouldn’t explain that, either.
Memorial’s behavior did great harm to Marilyn Harvey, as you can read in the complaint filed with her lawsuit.
Seth,
I defer to you entirely on the merits of the case, but surely you can’t be surprised that the public information officer, when encountering a hostile question from someone he doesn’t even know, will respond guardedly. Consider the alternative: do you really think he’s gonna say: “D’oh! You’re right–Chandra is a fraud and my bosses are incompetent.” Making judgments like this isn’t really part of his job description.
I might also say that it’s hardly worth your time to be pursuing this, but I won’t say that, because then I’d have to conclude it’s hardly worth my time to write this comment, etc etc. I guess I will suggest that we talk on the phone more often since that’s probably more efficient than blog commenting as a way of communicating!
Respectfully, it’s worth it. An innocent person got reamed. The media will call the university’s PIO (Morris) to “find out what happened.” Morris will talk up Chandra’s resume, limn Harvey as a crackpot out for money, and that will be what the reporter runs with. Unless the reporter actually decides to spend another 30 seconds on the story and run it through Google…then he’ll get the real story from Seth.
What’s right is right.
Harvey was not only innocent, she was trying to make the world a better place in a very difficult way — it was obviously dangerous going up against someone as powerful as Chandra. Who was also her boss. Because of the Memorial administration’s horrible behavior, she paid a huge price.
The Memorial administration could have decided that they made a mistake; they have chosen not to. I was curious to see if there was anything reasonable to be said in their defense. I gave Morris the opportunity to defend Memorial; he failed to say anything reasonable.