Shots in the Dark

Did the accused scientist hire the man who defended Claus von Bulow, O.J. Simpson and Jeffrey Epstein to defend him against allegations of scientific fraud?

A commenter on Greg Laden’s Blog says so. As does a commenter (maybe the same one) on the blog Why Evolution is True.

The plot, as they say, thickens.

Crimson, you there?

The Taliban orders the execution by stoning of an Afgan couple who had tried to elope—and hundreds of local villagers, and even relatives, join in.

The Times reports:

As a Taliban mullah prepared to read the judgment of a religious “court,” Mr. Khan said the lovers, a 25-year-old man named Khayyam and a 19-year-old woman named Siddiqa, defiantly confessed in public to their relationship.

“They said, ‘We love each other no matter what happens,’ ” Mr. Khan said.

Heroes…and villains.

The details are hard to get your head around. The woman didn’t want to marry the person chosen for her; the young couple fled.

…family members persuaded them to return to their village, promising to allow them to marry. (Afghan men are legally allowed to marry up to four wives). Once back in Kunduz, however, they were arrested by the Taliban, who convened local mullahs from surrounding villages for a religious court.

… some 200 villagers participated in the executions, including Khayyam’s father and brother, and Siddiqa’s brother, as well as other relatives, with a larger crowd of onlookers who did not take part.

“People were very happy seeing this,” Mr. Khan maintained, saying the crowd was festive and cheering during the stoning. “They did a bad thing.”…

I don’t know which is more horrifying: The idea that a father would voluntarily throw stones at his daughter with the intention of killing her, or the possibility that he was so afraid of the Taliban that he threw stones at his daughter with the intention of killing her.

The Times reported on Friday that Marc Hauser’s problems began three years ago, when a team of Harvard investigators “raided” his lab. The university has been looking into Hauser and his work ever since.

In January this year, a faculty committee at last completed its report, said to contain eight charges against Dr. Hauser. But the report was kept secret and nothing changed until this month when someone showed The Boston Globe a letter about the investigation from Dr. Hauser to his faculty colleagues.

This report raises serious questions, such as: What took Harvard three years? (This isn’t Iran-contra.) If the matter is so serious, why is Hauser only on leave? And why does the university continue to refuse to say anything—or even say something about why it won’t say anything?

And if any of the alleged misdeeds occurred before 1998, when Hauser was granted tenure by Harvard, should the university revisit that decision?

As a commenter on the blog Neuron Culture points out,

Also under question is a paper dating all the way back to 1995. Gordon G. Gallup Jr. of the State University of New York at Albany asked Dr. Hauser for videotapes of an experiment in which cotton-topped tamarins were said to recognize themselves in a mirror. Gallup could see no evidence for this.

Havard spokesperson Jeff Neal has implied that the university can not say anything publicly until the government finishes any investigation it may be pursuing.

That rationale has been shown on this blog to be untrue; if it weren’t an implication, it would be a lie, which is why it’s an implication.

Now Neal comes up with another excuse.

… a Harvard spokesman, Jeff Neal, declined to comment, saying the university had to respect individuals’ privacy.

Let us be fair to Neal, who is, after all, singing for his supper; it’s an embarrassment to Harvard that on a matter of this seriousness, the only person to step forward is a paid press secretary.

But as to his question: Why does the university have to respect this individual’s privacy?

I pose this as a serious question, not a rhetorical one. If Hauser did nothing wrong, then the university should clear the air. If he did, then his “right to privacy”—which may, in some instances, be a constitutional right, but at Harvard is probably not a contractual one, at least not when it comes to published work—should not exist.

Of course, if Harvard is legally bound in some stupid way not to disclose possible fraud by one of its employees, then, really, it needs a new contracts lawyer.  Not least because Harvard is a) setting a terrible example for its students, and b) getting hammered in the press—even the press, like the Times and the Globe, that Harvard cares about.

A commenter below suggests that Hauser has friends in high places. That might explain Harvard’s reticence.

But it shouldn’t explain Drew Faust’s invisibility.

