They’ve been hammering away at the research misconduct at some of the president’s neuroscience labs, and he has been as high-handed and obnoxious with the little buggers as you’d imagine. But the school journalists were right on the money. They persisted, and they brought the dude down. The school’s investigation found “repeated instances of manipulation of research data and/or subpar scientific practices from different people and in labs run by Dr. Tessier-Lavigne at different institutions.”

[Stanford’s] investigation [of Marc Tessier-Lavigne] took eight months, with one member stepping off after The Daily revealed that he maintained an $18 million investment in a biotech company Tessier-Lavigne cofounded. Reporting by The Daily this week shows that some witnesses to an alleged incident of fraud during Tessier-Lavigne’s time at the biotechnology company Genentech refused to cooperate because investigators would not guarantee them anonymity, even though they were bound by nondisclosure agreements.

Of course some sleuthing would turn up a financial conflict of interest on the committee: that’s SOOOO Stanford. And as to the skeeziness on protecting the identity of sources — why wouldn’t the committee guarantee anonymity, given the Genentech people’s legal vulnerability?

Much of the writing and reporting for the Daily has come from the genetically overdetermined Theo Baker.

This page has links to Baker’s reporting on Tessier-Lavigne.

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A comment in response to an article in the NYT:

In three successive labs headed by this man, data was manipulated (ie, fraudulent). The connecting link is Lavigne, who apparently rewarded post-docs who produced findings that advanced his career, and penalized those who couldn’t do so. The obvious conclusion is that he consistently cut corners and closed his eyes to what his behavior led underlings to do. And when the misconduct began to surface, he simply refused to issue the necessary corrections. He is not a victim or some innocent party here. His research was shabby and he has now got what he deserves: loss of his primary job and his reputation.

Devoted readers know that UD‘s birthday coincides with the height of the Perseids, the best of the meteor showers. This year, the two big events will take place on Tilghman Island. Here’s hoping for some clear nights.

But I think we’re winning it.

She forgot to list Windsor, for a work gathering.

The rest of it was meeting up with friends, attending a wedding,

and exploring Lisbon, which she’s been wanting to visit.

We focus, at University Diaries, on the notoriously stinky field of psychology; what a comfort to know that dangerous fraud runs rampant in many fields of scientific research.

Saul Fox, whose name emblazons a fancy professorship at U Penn, has got some splainin to do. How did the lamps get from his custody to some crapper in Mar-A-Lago?

The logic of integralism is straightforward. There is no neutral ground on fundamental questions of God, good and evil, and the purpose of human life. Political conflict entails conflict about these ultimate things, integralists argue. Accordingly, they view public institutions, social structures and religion as an integral whole. Nothing is truly private. Everything affects the common good; there is no private life or private conscience. The resulting vision is of a hierarchical society with concentrated power, close coordination between church and state, and public regulation of religious orthodoxy… [In short,] the Catholic Church should strategically co-opt the American state. The result would be a return of state-sanctioned religion and a politics that is at once socially conservative, statist and economically populist… [The ultimate goal of all human life] is heaven, and the integralist means of getting us to that destination is to subordinate politics to the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church.

UD so wishes her hero Richard Rorty were still around to do a number on these lost souls.

(For background, search Vermeule and Deneen on UD‘s search engine.)

[I]n this unpredictable era of reproductive health care in the U.S., Maryland is about as safe a place an abortion provider can be.

UD has always been rather proud to be a Marylander, but never so much as now, when the gulf between Tommy Tuberville and Jamie Raskin states has never been wider.

… are part of the pleasure of gardening.

What a distinction for Harvard, which gets a prominent mention every time Alan Dershowitz steps in another pile of shit, that he’s now been sanctioned for his involvement in Lake’s frivolous, time-wasting, and destructive suit against the integrity of Arizona’s electoral system. Hard to think of a more embarrassing old fart than Harvard’s highest-profile emeritus.

Only twenty years old, she was found unresponsive in an off-campus house.

Police have ruled out anything suspicious, which leaves

1. suicide
2. overdose
3. underlying, previously unknown, health issue.

Background on NMSU.

… on which Raskin and a co-signer of the letter sit. They call for an investigation into how it came to be that the committee chair brought disgrace and embarrassment to the committee by enthusiastically sponsoring a witness/whistleblower who turns out to be a career criminal on the lam from the cops.

We are concerned that an official committee of the House of Representatives has been manipulated by an apparent con man who, while a fugitive from justice, attempted to fortify his defense by laundering unfounded and potentially false allegations through Congress. Although [Gal] Luft has been on the run for months, you touted him as a ‘potential witness’ and even prepared to interview him as part of your investigation. As recently as Friday, you described Mr. Luft as ‘a very credible witness’ about matters relating to the President’s son’s financial dealings with Chinese companies.’ … [We ask that you] immediately initiate an investigation into whether the Committee may have been unwittingly duped by Mr. Luft in furtherance of the Chinese Communist Party’s interests [he’s an unregistered agent!], as well as any potentially false statements made by Mr. Luft to Members of Congress or congressional staff.

INTERVIEWER

But why would a novelist want to deprive himself of the right to express his philosophy overtly and assertively in his novel?

KUNDERA

Because he has none! People often talk about Chekhov’s philosophy, or Kafka’s, or Musil’s. But just try to find a coherent philosophy in their writings! Even when they express their ideas in their notebooks, the ideas amount to intellectual exercises, playing with paradoxes, or improvisations rather than to assertions of a philosophy. And philosophers who write novels are nothing but pseudonovelists who use the form of the novel in order to illustrate their ideas. Neither Voltaire nor Camus ever discovered “that which the novel alone can discover.” …

[M]y intention is to give [philosophical] reflections a playful, ironic, provocative, experimental, or questioning tone. All of part six of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (“The Grand March”) is an essay on kitsch which expounds one main thesis: kitsch is the absolute denial of the existence of shit. This meditation on kitsch is of vital importance to me. It is based on a great deal of thought, experience, study, and even passion. Yet the tone is never serious; it is provocative. This essay is unthinkable outside of the novel, it is a purely novelistic meditation…

My lifetime ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form. Nor is this purely an artistic ambition. The combination of a frivolous form and a serious subject immediately unmasks the truth about our dramas (those that occur in our beds as well as those that we play out on the great stage of History) and their awful insignificance. We experience the unbearable lightness of being.

No, not languages. You’re a smart kid from Nowheresville who got into Harvard. You’re totally able to learn languages.

What you need to learn is languidity. Someone needs to demonstrate to you how to be swish, posh, and highborn, even though you went to public school in Akron. You will not get taken on at Cravath Swain if you can’t learn languid.

Languid is Algernon in Earnest; languid is George in Who’s Afraid; languid is Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion, and Lady Utterwood in Heartbreak.

Languid in the real world is Gore Vidal, George Plimpton, and Lady Emily Lennox. All of these are your models. Or, you know.

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As pointed out by a number of defenders of legacy admissions, the overarching value in your going to Harvard among America’s aristocrats is that by watching them at close daily quarters you can learn how to throw off Akron and assume Cambridge (either England or America). You can learn to absorb upper class attributes, primary among them a steady unflappable sangfroid.

You come from the jumpy world that supplies COPS footage. You are going to need to scrub all of that and calm way the hell down.

A fellowship year in England will further refine your languidity and is highly recommended.

All of this does indeed constitute one of the few reasonable defenses of legacy admits you’ll encounter: Without a critical mass of uppers at the Ivies, America’s middles will have a harder time getting to the top.