As a scientist myself, who has been following this case for a while, and who has been a fan of data colada from before they got involved in this, I might be able to give some context.
The first is the defense of that even admitting that she did wrong, singling her out this way is wrong since everyone else did the same. But looking at the case, this is bullshit. She didn't just engage in bad statistics like everyone else. She is alleged to actually have falsified data. And I find data colada's evidence quite damning, even if it does not rise to the level of ironclad proof to demand damages from her in the court of law (not saying that it doesn't, I'm just not a lawyer so can't judge that), it should make her untrustworthy as a scientist, which effectively ends her career either way. Even the worst examples she and her defenders raise are completely different; Several are about sexual misconduct, which is firstly not about the quality of the research itself and secondly were based entirely on hearsay of the alleged victim. Her case is far, far stronger and directly concerns scientific integrity.
More similar are the cases concerning plagiarism, but again, even that is not nearly as bad as falsification (plagiarism is primarily an issue of status attribution, but generally doesn't erode trust in science itself). It's a lively discussion in itself, but there is a decent faction (which I agree with) that a large part of what we call plagiarism, mostly concerning boilerplate summaries or standard sentences included in many introductions and methods sections, should not be considered an issue at all, even if copied verbatim. Plagiarism accusation thus have among the widest range in science; On one end, you have philosophers copying the central arguments from another author and passing them off as their own, at the other end you hav, say, biomedical researchers paraphrasing the explanation of a toolset they used from a coauthor's paper in the supplemental. Both are technically plagiarism, but they are not even in the same ballpark of severity.
Btw, this also concerns Bill Ackman's creds as "major force behind the removal of ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay"; That removal was imo handled atrociously, even if I'm happy she is gone. She was effectively appointed from primarily political reasons, and she was removed for political reasons. Her plagiarism was a complete sham that nobody cared about, for good reason; For example, Gay used a description of the Voting Rights Act which closely mirrored a description in a 1999 book by David T. Canon. This is, in my experience, what literally everyone is doing when you need to summarize something for which there is already ample literature; You take what you consider the best summary, paraphrase it, maybe add (often even directly from others works, albeit again paraphrased) or remove some parts that you consider missing or unnecessary, respectively. Ironically if you try to do it "the right way", i.e. you read lots of summaries and then try to write a new one based on your own understanding, it can happen even easier to copy verbatim, because that is what's on your mind. So I'd be careful to consider Ackmann trustworthy in respect to upholding academic standards. He is a political actor.
Second, in opposition to @Pongalh and some others here, I think that singling her out for common, even if bad, behaviour, would actually be problematic if it were true. Low standards are bad; Selectively enforcing high standards only on people you have an issue with is worse. It's anarcho-tyranny, having written rules that you allow some people to flout and enforce on others, purely based on your own discretion, i.e. the written laws are in practice mostly irrelevant and it's really just discretion.
This is one of the primary vehicles how ideologies take over institutions in general, and how the left took over academia in particular. Deliberately, overtly organizing a takeover of an institution is difficult, obvious and too easy to thwart. On the other hand, simply engaging in a double standard for new applicants, especially under cover of vague gesturing towards safety and wellbeing, is easy and may only be noticed after it is too late. Again I want to contrast to simple low standards; You still let in plenty of incompetent people, but in addition to incompetence, they are also biased. That's worse, not better.
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As a scientist myself, who has been following this case for a while, and who has been a fan of data colada from before they got involved in this, I might be able to give some context.
The first is the defense of that even admitting that she did wrong, singling her out this way is wrong since everyone else did the same. But looking at the case, this is bullshit. She didn't just engage in bad statistics like everyone else. She is alleged to actually have falsified data. And I find data colada's evidence quite damning, even if it does not rise to the level of ironclad proof to demand damages from her in the court of law (not saying that it doesn't, I'm just not a lawyer so can't judge that), it should make her untrustworthy as a scientist, which effectively ends her career either way. Even the worst examples she and her defenders raise are completely different; Several are about sexual misconduct, which is firstly not about the quality of the research itself and secondly were based entirely on hearsay of the alleged victim. Her case is far, far stronger and directly concerns scientific integrity.
More similar are the cases concerning plagiarism, but again, even that is not nearly as bad as falsification (plagiarism is primarily an issue of status attribution, but generally doesn't erode trust in science itself). It's a lively discussion in itself, but there is a decent faction (which I agree with) that a large part of what we call plagiarism, mostly concerning boilerplate summaries or standard sentences included in many introductions and methods sections, should not be considered an issue at all, even if copied verbatim. Plagiarism accusation thus have among the widest range in science; On one end, you have philosophers copying the central arguments from another author and passing them off as their own, at the other end you hav, say, biomedical researchers paraphrasing the explanation of a toolset they used from a coauthor's paper in the supplemental. Both are technically plagiarism, but they are not even in the same ballpark of severity.
Btw, this also concerns Bill Ackman's creds as "major force behind the removal of ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay"; That removal was imo handled atrociously, even if I'm happy she is gone. She was effectively appointed from primarily political reasons, and she was removed for political reasons. Her plagiarism was a complete sham that nobody cared about, for good reason; For example, Gay used a description of the Voting Rights Act which closely mirrored a description in a 1999 book by David T. Canon. This is, in my experience, what literally everyone is doing when you need to summarize something for which there is already ample literature; You take what you consider the best summary, paraphrase it, maybe add (often even directly from others works, albeit again paraphrased) or remove some parts that you consider missing or unnecessary, respectively. Ironically if you try to do it "the right way", i.e. you read lots of summaries and then try to write a new one based on your own understanding, it can happen even easier to copy verbatim, because that is what's on your mind. So I'd be careful to consider Ackmann trustworthy in respect to upholding academic standards. He is a political actor.
Second, in opposition to @Pongalh and some others here, I think that singling her out for common, even if bad, behaviour, would actually be problematic if it were true. Low standards are bad; Selectively enforcing high standards only on people you have an issue with is worse. It's anarcho-tyranny, having written rules that you allow some people to flout and enforce on others, purely based on your own discretion, i.e. the written laws are in practice mostly irrelevant and it's really just discretion.
This is one of the primary vehicles how ideologies take over institutions in general, and how the left took over academia in particular. Deliberately, overtly organizing a takeover of an institution is difficult, obvious and too easy to thwart. On the other hand, simply engaging in a double standard for new applicants, especially under cover of vague gesturing towards safety and wellbeing, is easy and may only be noticed after it is too late. Again I want to contrast to simple low standards; You still let in plenty of incompetent people, but in addition to incompetence, they are also biased. That's worse, not better.
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