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> It just sounds bizarre and German seems to be the real victim. I have no idea since both stories seem plausible. That said, this portion stood out to me: "

> It just sounds bizarre and German seems to be the real victim. I have no idea since both stories seem plausible. That said, this portion stood out to me: " In January 2016, a postdoctoral researcher reported that German asked her to perform a tedious task, which she believed was disrespectful, leading to a dispute. German was “red in the face and shaking with rage,” she said in her sworn statement. " Reading the docket NO. 1681CV01640 shows: " The Lab Manager, LaLonde, who would have seen German daily (until May 21, 2016), described plaintiff as "odd sometimes in his behavior, but nothing requiring immediate action, no danger to himself or anyone." " " how they should treat him better and how he deserves things other people should not have. This behavior has lasted for a while. " That makes me question exactly who is the real victim. There doesn't seem to be enough evidence to know for sure. I've seen both types of things. I've seen advisors sabotage their pupils. I've seen pupils blame their advisors when things didn't go their way. I'm sure we've all heard how Robert Openheimer tried to poison his tutor at Cambridge. Unrelated, but still worth mentioning is also a suspicious suicide of a former lover of his. Openheimer got out of trouble, despite the attempted murder because of his parents influence at Cambridge. It is interesting that this article mentions German was with his parents as well. That swayed me a bit against believing that German was the real victim.

LanceH 10y ago
The bar for dragging someone away by force for potential involuntary commitment is pretty damn high. It's way above making an appointment with a psychiatrist and moving further if he skips the appointment.
- mzs 10y ago
  It depends on where you live to some extent, but it goes like this where I live (I know cause it happened just like this). A (in this case well-meaning good) kid calls the police saying your kid is suicidal. The police and paramedics show-up to your house. You and your kid say all is fine, SI has passed but paramedics say a LCSW needs to make the call, police agree. They strap your kid to a stretcher and go to hospital. There you learn that a social worker cannot make the call unless your kid is sure to not be in an altered state (like say high on drugs), so you need for a nurse to draw blood and wait for results. A doctor looks at the test results showing no substances and calls for the LCSW. A social worker shows-up speaking to you and your kid separately. The social worker now needs to consult a psychologist and the doctor on call. The doctor on call discharges your kid from the ER. Clearly this can be abused, but I'm happy it's the way it is.
npiazza83 10y ago
Anecdotes and mild testimony from his peers about odd behavior sways you to the side of involuntary medical incarceration? I don't understand what convinces you here?
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  If you arrest every oddball in every university, the buildings would be near empty. I have to say though, the police in this seemed very reasonable and friendly, so a great round of applause to the guys in between doing a good job.
deong 10y ago
You're right, both stories do seem plausible, and we're getting both sides presented through a third party who might or might not have an editorial slant as well. Still, here's the part I noticed more than anything: "In the fall of 2015, he took a refresher course in the conduct of science, which covered topics such as ethics and misconduct. The course reminded him that, around June 2015, a member of Rubin’s lab had told him about the alleged data fabrication in the Cell Stem Cell paper." It "reminded him"? As in, someone told him his supervisor was falsifying data, and that didn't warrant even taking notice until something had to jog your memory? While the general circumstances -- student makes false allegations vs supervisor maliciously treats student -- are both plausible, this one line, if accurate in truth and accurately worded, makes me pretty skeptical.
- dhimes 10y ago
  Agree- it's hard to know. But the misconduct was probably not black and white (catching somebody gluing extra tails on a rat). It may be more fuzzy, especially to a student, who may have undergone training in ethics and had some issues identified as "bad" that maybe aren't obvious. In this (contorted and invented) scenario, I can see it. Like there are "gray areas" in sexual harassment that department training clarifies and says "this is (or is not) sexual harassment." What stood out to me was the fact that he was accused his own advisor BEFORE GETTING HIS PH.D. There is just something wrong here- especially if it's gray area. It's almost like it's not your place at that time (not to mention realizing you are throwing everything away- it's not like somebody is going to pick you up). So, yeah. Weird story.