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Harvard behavior scientist who studied honesty accused of fabricating data

A prominent Harvard behavioral scientist who undertook studies about honesty is under fire for allegedly fabricating papers that she worked on, according to a report.

Harvard Business School’s Francesca Gino allegedly chalked up phony results tied to studies, including one focused on honest behavior, the New York Times reported.

She’s been placed on leave, according to her business school web page, which the Times reported showed she was still on the job as recently as mid-May.

She has published 135 articles since 2007, according to the Chronicle for Higher Education.

In a blog, called DataColada, run by three behavioral scientists, it alleged fraud in four academic papers that Gino co-authored.

They said they presented evidence of fraud to Harvard in the fall of 2021 tied to a 2012 paper and another three papers she was a part of.

The 2012 paper relied on three separate studies, including one that Gino spearheaded.

The paper claimed that people who fill out tax forms or insurance documents are more honest if they attest to the truth of their responses at the top of the page instead of the bottom, the Times reported.

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Study reveals that ravens were attracted to humans’ food more than 30,000 years ago

University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment team investigates human-raven relationships

Wild animals entered into diverse relationships with humans long before the first settlements were established in the Neolithic period around 10,000 years ago. An international study by researchers from the Universities of Tübingen, Helsinki and Aarhus presents new evidence that ravens helped themselves to people’s scraps and picked over mammoth carcasses left by human hunters during the Pavlovian culture more than 30,000 years ago in what is now Moravia in the Czech Republic.

The large number of raven bones found at the sites suggests that the birds in turn were a supplementary source of food, and may have become important in the culture and worldview of these people.

The study’s lead authors are Dr. Chris Baumann, who currently conducts research at the Universities of Tübingen and Helsinki, and Dr. Shumon T. Hussain from Aarhus University, an expert in the deep history of human-animal interaction, along with Professor Hervé Bocherens of the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment. The study has been published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

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Dutch unveil 4,000-year-old ‘Stonehenge’-like discovery

Dutch archaeologists on Wednesday revealed an around 4,000-year-old religious site—dubbed the “Stonehenge of the Netherlands” in the country’s media—which included a burial mound serving as a solar calendar.

The burial mound, which contained the remains of some 60 men, women and children had several passages through which the sun directly shone on the longest and shortest days of the year.

“What a spectacular archaeological discovery! Archaeologists have found a 4,000-year-old religious sanctuary on an industrial site,” the town of Tiel said on its Facebook page.

“This is the first time a site like this has been discovered in the Netherlands,” it added in a statement.

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CIA’s Extraordinary Role Influencing Liberal Media Outlets Daily Kos, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone

As a longtime investigative journalist and author, I have spent a good portion of my career researching corruption within U.S. intelligence agencies. I was nevertheless surprised to learn about the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) central role in crafting the militarized governmental response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. documents in the final chapters of his new runaway best-seller, “The Real Anthony Fauci.”

I’ve known Kennedy for more than two decades. I have interviewed him and collaborated with him on environmental articles and several books, including “Climate In Crisis.” I have great respect for his legal work and the accomplishments of his ongoing Waterkeeper Alliance. And I appreciate his dedication to alerting the public about alternative narratives related to the pandemic.

I am fully vaccinated and a believer in the efficacy of the vaccines. However, as a bedrock liberal with a deep reverence for the First Amendment and time-honored right to freedom of speech, I became alarmed that social media sites, including Instagram and YouTube, have banned Kennedy from pointing out flaws in the dominant narratives surrounding the COVID crisis.

In my view, Kennedy has been falsely vilified as an anti-vaccination disinformation “conspiracy theorist.” Blanket censorship by mainstream media seems to prohibit him from responding to such attacks.

And it disturbs me that once-idealistic liberal media outlets have devolved into apologists for the pharmaceutical industry (including its captured public health technocrats), as well as their stifling of any dissent. Why the vitriol against Kennedy, I wondered, from leading liberal news websites such as Daily Kos, The Daily Beast, and more recently, Rolling Stone?

A The Daily Beast headline appearing one year before the pandemic set the tone (Feb. 8, 2019): “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. spouts his insane anti-vaxxer conspiracy theory in measles hot zone.”

Seeming to borrow a page from the CIA’s propaganda manuals, the liberal blogs have employed the signature trope of portraying opposition to official theology as the dangerous product of right-wing extremism.

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Illinois Gives $300,000 to BLM Group That Appears to Be Inactive

Despite being crime ridden, over-taxed and hemorrhaging citizens (and their tax dollars) in favor of red states, Illinois apparently has enough money to provide $300,000 to a BLM group that appears to be mostly inactive.

A recent Wirepoints analysis of Internal Revenue Service migration data shows the exodus from the state.

This comes at a time that Chicago’s public pension system is in dire straits.

According to a report from Equable Institute, Chicago’s core public pensions, which include municipal, laborers, police, fire and the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund, hold more debt than 44 states with a combined pension debt of nearly $48 billion.

Yet lawmakers thought this was a good time to include a $300,000 grant to Black Lives Matter Lake County, a group that critics suggest appears to be mostly inactive,  and is headed by a leader that is alleged to have had  run-ins with police.

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The Biden family’s long history of skirting the law, sweetheart deals

Hunter Biden’s slap-on-the-wrist plea deal after failing to pay taxes on millions of dollars in income, and a felony gun charge he won’t be prosecuted for, follows a long history of Biden family members running afoul of the law — and skating.

Hunter Biden, 53, could have faced felonies for both his tax charges — and a multitude of other crimes evidenced on his abandoned laptop.

