Latest news with #SophiePark
Vox
3 days ago
- Business
- Vox
Harvard just fired a tenured professor for the first time in 80 years. Good.
is a senior writer at Future Perfect, Vox's effective altruism-inspired section on the world's biggest challenges. She explores wide-ranging topics like climate change, artificial intelligence, vaccine development, and factory farms, and also writes the Future Perfect newsletter. The Harvard University crest on the Baker Library of the Harvard Business School in Boston on May 27. Sophie Park/Bloomberg via Getty Images In the summer of 2023, I wrote about a shocking scandal at Harvard Business School: Star professor Francesca Gino had been accused of falsifying data in four of her published papers, with whispers there was falsification in others, too. A series of posts on Data Colada, a blog that focuses on research integrity, documented Gino's apparent brazen data manipulation, which involved clearly changing study data to better support her hypotheses. Future Perfect Explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. This was a major accusation against a researcher at the top of her field, but Gino's denials were unconvincing. She didn't have a good explanation for what had gone wrong, asserting that maybe a research assistant had done it, even though she was the only author listed across all four of the falsified studies. Harvard put her on unpaid administrative leave and barred her from campus. The cherry on top? Gino's main academic area of study was honesty in business. As I wrote at the time, my read of the evidence was that Gino had most likely committed fraud. That impression was only reinforced by her subsequent lawsuit against Harvard and the Data Colada authors. Gino complained that she'd been defamed and that Harvard hadn't followed the right investigation process, but she didn't offer any convincing explanation of how she'd ended up putting her name to paper after paper with fake data. This week, almost two years after the news first broke, the process has reached its resolution: Gino was stripped of tenure, the first time Harvard has essentially fired a tenured professor in at least 80 years. (Her defamation lawsuit against the bloggers who found the data manipulation was dismissed last year.) What we do right and wrong when it comes to scientific fraud Harvard is in the news right now for its war with the Trump administration, which has sent a series of escalating demands to the university, canceled billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts, and is now blocking the university from enrolling international students, all in an apparent attempt to force the university to conform to MAGA's ideological demands. Stripping a celebrity professor of tenure might not seem like the best look at a moment when Harvard is in an existential struggle for its right to exist as an independent academic institution. But the Gino situation, which long predates the conflict with Trump, shouldn't be interpreted solely through the lens of that fight. Scientific fraud is a real problem, one that is chillingly common across academia. But far from putting the university in a bad light, Harvard's handling of the Gino case has actually been unusually good, even though it still underscores just how much further academia has to go to ensure scientific fraud becomes rare and is reliably caught and punished. There are two parts to fraud response: catching it and punishing it. Academia clearly isn't very good at the first part. The peer-review process that all meaningful research undergoes tends to start from the default assumption that data in a reviewed paper is real, and instead focuses on whether the paper represents a meaningful advance and is correctly positioned with respect to other research. Almost no reviewer is going back to check to see if what is described in a paper actually happened. Fraud, therefore, is often caught only when other researchers actively try to replicate a result or take a close look at the data. Science watchdogs who find these fraud cases tell me that we need a strong expectation that data be made public — which makes it much harder to fake — as well as a scientific culture that embraces replications. (Given the premiums journals put on novelty in research and the supreme importance of publishing for academic careers, there's been little motivation for scientists to pursue replication.). It is these watchdogs, not anyone at Harvard or in the peer-review process, who caught the discrepancies that ultimately sunk Gino. Crime and no punishment Even when fraud is caught, academia too often fails to properly punish it. When third-party investigators bring a concern to the attention of a university, it's been unusual for the responsible party to actually face consequences. One of Gino's co-authors on one of the retracted papers was Dan Ariely, a star professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. He, too, has been credibly accused of falsifying data: For example, he published one study that he claimed took place at UCLA with the assistance of researcher Aimee Drolet Rossi. But UCLA says the study didn't happen there, and Rossi says she did not participate in it. In a past case, he claimed on a podcast to have gotten data from the insurance company Delta Dental, which the company says it did not collect. In another case, an investigation by Duke reportedly found that data from a paper he co-authored with Gino had been falsified, but that there was no evidence Ariely had used fake data knowingly. Frankly, I don't buy this. Maybe an unlucky