For years now, Faust’s handlers have labored to keep her away from any association with bad news—even if makes Faust look weak, which it does. (Which then, of course, has the effect of making her weak.) And Faust, weakly, goes along with their advice.

It’s unfortunate. She is un-firable; Harvard can not oust two presidents in a row, and certainly not its first woman. So why does she do so little with her unassailable position? She reminds me of the anchorman in last night’s episode of True Blood.

The other day I read a bit of an unpublished memoir whose author detailed a meeting with Derek Bok and Henry Rosovsky over a potentially litigious matter in which the university was probably at fault. The author suggested a resolution; Bok and Rosovsky conferred momentarily and said, “Okay, fine.” The author said, well, how do I know you’ll stick to this? Bok said, “You have our word.” And that was enough.

Would anyone trust Drew Faust’s word in such a matter? Does she even have autonomy to give it?

Commenters on my post below about Steven Slater said, variously:

1) Who knew that he was gay, and who cares?

2) Why bring race into it, and you’re wrong anyway?

3) How dare you call him a fraud.

Let’s take these in order.

1) The gay thang: If you couldn’t tell Steven Slater is gay from the second you saw his MySpace photo, below, then you have not been to a major city lately. Or watched a reality TV show. Or flown on an airplane.

In any case, Google “Steven Slater gay” and you’ll see that most of the world had no trouble picking up on this. Here, the GA Voice debates whether Slater is good or bad for the gays. (They say: Good. I say: Terrible.) To those who allege homophobia on my part, I answer: Nice try. My point was that Slater played into unflattering stereotypes of gays: That they are melodramatic, bitchy, moody divas.  (As portrayed on reality TV.) Slater did every professional gay man a disservice.

But then, some gays, like the GA Voice writer, embrace the stereotypes:

If you didn’t already know, stressed gay men will pop off at the mouth in a moment’s notice. …Slater didn’t go to work on Aug. 9 expecting to become a gay stewardess icon, but here we are, on Aug. 10, seeing his mug all over the news….

2) Back in black:  I posed the question, “Would America have reacted differently to Steven Slater if he were a straight black man?”  If you don’t believe me, I said, ask a black guy if he thinks that’s a crazy question.

The responses were generally, it wouldn’t make any difference, and why would you ask that question in the first place?

Here the blog “Chocolate City,” which describes itself as “the best African-American blog,” asks the question, “What if Steven Slater was a Gay Black Male?” (I took it up a notch.)

Would you have started a defense fund on his behalf without knowing anything about him? Would you have started a Facebook page for him? Would you have become one of his fans, or Would you have instantly passed judgment or condemned him and probably referred to him as a “crazy n*&&#@”?

(To be fair, the post is a little vague, and may be condemning homophobia in the black community. But…the point remains that perceptions of Slater would be different had Slater been black.)

3) Is Slater a faker? The answer looks like yes; not one of the passengers verifies his account, some of the passengers say he had a cut on his head before the flight started, and he’s admitted that he’d dreamed of popping out the chute for years. (Calling Dr. Freud.)

There’s a decent chance that Slater was actually drunk.

The guy’s a scam artist. And so our culture does what it does for all scam artists: It offers him a reality TV show.

Which is to say that the scam worked. And that an action which was probably shaped by images of the world on reality TV, and propelled by a desire to be on a reality TV show, now comes full circle. Artificial reality becomes real life becomes artificial again.

It’s a good thing no one died from that chute….

Because I once had an unpleasant altercation with a flight attendant that was totally not my fault, I’ve been slightly skeptical about the Steven Slater as folk hero trope.

And that’s not the only reason: I also kept thinking about the people on that plane who were surely delayed disembarking, and the people on other flights who were surely delayed by the fact that JetBlue’s plane had its evacuation chute deployed.

Now, of course, comes the inevitable evidence that Slater’s whole act was a fraud.

But before he’s completely undermined, it’s worth taking a moment to consider why Americans felt comfortable making this man a folk hero.

Yes, many people want to quit crappy jobs in a dramatic fashion. But do we really want to risk lives (you wouldn’t have wanted to be under that chute) and inconvenience hundreds of people to do it?

