(PM.) A renowned criminology professor who “proved” that racism is systemic in America’s law enforcement and American society has been fired for faking data and his studies have now been retracted.
Eric Stewart, 51, a now former criminology professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee, is now out of work due to “extreme negligence” in his research. According to Google Scholar, Stewart and his work were cited over 8,500 times by other researchers.
Now, the WEB DuBois fellow at the National Institute of Justice is out of a job on account of “extreme negligence and incompetence.”
Retraction Watch obtained the termination letter from the university, which said that due to Stewart’s conduct “decades of research” previously thought “to be at the forefront” of the field of criminology has “been shown to contain numerous erroneous and false narratives.”
In the July 13 letter that informed Stewart of his termination, FSU Provost James J. Clark wrote, “The details of problematic data management, false results, and the numerous publication retractions have negatively affected the discipline on a national level.”
Clark noted that Stewart’s actions had also impacted the recruitment of students and faculty and that now the university’s researchers are concerned that their papers will not be published in major journals writing in the termination latter, “The damage to the standing of the University and, in particular, the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice and its faculty approaches the catastrophic and may be unalterable.” Clark added, “I do not see how you can teach our students to be ethical researchers or how the results of future research projects conducted by you could be deemed as trustworthy adding that six of the studies had been retracted while his other work was “in doubt.”
Stewart, who was a vice president and fellow at the American Society of Criminology, which honored him as one of four highly distinguished criminologists in 2017, was fired after nearly 2 decades of his data was found to have “false results,” which included information used in his study in which he claimed that the history of lynchings made whites perceive blacks are criminals and that the issue was more prevalent among those who are politically conservative.
Stewart’s studies in which he claimed that whites wanted longer sentences for Latinos and blacks had to be retracted. Stewart stated in the work “…that this effect will be greater among whites… where socioeconomic disadvantage and political conservatism are greater.”
A 2018 study which has now also been retracted suggested that because white Americans perceive Latinos and blacks as “criminal threats,” that perception could lead to “state-sponsored social control.”
Stewart claimed in a 2015 study which has now been retracted that Americans desired harsher sentences for Latinos because their numbers were increasing and they were becoming more successful economically. Stewart concluded that “Latino population growth and perceived Latino criminal and economic threat significantly predict punitive Latino sentiment.”
Stewart’s research also delved into the relationship between incarceration and divorce, street violence, the impact of tough neighborhoods on adolescents, whether street gardens reduce crime, and how race impacts student discipline in schools.