professor might once end up using data that was faked without their knowledge. But if it happens again, I'm not willing to credit bad luck, and at some point, a professor who keeps 'accidentally' using falsified or nonexistent data should be out of a job even if we can't prove it was no accident. But Ariely, who has maintained his innocence, is still at Duke. Or take Olivier Voinnet, a plant biologist who had multiple papers conclusively demonstrated to contain image manipulation. He was found guilty of misconduct and suspended for two years. It's hard to imagine a higher scientific sin than faking and manipulating data. If you can't lose your job for that, the message to young scientists is inevitably that fraud isn't really that serious. What it means to take fraud seriously Gino's loss of tenure, which is one of a few recent cases where misconduct has had major career consequences, might be a sign that the tides are changing. In 2023, around when the Gino scandal broke, Stanford's then-president Marc Tessier-Lavigne stepped down after 12 papers he authored were found to contain manipulated data. A few weeks ago, MIT announced a data falsification scandal with a terse announcement that the university no longer had confidence in a widely distributed paper 'by a former second-year PhD student.' It's reasonable to assume the student was expelled from the program. I hope that these high-profile cases are a sign we are moving in the right direction on scientific fraud because its persistence is enormously damaging to science. Other researchers waste time and energy following false lines of research substantiated by fake data; in medicine, falsification can outright kill people. But even more than that, research fraud damages the reputation of science at exactly the moment when it is most under attack. We should tighten standards to make fraud much harder to commit in the first place, and when it is identified, the consequences should be immediate and serious. Let's hope Harvard sets a trend.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
What Harvard's Federal Funding Cuts Mean for the University
The Eliot House dormitory on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, on Tuesday, May 27, 2025. Credit - Sophie Park—Bloomberg via Getty Images Harvard University is poised to lose its remaining federal funding and ties to the federal government as its battle with the Trump Administration intensifies. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) asked federal agencies in a Tuesday letter to reconsider all federal contracts with Harvard and instead 'seek alternative vendors' for future endeavors. The letter was first reported on by The New York Times. 'The Trump Administration is not backing down from its onslaught of attacks on the institution,' says Katharine Meyer, an education policy fellow at the Brookings Institution. 'No sort of path is too small for them to look into going after.' The GSA and Harvard did not respond to TIME's requests for comment. The university has previously filed multiple lawsuits against the Administration over its actions. Here's what to know about what the requested federal funding cuts, and what they mean for Harvard. The Trump Administration has targeted a number of colleges and universities over their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and pro-Palestinian demonstrations on their campuses, among other issues. Harvard, which has refused to comply with the Administration, has faced particular ire. In April, federal officials sent a letter to Harvard demanding that it modify its hiring practices, implement 'viewpoint diversity' to include conservative ideology, and alter its student discipline regulations or risk federal financial support. Harvard's defiance of the demands initially put $2.2 billion in multi-year federal grants at risk. Another $2.7 million in Department of Homeland Security grants and $1 billion in federal funding for health research are under threat as well. The Trump Administration has also moved to attempt to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status and the university's ability to enroll foreign-born students. A federal judge on Thursday will decide whether a preliminary injunction issued against the latter should be extended. In its Tuesday letter, the Administration cited what it called 'discriminatory practices' related to Harvard's hiring and admissions process, the university's handling of antisemitism on campus, and a 'lack of commitment' to 'national values and priorities' in its request for agencies to cancel remaining contracts with the school. 'This $100 million dollar contract pullback is certainly the smallest effort that we've seen, but I think the cumulative impact is hurtling toward a point where eventually Harvard does not have infinite funds to be able to fill in where they've lost federal contracts and grants and any other sources of their revenue,' says Meyer. Harvard's operating expenses reached $6.4 billion for fiscal year 2024, compared to the more than $3 billion in federal funding for the university at risk under the Trump Administration. Federal sponsorship for research made up 11% of the university's total operating revenue for the 2024 fiscal year. Harvard warns on its website that without federal funding, cutting-edge research into conditions including cancer, heart disease, and diabetes 'will come to a halt midstream, and researchers will lack necessary resources to finish ongoing projects or to finance new ones.' Some Harvard labs, including one working on human organs-on-chips, which