And here’s what I really think: That Slater’s homosexuality is a sine qua non for him becoming a hero.

Why? Because his flamboyant gayness makes him non-threatening, and adds an element of humor to the whole silly affair. How many times in film and television have we seen stereotypes of gay men throw a similar hissy fit, or act like a diva, or a bitchy queen, all for comic effect?

We laugh at Steven Slater because we’ve been programmed to do so; he conforms to preexisting prejudices.

But…two things.

I’ll bet there are a lot of gay men who don’t find this episode so funny, and certainly don’t think of Slater as a hero.

And: How do you think the country would have reacted had Steven  Slater been a heterosexual black man who swore at a white woman and all the other passengers, stole beer and jumped out of the plane, then was arrested at home in bed with his live-in girlfriend?

Today’s Globe reports that “Harvard” has confirmed that it has investigated Marc Hauser and has taken “steps to ensure that the scientific record is corrected.”

I put “Harvard” in quotes because the only actual person associated with the university who’ll speak to the Globe is spokesman Jeff Neal. What an impressive display of taking responsibility. Is there no one at “Harvard” who will stand up and say, “The buck stops here”?

Like, for example, its president?

But “Harvard” refused to specify what was wrong with the research or what “Harvard” had done to correct the scientific record.

The calls for more disclosure continued yesterday. Robert Seyfarth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who was one of Hauser’s doctoral advisors at the University of California, Los Angeles in the 1980s, said in an e-mail that the lack of information about the misconduct may cast suspicion on innocent researchers.

“Harvard” does appear to respond to my suggestion on this blog that, given that taxpayers paid for this research, it owed the university an explanation.

Meanwhile, the Times follows suit, reporting on the “ripple effect” of Harvard’s silence.

Jeff Neal, a public affairs officer at Harvard, suggested in an e-mail that it was up to the federal government, which financed some of the research, to publish any report on the case. Harvard reports any findings about research misconduct to the government, he said, and “in cases where the government concludes scientific misconduct occurred, the federal agency makes those findings publicly available.”

But, of course, we already know what this really means: that, while the government can make its findings public, it does not prohibit “Harvard” from doing the same first.

“Most universities in these situations try to be open because that is usually the best policy,” said Michael Tomasello, a leading psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “We have no statement from anyone, just one withdrawn paper. The scientific community needs to know if this was a quirk or a pattern.”

At the very least, “Harvard” could give a reason for its silence. That it does not suggests it is not proud of its reasoning.

According to McSweeneys, it’s the newspaper. Seriously. Sort of.

The most obvious advantage of The Newspaper was the size of its display, which outclassed its rivals both in terms of size and elasticity. The Newspaper display could be read at full size or, when flipped open, twice its normal width. We also had no trouble reading copy when the display was flipped to half or even quarter size. One of our engineers even figured out how to make a hat….

Ah, schadenfreude.

No, I’m not proud of it. But how can you not feel great when the Mets not only lose, but their best (sic) relief pitcher is arrested for beating up his father-in-law?

He’s taken a job with Centerview, a private equity firm.

But he comes back with diminished luster: his record at Treasury doesn’t look so hot now—really, he insists, he was against that repeal of Glass-Steagall, it’s just that Larry Summers was so darned forceful!—he’s been a disaster at Harvard, he was a ($130 million) disaster at Citigroup, and Iris Mack—whom Harvard fired after she complained to Larry Summers about risky business at the Harvard Management Company—has publicly claimed that she and Rubin had an adulterous (for him) affair.

…later he would remind me that the first time we’d met I had something written on my backside. (I promise you, I had not even noticed when I picked up a few pairs of gray sweatpants on clearance at Victoria’s Secret that the words “Pink University” were screen printed on the behind, but give the man credit for being observant.)

Rubin, so far as I can tell, has not deigned to respond to the allegation (and to be fair, what is he supposed to say?).

But Citigroup, which allegedly unknowingly paid for Rubin to fly on private planes to facilitate conduct the affair, might want some money back. As might the taxpayers, who at some point paid for those flights when Citigroup was bailed out.

Is there in American life today a greater example of the inverse correlation between executive compensation and executive performance?