Shots in the Dark

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?

Today’s Times reports on the Marc Hauser/fraudulent research scandal at Harvard. It goes farther than the Globe in suggesting what might have gone wrong—although it’s unclear (to me, anyway) what it’s basing the suggestion below on.

Dr. Hauser is a fluent and persuasive writer, and his undoing seems to have been his experiments, many of which depended on videotaping cotton-topped tamarin monkeys and noting their responses. It is easy for human observers to see the response they want and so to be fooled by the monkeys.

[Columbia professor of psychology] Dr. Terrace said there had been problems for some time with Dr. Hauser’s work.

“First there was arbitrary interpretation of the videotapes to suit the hypothesis,” he said. “The other was whether the data was real. There have been a number of papers using videotape, and all of them have to be reviewed to see if the data holds up.”

This is a good quote and if I reported the story I’d use it. But I wouldn’t use it without some other indication that there was a consensus on the issue of “arbitrary interpretation” and, more important, whether there really were widespread doubts that “the data was real.” That’s a serious charge and the Times should have more backing it up than just one quote—which it doesn’t.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more this reporting/hypothesizing by the Times’ Nicholas Wade makes me uncomfortable. It is simply bad journalism to present an allegation within the body of a quote as fact—an allegation that is unsupported.

That said, the article represents more bad publicity for Harvard, and hammers home the theme, espoused here and in the Globe yesterday, that Harvard is handling this matter in a manner reminscent of the Nixon White House. (Don’t they know that the cover-up is worse than the crime?)

Harvard’s silence about the nature of the problem in Dr. Hauser’s laboratory has stirred concern among other researchers who fear their field will be discredited unless the full facts are made known.

“I think that Harvard has to make public what they found,” said Herbert Terrace, a professor of psychology at Columbia University. “They say they have to protect Harvard and Hauser, but how about protecting the field?”

[Again—relevant questions here include who is Herbert Terrace in the context of this subfield, does he have any prior relationship/dispute with Hauser and/or Harvard, and why is he the only person quoted? All of these need to be addressed in order to make this article fair.)

But yes, Terrace is right that Harvard’s sneakiness isn’t helping the situation, and it’s making Harvard look terrible.

A commenter below admonishes me for taking a shot at Drew Gilpin Faust’s (lack 0f) leadership. The commenter wrote (sarcastically):

Yes, she should know all the facts instantly about every thing happening every where at once that relates to Harvard, its students, its employees, its flora, fauna, and infrastructure and instantly comment insightfully and constructively.

Here are the possible scenarios:

1) The people involved in this didn’t tell Faust, which suggests that they didn’t think they needed to—or that they didn’t think there would be repercussions if they didn’t. That is a sign that they think Faust is weak. Which is often a sign that she is weak.

2) Faust was informed of and agreed to go along with the cover-up.

3) Faust instigated the cover-up.

These are all unflattering options, but I can’t think of another one that reflects well on her leadership. Suggestions are welcome.

It reminds me of the Christy Romer debacle, in which Faust, perhaps feeling out of her league when it came to economics, accepted the recommendation to reject her tenure nomination.

Could it be that Faust allows herself to be steamrolled when she’s out of her comfort zone? Or is she just out of the loop?

Yesterday the Globe reported (signs of life!) that Harvard had compelled scientist Marc Hauser to take a “year-long leave” after “a lengthy internal investigation found evidence of scientific misconduct in his laboratory.”

Hauser, by the way, is a fellow at the Center for Ethics.

The news came out not because Harvard disclosed it, but because Hauser wrote a pained—but vague—letter to colleagues, one of whom (or a subsequent recipient) leaked it to the Globe.

Published in the Journal Cognition, the government-funded paper claimed to show that monkeys could learn patterns, which suggested that pattern-recognition was not the critical building block in human speech that it had previously been thought to be. (Because monkeys could recognize patterns, but not speak.)

So what malfeasance did Harvard find? It’s an important question for determining whether the paper remains generally valid, is partly discredited, or totally worthless. The answer? No one knows. Because Harvard isn’t saying.

The editor of Cognition, Gerry Altmann, said in an interview that he had not been told what specific errors had been made in the paper, which is unusual. “Generally when a manuscript is withdrawn, in my experience at any rate, we know a little more background than is actually published in the retraction,’’ he said. “The data not supporting the findings is ambiguous.’’

Today the Globe calls on Harvard to ‘fess up.

Harvard’s reaction isn’t entirely shocking; the revelation of defects in the work of a big-name researcher is an embarrassment to the institution, and most employers of any sort are wary of publicly singling out misdeeds by individual employees. But faulty scientific studies aren’t merely a personnel matter, and vague acknowledgments of serious flaws in a study only fuel broader doubts — and not just about Hauser’s work. Correcting the record in a straightforward, detailed way is important to Harvard’s reputation, too.

That strikes me as a pretty gentle admonition. I have two words for Harvard: “taxpayer-funded.” You can’t take public money and then play secret when it is stolen, which is essentially what fraudulent research is—the theft of the money paid to underwrite it.

Moreover, there’s a public interest in the disclosure of accurate information about this apparently inaccurate study.

And finally, why cover it up? The university will only look worse than if it tells the truth.

I know this is corny, but Truth is Harvard’s motto. Is that really too much to ask?

If Drew Faust were a strong president, she’d step in here….

It’s very sad—like him or no, Hitchens is a rare figure. But it doesn’t sound like we’ll have him around much longer.

I wonder, though, if he’s regretting the decades he spent puffing away on cigarettes….