replicate the function of organs, have received stop-work orders following the Trump Administration's efforts to slash funding. Those researchers were using that technology to study how certain organs react to radiation therapy. The Administration's move to bar Harvard from enrolling international students could hit another source of the university's funds beyond the money it receives through government grants and contracts. Harvard received more than a fifth of its funding in 2024 from education revenue, including tuition, housing, food income, and more. International students contribute a large portion of that revenue, with more than 6,700 enrolling at the school for the most recent school year. The standard cost of attendance for foreign-born students, many of which pay full price for tuition, is $101, 974. Harvard has mounted legal challenges against the Administration's unprecedented actions. It filed a lawsuit on April 21, citing violations of the First Amendment and claiming federal officials did not abide by the proper procedural rules to slash grant funding. A second lawsuit followed last Friday after officials moved to bar the university from enrolling international students, and a federal judge temporarily blocked the Administration from doing so. Harvard's substantial federal endowment, which distributed $2.4 billion in the fiscal year ending in June 2024, also puts it in a unique financial position to bite back against the Trump Administration's attacks. But restrictions on how the endowment is used mean it can't be relied on as a simple replacement for lost federal funding. And as the lawsuits continue to play out in the courts, some experts warn that the federal government's actions are already changing the higher education landscape. The legal limbo surrounding student visas has led universities worldwide to attempt to entice Harvard international students to transfer to their higher education institutions. Some colleges and universities are also implementing policy changes to proactively avoid Trump's ire. '[Universities] are certainly very worried that the courts will rule that the federal government has the ability to do these ad hoc rescissions of grants and contracts and institutions that don't have the financial means of Harvard are not going to be able to say no,' says Meyer. 'With the legal uncertainty, I think a lot of institutions are reviewing their policies and reviewing their practices and trying to kind of proactively rearrange what they're doing and try to position themselves to be in the federal government's good graces.' Meyer believes that the Trump Administration will likely move to rescind Harvard's ability to award federal financial aid to students, dealing the school a further blow. 'When institutions lose the ability to award federal financial aid just largely because they're truly bad faith actors who are misleading students about their enrollment opportunity,' she says. 'To do so for Harvard because of ideological reasons would be completely unprecedented, but I expect that the Trump Administration is looking through every policy that exists to see if they might have grounds to do so.' Contact us at letters@
Sinar Daily
6 days ago
- Politics
- Sinar Daily
Japan urges universities to temporarily accept students affected by US Harvard ban
The call came in response to concerns over Japanese and other international students studying in the US, following recent developments under the Trump administration. 27 May 2025 07:57pm People sit on Harvard Yard at Harvard University on April 17, 2025 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. - (Photo by Sophie Park / AFP) TOKYO - The Japanese government on Tuesday urged domestic universities to consider temporarily accepting students affected by the United States' move to bar foreign students from Harvard University. The call came in response to concerns over Japanese and other international students studying in the US, following recent developments under the Trump administration, Kyodo news agency reported. Education Minister Toshiko Abe stressed the importance of safeguarding students' futures. "We'd like to work with related institutions and make utmost efforts to guarantee education for young people with ambition and talent," she said during a press conference. On Monday, the University of Tokyo said it is considering the option of accepting affected international students from Harvard. A Harvard Faculty member holds a sign as he exits Harvard Yard after a rally was held against US President Donald Trump's attacks on Harvard University at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 17, 2025. - (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP) The Japan Student Services Organisation will soon release information on each university's stance regarding such support, the education ministry said. Last Thursday, the US administration moved to revoke Harvard's certification for the Student and Exchange Visitor Programme. The move would prevent Harvard from enrolling foreign students and force current students to transfer or risk losing their legal visa status. However, a US federal district court has issued a temporary injunction, allowing international students to remain enrolled while the legality of the decision is under review. According to Japan's education ministry, Harvard currently has 110 Japanese students and 150 researchers. The ministry will also launch a consultation service on the Japan Student Services Organisation's website for students studying in the US. - BERNAMA More Like This
Toronto Sun
7 days ago