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I had the same doubt, but on reflection I'm not sure how implausible it is. The article does say "fabricated", but I'm not sure that means the data was generated by sitting at Excel going "0.6 sounds nice!" When data falsification comes out, these numerically small "four of six" cases don't usually seem to represent total invention. (Some larger cases, like one of the social psych studies that tanked a few years ago, do appear to involve making up hundreds of data points from scratch.) Rather, someone drops data, or reruns an experiment a few times, or 'adjusts' a number "based on their judgement". Normally you wouldn't call it fabrication, but sometimes people do that aggressively enough to get completely-baseless results off real experiments. In that case, I can honestly see someone (perhaps short on judgement overall) suddenly realizing that something was fraud. There's a note that German talked to some people and concluded that what happened was "grave misconduct". Infamously, Millikan 'tweaked' a lot of the data for his oil drop experiment, but got results so stunningly accurate that it's hard to criticize his chosen methods. If you think you're seeing that, I guess it could be a moment of realization that you're actually seeing fraud. Obviously there's not enough information to distinguish here, and no one comes out looking pretty. But that's the best justification I could come up with for 'realizing' an ethical issue had occurred.
belovedeagle 10y ago
Come on, don't be so naive. It sounds like a pretty obvious smear job: "he deserves to be locked up, he's sexist!" And after the mere allegation of sexism, you're happy to see someone dragged from their home in the middle of the night and locked up against their will without due process! It's absolutely disgusting. The woman with delusions of assassination plots is the one who needs mental examination, and I don't think it's fair to take any of her complaints seriously given that evidence. Edit: how much you want to bet this guy's got a different skin color than his accusers?
- nkurz 10y ago
  I downvoted your comment because I think you are wrong to believe that there is a simple answer to this issue that can be seen from the outside. Your level of confidence would only be justified if you have inside knowledge that the rest of us lack. you're happy to see someone dragged from their home in the middle of the night I didn't see anything in the parent's comment to indicate this. I took "There doesn't seem to be enough evidence to know for sure" to express the parent's sadness at the turn of events, rather than satisfaction in the outcome. The woman with delusions of assassination plots is the one who needs mental examination Whether they are delusions or not would depend on details of what happened in the lab. Someone who files a report of academic misconduct against their advisor in the final year of their PhD and continues working in that lab is likely to exhibit signs of stress. Someone not aware of the underlying cause of this stress might reasonably conclude that the subject is behaving erratically and unpredictably. how much you want to bet this guy's got a different skin color than his accusers? Very little, but I guess it depends on who you consider to be his "accusers". If we are restricting ourselves to the members of the lab group who were referenced in the article (cross-referenced with the names in the docket), all participants appear to be of approximately the same pale skin color: http://hscrb.harvard.edu/res-fl-rubin-members http://hscrb.harvard.edu/res-fl-rubin-members. If it's true that the parties are of the same skin color, how would it affect the confidence you have in your interpretation of events? While it's possible that other ethnic or cultural issues are in play here, I think the simpler explanation is that normal relations break down in the presence of accusations of academic fraud. If you want to dive into it further, the docket referenced by the parent is interesting reading. The judge who wrote seems to feel the white male advisor unfairly took retaliatory action against the white male graduate student, and there is no mention of race or skin color being a factor. The docket no longer appears to be online, but is still present in Google's cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:86cjl1rV_t0J:https://www.socialaw.com/services/slip-opinions/slip-opinion-details/gustavo-german-plaintiff-vs.-david-lopes-cardozo-and-lee-l.-rubin-defendants+&cd=1&hl=en https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:86cjl1...
Avenger42 10y ago
> It is interesting that this article mentions German was with his parents as well. That swayed me a bit against believing that German was the real victim. This confuses me. I don't see how his parents being present affects the story.
iaw 10y ago
I read it the same way. Either, or both, sides could be bending the truth based on their perspective. The main takeaway that I have is that Rubin's lab is toxic.

