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

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...