- Politics
- Toronto Sun
Trump threatens to steer Harvard grant money to trade schools
Published May 26, 2025 • 2 minute read The Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass. Photo by Sophie Park / Bloomberg President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to divert billions in grant dollars away from Harvard University and give those funds to trade schools across the U.S., escalating his clash with the elite institution. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account 'I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,' Trump said in a post on social media. 'What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!' The Trump administration has already moved to freeze grant funding and block Harvard's ability to enroll international students in an intensifying battle over what the president has cast as a failure by the Ivy League university and others to crack down on antisemitism. The Trump administration has been using that rationale to pressure schools such as Harvard to institute wide policy changes that university officials say infringe on free speech and their academic missions. Harvard has been front and center in Trump's campaign, with the administration already suspending more than $2.6 billion in federal research grants. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The government has also moved to bar Harvard from enrolling foreign students, but the school won a temporary court order blocking the government from enforcing that ban. Administration officials have demanded more oversight of foreign students, including the names of those attending Harvard. Harvard still hasn't turned over foreign student lists, with Trump calling the university 'very slow in the presentation of these documents.' The information is needed, Trump said in a second post on Monday, the Memorial Day holiday, to determine 'how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country.' Trump has claimed that nearly 31% of Harvard students are foreign, questioning why the U.S. should effectively contribute to their education when their home countries do not. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also has said the school refuses to turn over documentation about students at the government's request. Read More Ontario Music Sunshine Girls World Opinion
Toronto Sun
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Toronto Sun
Harvard loses another $450M in grants in escalating battle with Trump administration
Published May 13, 2025 • 2 minute read People leave Harvard University on April 17, 2025 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo by Sophie Park / Getty Images WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's administration is cutting another $450 million in grants to Harvard University a day after the Ivy League school pushed back against government allegations that it's a hotbed of liberalism and antisemitism. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account In a letter to Harvard on Tuesday, a federal antisemitism task force said Harvard will lose grants from eight federal agencies in addition to $2.2 billion that was previously frozen by the Trump administration. The letter said Harvard has become a 'breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination' and faces a 'steep, uphill battle' to reclaim its legacy as a place of academic excellence. 'There is a dark problem on Harvard's campus, and by prioritizing appeasement over accountability, institutional leaders have forfeited the school's claim to taxpayer support,' the letter said. It was signed by officials at the Education Department, Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. University officials did not immediately provide comment on the letter. Harvard has faced escalating sanctions from the White House after becoming the first U.S. university to openly defy the government's demands to limit pro-Palestinian activism and end diversity, equity and inclusion practices. RECOMMENDED VIDEO Trump, a Republican, has said he wants Harvard to lose its tax-exempt status, and the Department of Homeland Security has threatened to revoke the school's eligibility to host foreign students. Last week, the Education Department said Harvard will receive no new federal grants until it meets the government's demands. The Trump administration has demanded Harvard make broad leadership changes, revise its admissions policies and audit its faculty and student body to ensure the campus is home to many viewpoints. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The demands are part of a pressure campaign targeting several other high-profile universities. The administration has cut off money to colleges including Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University, seeking compliance with Trump's agenda. Harvard is suing to block the federal funding freeze. Harvard President Alan Garber disputed the government's allegations in a Monday letter, saying Harvard is nonpartisan and has taken steps to root out antisemitism on campus. He insisted that Harvard is in compliance with the law, calling the federal sanctions an 'unlawful attempt to control fundamental aspects of our university's operations.' The government's letter on Tuesday said Harvard has repeatedly failed to address racial discrimination and antisemitism on campus. It cited the Supreme Court's 2023 decision striking down Harvard's use of race in the admissions process, along with a recent internal report at Harvard detailing cases of antisemitic harassment. Toronto Maple Leafs Editorials Ontario Canada Canada