LanceH 10y ago

The bar for dragging someone away by force for potential involuntary commitment is pretty damn high. It's way above making an appointment with a psychiatrist and moving further if he skips the appointment.

mzs 10y ago
It depends on where you live to some extent, but it goes like this where I live (I know cause it happened just like this). A (in this case well-meaning good) kid calls the police saying your kid is suicidal. The police and paramedics show-up to your house. You and your kid say all is fine, SI has passed but paramedics say a LCSW needs to make the call, police agree. They strap your kid to a stretcher and go to hospital. There you learn that a social worker cannot make the call unless your kid is sure to not be in an altered state (like say high on drugs), so you need for a nurse to draw blood and wait for results. A doctor looks at the test results showing no substances and calls for the LCSW. A social worker shows-up speaking to you and your kid separately. The social worker now needs to consult a psychologist and the doctor on call. The doctor on call discharges your kid from the ER. Clearly this can be abused, but I'm happy it's the way it is.

npiazza83 10y ago

Anecdotes and mild testimony from his peers about odd behavior sways you to the side of involuntary medical incarceration? I don't understand what convinces you here?

Pica_soO 10y ago
If you arrest every oddball in every university, the buildings would be near empty. I have to say though, the police in this seemed very reasonable and friendly, so a great round of applause to the guys in between doing a good job.

deong 10y ago

You're right, both stories do seem plausible, and we're getting both sides presented through a third party who might or might not have an editorial slant as well. Still, here's the part I noticed more than anything: "In the fall of 2015, he took a refresher course in the conduct of science, which covered topics such as ethics and misconduct. The course reminded him that, around June 2015, a member of Rubin’s lab had told him about the alleged data fabrication in the Cell Stem Cell paper." It "reminded him"? As in, someone told him his supervisor was falsifying data, and that didn't warrant even taking notice until something had to jog your memory? While the general circumstances -- student makes false allegations vs supervisor maliciously treats student -- are both plausible, this one line, if accurate in truth and accurately worded, makes me pretty skeptical.

dhimes 10y ago
Agree- it's hard to know. But the misconduct was probably not black and white (catching somebody gluing extra tails on a rat). It may be more fuzzy, especially to a student, who may have undergone training in ethics and had some issues identified as "bad" that maybe aren't obvious. In this (contorted and invented) scenario, I can see it. Like there are "gray areas" in sexual harassment that department training clarifies and says "this is (or is not) sexual harassment." What stood out to me was the fact that he was accused his own advisor BEFORE GETTING HIS PH.D. There is just something wrong here- especially if it's gray area. It's almost like it's not your place at that time (not to mention realizing you are throwing everything away- it's not like somebody is going to pick you up). So, yeah. Weird story.
Bartweiss 10y ago
I had the same doubt, but on reflection I'm not sure how implausible it is. The article does say "fabricated", but I'm not sure that means the data was generated by sitting at Excel going "0.6 sounds nice!" When data falsification comes out, these numerically small "four of six" cases don't usually seem to represent total invention. (Some larger cases, like one of the social psych studies that tanked a few years ago, do appear to involve making up hundreds of data points from scratch.) Rather, someone drops data, or reruns an experiment a few times, or 'adjusts' a number "based on their judgement". Normally you wouldn't call it fabrication, but sometimes people do that aggressively enough to get completely-baseless results off real experiments. In that case, I can honestly see someone (perhaps short on judgement overall) suddenly realizing that something was fraud. There's a note that German talked to some people and concluded that what happened was "grave misconduct". Infamously, Millikan 'tweaked' a lot of the data for his oil drop experiment, but got results so stunningly accurate that it's hard to criticize his chosen methods. If you think you're seeing that, I guess it could be a moment of realization that you're actually seeing fraud. Obviously there's not enough information to distinguish here, and no one comes out looking pretty. But that's the best justification I could come up with for 'realizing' an ethical issue had occurred.

belovedeagle 10y ago

Come on, don't be so naive. It sounds like a pretty obvious smear job: "he deserves to be locked up, he's sexist!" And after the mere allegation of sexism, you're happy to see someone dragged from their home in the middle of the night and locked up against their will without due process! It's absolutely disgusting. The woman with delusions of assassination plots is the one who needs mental examination, and I don't think it's fair to take any of her complaints seriously given that evidence. Edit: how much you want to bet this guy's got a different skin color than his accusers?

nkurz 10y ago
I downvoted your comment because I think you are wrong to believe that there is a simple answer to this issue that can be seen from the outside. Your level of confidence would only be justified if you have inside knowledge that the rest of us lack. you're happy to see someone dragged from their home in the middle of the night I didn't see anything in the parent's comment to indicate this. I took "There doesn't seem to be enough evidence to know for sure" to express the parent's sadness at the turn of events, rather than satisfaction in the outcome. The woman with delusions of assassination plots is the one who needs mental examination Whether they are delusions or not would depend on details of what happened in the lab. Someone who files a report of academic misconduct against their advisor in the final year of their PhD and continues working in that lab is likely to exhibit signs of stress. Someone not aware of the underlying cause of this stress might reasonably conclude that the subject is behaving erratically and unpredictably. how much you want to bet this guy's got a different skin color than his accusers? Very little, but I guess it depends on who you consider to be his "accusers". If we are restricting ourselves to the members of the lab group who were referenced in the article (cross-referenced with the names in the docket), all participants appear to be of approximately the same pale skin color: http://hscrb.harvard.edu/res-fl-rubin-members http://hscrb.harvard.edu/res-fl-rubin-members. If it's true that the parties are of the same skin color, how would it affect the confidence you have in your interpretation of events? While it's possible that other ethnic or cultural issues are in play here, I think the simpler explanation is that normal relations break down in the presence of accusations of academic fraud. If you want to dive into it further, the docket referenced by the parent is interesting reading. The judge who wrote seems to feel the white male advisor unfairly took retaliatory action against the white male graduate student, and there is no mention of race or skin color being a factor. The docket no longer appears to be online, but is still present in Google's cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:86cjl1rV_t0J:https://www.socialaw.com/services/slip-opinions/slip-opinion-details/gustavo-german-plaintiff-vs.-david-lopes-cardozo-and-lee-l.-rubin-defendants+&cd=1&hl=en https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:86cjl1...

Avenger42 10y ago

> It is interesting that this article mentions German was with his parents as well. That swayed me a bit against believing that German was the real victim. This confuses me. I don't see how his parents being present affects the story.

iaw 10y ago

I read it the same way. Either, or both, sides could be bending the truth based on their perspective. The main takeaway that I have is that Rubin's lab is toxic.