Eric Stewart is a Black criminology professor at Florida State University [FSU]. He was being paid $190k per year, which is funded by student tuition and state and federal tax dollars.
For the 2021-2022 school year, in-state tuition was $5,656, and out-of-state tuition was $18,786.
Six of his “research papers” have been retracted over claims that he faked the results. Five of these papers were about race. Stewart would allegedly change sample sizes and data to invent fictional claims of “racism.” The six papers date from 2006 to 2020.
One of Stewart’s papers was called out by Albany University Professor Justin Pickett, who was a co-author of the paper. Pickett asked for the paper to be retracted due to fraud. He said the final paper reported a sample size of 1,184, which is over double the actual sample size. Pickett said that the paper reported significant findings when in fact, there were none.
The paper claimed that Whites people increase their demand for long prison sentences for non-Whites, as the percentage of the non-White population rises. Pickett says that, in reality, they found no evidence of this.
Pickett says he asked Stewart why the data was so different in the final paper, and he stonewalled for four months. When Pickett went public, Stewart claimed he had been lynched “lynched” by his White peer.
Then more and more papers were retracted.
FSU opened an academic malpractice investigation into Stewart after five retractions. They convened a three-member committee of his peers to review his work. However, Florida Standard suggests that the committee didn’t actually investigate anything. They simply declined to take any action. Most likely, they were terrified to remove a Black professor who was denouncing his critics as “racists.”
Pickett told a Florida Standard, “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.”
Now, a sixth paper has been retracted for the same reasons. The Florida Standard reports that Stewart has been absent for the past month and is likely no longer working at FSU. However, neither FSU nor Stewart will comment on the matter.
