🚨 NEW: Joan Donovan, one of the world’s leading misinformation experts, claims that the Harvard Kennedy School shut down her work there to appease Meta, a major donor.

Today I’m publishing an investigation that asks: Is she spreading misinformation?

chronicle.com/article/the-di… Starting in December, I set out to fact-check Donovan’s story of why she believed Harvard ended her research. She'd risen to fame as a punk-rock truth-teller, a fearless fighter against fake news and Nazis, so her whistleblower campaign got a lot of coverage.

NEWS: Francesca Gino today filed a $25 million defamation lawsuit against Harvard and Data Colada. Story coming soon. Francesca Gino's defamation lawsuit against Harvard and Data Colada is 100 pages, so there's a lot to go through here. Here's my story summarizing it. Harvard and the three professors behind Data Colada declined to comment for this.

chronicle.com/article/schola…

SCOOP: The University of California is reversing course on "data science."

A panel has voted to undo an admissions standard that faculty fear isn't preparing students for college-level math—just as it's on the cusp of being written into statewide policy. chronicle.com/article/the-un… On Friday, a UC panel voted to drop "data science" from its math admissions standards, an email shows.

“Those courses...should not have been approved as an advanced math course or a replacement for algebra II,” one person present at the meeting tells me.

SCOOP: In 2021, you may recall a famous study about honesty getting retracted due to fraudulent data (ironic).

But that wasn't the end. An author now says that per a Harvard investigation, the study had even more fraudulent data than previously revealed chronicle.com/article/a-weir… To recap, the 2012 paper reported on three experiments. #3, which was co-led by Dan Ariely of Duke, was found to be fraudulent, leading to the 2021 retraction. (My BuzzFeed story here: )

The new alleged problems have to do with experiment #1 ...buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha…

SCOOP: Stanford’s sustainability school recently announced its first big research focus: greenhouse gas removal.

The decision was shaped in part by meetings w/employees from fossil fuel companies like Shell, ExxonMobil, and Total, per emails I obtained 🧵 chronicle.com/article/big-oi… Carbon removal/capture/storage is drawing buzz and $$, including from the oil and gas industry, but critics worry it's distracting from the need to cut emissions.

So some at the Stanford Doerr School were surprised that it chose this as its first “flagship destination.”

NEW: Jo Boaler of Stanford is the most influential math-education expert in the country. She’s helping draft a framework for how California should teach math. But critics say her claims don’t always add up.

My @chronicle cover story on the math wars. 🧵 chronicle.com/article/the-di… This week, Dr. Boaler published an essay on her website in an effort to pre-empt this story.

I hope you’ll read the piece for yourself. It’s a deep dive into the debate over how to shape tomorrow's STEM workforce, and the personalities/ideas shaping it chronicle.com/article/the-di…

NEW: In New Orleans, a group of Black doctors risked their careers to accuse their medical school of institutional racism. The year was 2020. What would it take to prove that there was a problem — and fix it?

This is an anatomy of a racial reckoning. buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha… Princess Dennar was the first Black woman to run a medical residency program at Tulane. She alleged that her white bosses undermined her authority for a decade-plus, trying to drive her out, and her Black trainees suffered the consequences. Her claims set off a chain of events:

NEW: I wrote about Elisabeth Bik, a scientist turned science detective, and the time she challenged a prominent hydroxychloroquine crusader.

Their feud illustrates a larger truth that COVID has made all too clear: science often fails to police itself.

buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha… As vital as error detection is to keeping science honest, watchdogs say there's no upside (not a good way to make friends). The pandemic has shown how vulnerable—and vital—they are.

“I’m convinced there is a chilling effect,” @MicrobiomDigest says. “I’m feeling the cold too.”

NEW: Ivermectin prevents COVID 100% of the time—or so says a study out of Argentina. Maybe you heard about it via Joe Rogan (who says he’s on ivermectin now).

But the paper has so many red flags, experts say it’s unreliable at best. Story w/@kenbensinger: buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha… This study says that, out of 100s of workers across 4 hospitals in Argentina, 0 taking ivermectin got COVID.

Yet their reported numbers/ages/genders are inconsistent, as @GidMK points out here:

https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1419557546872819719

The lead author’s defense: “We are not statistical people.”

NEW: A big study about honesty—led by Dan Ariely, who literally wrote the book on the subject—is being retracted over fake data.

What does Dr. Ariely have to say? And what's the company that allegedly provided the data? I have answers. buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha… First, if you haven't already, check out this amazing data detective work by @DataColada, which blew up this week. It shows how this influential 2012 paper—which found that signing at the top of forms, not the bottom, curbed cheating—had fabricated data.

https://twitter.com/jpsimmon/status/1427628315939049491

NEW: When JAMA, one of the world's top medical journals, claimed “no physician is racist,” a furious backlash ensued.

Now, scholars are boycotting. They say they won’t submit research to JAMA until it makes changes, starting with diversifying its staff. buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha… At least 10 scholars say they're boycotting for the time being. Many no longer trust JAMA to fairly evaluate research on racial disparities.

This is a potential risk. “People’s careers have been made by a single publication in JAMA—that’s how important it is,” says @mclemoremr.

Notes from tonight's FDA call on Moderna's vaccine: NIH is thinking about studying how well vaccines prevent asymptomatic spread, maybe in college students or another group who won't be eligible soon. Peter Marks called this “a critical thing to get answered.” On allergies: The prescribing information for Moderna’s vaccine (as with Pfizer’s) says it should be avoided by people with severe allergies to any component of the vaccine.

The @washingtonpost has a story today about John Ioannidis’ research into and statements about COVID. It does a nice job of recapping the year. Some thoughts...

washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/… This piece does a good job of frankly stating that the course of action that Ioannidis was advocating for in the spring is now widely viewed as a mistake. (Though I should add that lots of people held that view in the spring, as well.)

Just had a lovely week offline. Now I am here, reading an (unlabeled) op-ed in @sciam, from the same two authors who made the same argument in @undarkmag in June.

I wrote this thread then, noting important, missing context:

https://twitter.com/stephaniemlee/status/1271152906935230464

Time for another, I guess! This piece doesn’t link to any of my stories. Here they are, for the 1000th time.

buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha…
buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha…
buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha…
buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha…

NEW: A small band of scientists has been pushing policies reflecting the (unfounded) idea that COVID isn't a big threat. This week, they met with top administration officials.

I've been reporting on this group for months. Here's why this is so important: buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha… On Monday, three Harvard, Stanford and Oxford scientists met w/HHS Sec. Azar and adviser Scott Atlas. Their plan: isolate the “vulnerable,” let COVID spread through everyone else, reach herd immunity.

This is dangerous, unrealistic and could kill millions, @greggonsalves says.

SCOOP: John Ioannidis's studies say COVID isn’t a big threat, infuriating critics who say they have fundamental errors.

In March, before he had any data, he rounded up a group of scientists to try to meet with President Trump — to warn against shutdowns.

buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha… By late March, COVID had killed thousands. Many experts urged the US to shut down.

But Ioannidis wanted to warn Trump against “shutting down the country for very long time and jeopardizing so many lives in doing this.”

His ideas were “scientifically untenable,” @mlipsitch says.

Today @undark ran this op-ed defending John Ioannidis. The authors are entitled to their opinions.

But it cites my story on the whistleblower complaint about his team's antibody survey, and doesn’t mention facts/context that I think are important. undark.org/2020/06/11/joh… To start: Stanford is investigating the complaint, filed by someone involved w/the research.

It alleges that two scientists failed to validate their antibody test and withheld their names, and David Neeleman tried to financially pressure one of them. Op-ed doesn’t mention this.