Last week news came forth that a study about attitudes regarding same-sex marriage was bogus.
Now it gets even … “better.”
It’s now been revealed that (UCLA graduate student) researcher Michael LaCour also fabricated sources of grants he “received” for his “work,” and created a fake teaching award.
Virginia Hughes of BuzzFeed reported last week that spokespeople for three of the sources listed in the acknowledgements sections of the study — the Ford Foundation, the Williams Institute at UCLA, and the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr., Fund — told her that their organizations hadn’t actually contributed funds to LaCour’s research.
The largest of these is a $160,000 grant in 2014 from the Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation of Minnesota. But Patrick J. Troska, executive director of the foundation, which is focused on projects that combat discrimination, wrote in an email to Science of Us, “The Foundation did not provide a grant of any size to Mr. LaCour for this research. We did not make a grant of $160,000 to him.”
It appears the fabrication extends to another part of his CV, too: the “Awards & Fellowships” section.
In that section, he lists as one of his awards: “Emerging Instructor Award, UCLA Office of Instructional Development, 2013-2014. One of three UCLA graduate student instructors selected for excellence in their first year of teaching” (formatting his). But a staffer in the office of instructional development told Science of Us that it does not give out an award of that name.
Science of Us’s Jesse Singal notes that since contacting LaCour, the graduate student’s website was briefly taken down, then put back up — now excluding the ersatz award.
UCLA’s site still has it listed, however.
h/t to Instapundit.
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
IMAGE: Branchman/Flickr
Please join the conversation about our stories on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, MeWe, Rumble, Gab, Minds and Gettr.