Instead, he pled guilty to just two misdemeanor tax offenses, virtually guaranteeing he will not see the inside of a jail cell.

“The Biden family are beginning to make the Medicis look like small-time operators,” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.

“That fact that it took over five years to even secure a plea on a couple of small misdemeanors is a testament to a family that has leveraged Joe Biden public positions into a fortune of foreign influence peddling.”

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House Democrats want taxpayers to cover costs of abortion travel, lodging, ‘escorts’

House Democrats want taxpayers to pick up the tab for a host of abortion-related services, including travel, hotels, childcare, “escorts” and “doula care,” as part of a bill timed to the one-year anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson.

The Abortion Justice Act, sponsored by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts Democrat, would circumvent the Hyde Amendment’s ban on federal funds for abortion by earmarking $350 million annually for grants to “increase abortion access or support individuals who need abortion access.”

That includes covering “both the direct costs of the care and associated costs of travel, lodging, and childcare,” as well as “patient navigators,” “linguistically appropriate and culturally competent legal assistance,” “the full spectrum of doula care,” and “escorts to support abortion seekers as they access care.”

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Wagner’s March on Moscow Halted as Belarus’ Lukashenko Negotiates Stand Down with Prigozhin

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, one of the chief allies of Vladimir Putin, has reportedly brokered a deal with Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin to stop the paramilitary group’s advances towards Moscow.

Following negotiations that are said to have lasted the entire day, Aleksandr Lukashenko has claimed to have struck an agreement with the Wagner Private Military Company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, to stop his forces from marching on Moscow and work to “de-escalate tensions”, according to Belarussian state media BelTA.

The deal — which was reached as Wagner forces reportedly were within striking distance of the Russian capital — was struck as both the Belarussians and the Wagner leader agreed that it was “unacceptable to start a bloodbath in Russia’s territory.”

Lukashenko claimed that the two sides had come to an “absolutely advantageous and acceptable” way to end the situation, which will reportedly include safety guarantees for Wagner forces.

It remains to be seen, however, if any assurances were given personally to Prigozhin, who Russia’s Federal Security Service charged for allegedly orchestrating an “armed rebellion” against Moscow. Should Prigozhin not receive such assurances, the Belarussian-brokered deal may be short-lived.

Earlier in the day, Vladimir Putin called on Prigozhin to turn himself him and “answer” for his “betrayal” of the nation, statements that will likely be hard for the Russian leader to walk back without appearing weak, further complicating matters.

For his part, Prigozhin responded that Putin was “mistaken”, claiming that Wagner was not attempting a coup and that his band of mercenaries are “patriots” merely interested in “justice” for the alleged strikes against their forces in Ukraine by the Russian military top brass after Prigozhin refused to give up leadership of his private army to the Kremlin.

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16 Bombshells on Hunter Biden From The IRS Whistleblowers

Two IRS whistleblowers leveled serious allegations about Hunter Biden and the government’s investigation of the troubled first son, according to transcripts of testimony released this week.

The whistleblowers, IRS supervisory criminal investigator Gary Shapley and a second unnamed IRS investigator, provided evidence to the House Ways and Means Committee that top Justice Department officials stonewalled an investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business ventures. They also call into question President Biden’s repeated denials that he has no knowledge of his son’s business dealings.

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The Supreme Court’s latest opinion means innocent people must remain in prison

The Supreme Court just ruled that at least some federal prisoners who are completely innocent must serve out their entire sentence, with no meaningful way to challenge their unlawful conviction.

One of the most fundamental principles of criminal law is that no one may be convicted of a crime unless the legislature previously passed a law making their actions illegal. If there is no law on the books that, say, marijuana possession is unlawful, then a judge cannot toss someone in jail because they were found with a joint.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Jones v. Hendrix, handed down Thursday, does not directly attack this foundational principle. Instead, it does so indirectly by prohibiting many prisoners from ever challenging their convictions in court.

The case centers on Marcus DeAngelo Jones, a federal prisoner who was convicted in 2000 of possessing a firearm after being convicted of a felony. Nineteen years later, in Rehaif v. United States (2019), the Supreme Court held that no one may be convicted under this felon-in-possession statute unless they knew they had a felony conviction at the time that they possessed the gun.

Jones says that he (incorrectly, but genuinely) believed that his previous felony conviction had been expunged when he purchased a gun, and thus his conviction was invalid under Rehaif. In essence, he claims that no federal law criminalized his possession of a firearm, because he did not know he had a felony conviction.

Thanks to Thomas’s opinion in Jones, however, we will never know if Rehaif invalidates Jones’s conviction — that is, if he is innocent of the crime that caused him to spend nearly a quarter-century in prison — because the Court held that Jones may not challenge his conviction at all.

The reason why is a federal law, known as Section 2255, which ordinarily prevents federal prisoners from challenging their conviction or sentence more than once.

After he was sentenced, but before Rehaif raised a cloud of doubt over whether Jones belonged in prison at all, Jones successfully petitioned a federal court to vacate part of his sentence. Thomas’s opinion holds that Jones’s pre-Rehaif challenge to his sentence blew his only chance to challenge his conviction — even though Jones couldn’t have known before Rehaif was decided that he had a potentially valid claim that he is innocent.

Section 2255 contains several exceptions which allow some federal prisoners to bring a second challenge — one of which provides that Jones may bring a second challenge if § 2255’s usual process “is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.”

But Thomas construes this “inadequate or ineffective” language very narrowly — so narrowly, in fact, that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson mocks Thomas in her dissenting opinion for ruling that someone like Jones may only seek relief “if the courthouse where a § 2255 motion would have otherwise been filed has burned to the ground or been carried away by a mudslide.”

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