A professor at a Florida university has been given the boot after demonstrating “extreme negligence” in data management connected to racial bias studies.

Criminologist Eric Stewart was summarily fired after a months-long investigation was conducted into his duties with the university, concluding he could have caused “unalterable” damage to the school’s reputation, according to Fox News.

This wasn’t your standard termination letter. It was five pages long and scathingly written by Florida State University’s (FUS) Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, James Clark. Stewart was told that decades of his research “once thought to be at the forefront” of his profession were shown to contain “numerous erroneous” and “false narratives.”

“My specific concerns are related to the details of your behavior and the extreme negligence and incompetence that you demonstrated in the performance of your duties,” Clark wrote, torching Stewart and his career.

“As outlined in the Notice of Intent to Terminate letter, you demonstrated extreme negligence in basic data management, resulting in an unprecedented number of articles retracted, numerous other articles now in question, with the presence of no backup of the data for the publications in question,” he noted.

Clark hammered Stewart into the ground over his professional misconduct.

“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,” Clark continued.

The College Fix reported, “Reports were provided by FSU’s misconduct inquiry committee in 2019 and 2020 in response to misconduct allegations against Stewart, according to the July 13 letter, which noted Stewart had responded that the reports ‘indicate that the misconduct claims were rejected by multiple panel experts.'”

“In the four years since the initial issues arose, you [Stewart] have not taken any meaningful steps to remedy the situation, you have not re-created or attempted to re-create any of the studies, you have not pursued any remedial action, and you have even refused to cooperate with your FSU colleagues and coworkers who requested to work with you on these matters,” Clark bluntly told Stewart.

Good. Playing the race card with phony data.

— Barnabus (@BarnabusShadows) August 1, 2023

Stewart was with the university for 16 years at the time he was terminated. He was paid $190,000 a year by the school.

The professor’s work hauled in nearly $3.7 million in funding according to his CV. He was awarded grants from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Justice.

In one of his papers, the criminologist asserted that there was a correlation between a criminal’s race and the public’s desire to see harsher prison sentences meted out. An investigation into that premise revealed no correlation and that the sample size had been increased to yield Stewart’s desired outcome.

One of the study’s co-authors, Justin Pickett, has claimed previously that the “identified discrepancies” in the criminologist’s work could not be attributed to “researcher error.”

Good riddance – nothing was peer reviewed – he wouldn’t share data with colleagues – six articles were retracted – he went with his bias and built papers around them… – I went to school there, just embarrassing…

— Dr Dan McDougall (@DrDanMcDougall) August 1, 2023

“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 charged in an article he wrote.

“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,” Pickett told the Florida Standard. “There’s too much incentive to fake data and too little oversight.”

“Professor Stewart’s 16-year FSU career appears to have ended, signaled by his abrupt March 2023 absence,” The Florida Standard reported upon his departure.

“His sudden, unexplained replacement may indicate the looming end of the investigation, with enough evidence of fraud discovered to justify termination,” the paper speculated at the time.

Conservatives are not surprised in the least and many say good riddance:

There is a growing trend in which liberals are distorting scientific findings to paint America as a racist country.

— Razgriz (@DamianNB) August 1, 2023

Someone using racial discrimination claims inappropriately!? That never happens!!

— Mark Stewart (@gmark1706) August 1, 2023

So, basically, he made stuff up.

— A B (@AstroMan2060) July 31, 2023

190K a year to blatantly lie and perpetuate racial falsehoods. I’m sorry, but no professor is worth that unless it’s related to a field they could make comparable in the private sector.

— Nathan_Tells_It_Like_It_Is (@beachbuddha1) July 31, 2023

a biblical plague of locusts populating departments in colleges & universities throughout the USA.
2:2

I pray Stewart was a exception rather than an exemplar; but I fear it may not be the case.

— Connie McLou ☘️ (@ConnieMcLou) August 1, 2023

Negligence and incompetence? More likely data skewed on purpose.

— Gold Beacon (@BeaconofGold) July 31, 2023

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