US professor resigns amid claims of fabricating racial statistics, says media

The Florida State University criminology professor Eric Stewart has resigned after a month-long absence, amid an inquiry into whether he faked data in multiple studies to inflate the prevalence of racism in the US. He was first accused of falsifying data in 2019 by University of Albany criminology professor Justin Pickett, who claimed Stewart had made several misleading changes to the data in a 2011 paper the pair co-authored. Two of the three people eventually chosen to investigate the claims had co-authored studies with Stewart, violating Florida State’s conflict of interest policy. The inquiry concluded that it did not have enough evidence to substantiate fraud claims and advised against continuing the investigation. Stewart, who is black, complained to the university that Pickett had “essentially lynched [him] and his academic career.” In 2020, a sixth paper authored by Stewart was retracted, and another investigation found enough merit in the fraud claims to pursue them, imperiling Stewart’s $190,000 per year position. Florida State declined to discuss the matter with the Florida Standard, and Stewart’s profile is still live on the university’s website.