P sent an article to a scientific journal falsifying the sample on which its content was based: most of its cases had never existed. DF has been able to contrast oral and written sources that demonstrate this falsification and that P himself has admitted. This is one of the most serious misconducts that can be committed in the scientific community, which is based on the confidence that the data provided by the researcher are true. Precisely for this reason, the scientific community loses all its confidence when someone falsifies this data and it is discovered, which is what almost always ends up happening in the current information society. P could have rectified and publicly acknowledged his mistake and committed not to do it again.
As neither recognizing the truth showed the slightest self-criticism, nor willing to not do it again, his research group had to expel him. From that moment on, the main objective of P was to slander that group, mistakenly believing that it could destroy it, thus avoiding the testimony of his falsifications.
He knew that he could not do it alone and because of this, he looked for help in the lobby of sexual harassers of the University, who were preparing a public lynching against that group for having been the one who broke the silence on gender violence in our universities. That lobby had co-allied with journalists who were looking for easy success with news they knew were lies, but which generated a morbid expectation that would give them a large audience.
This was not P’s first action against the ethical values agreed in democratic societies and in the scientific community. In fact, two previous times he had acted against those values. Both times he had been expelled and he had reacted by committing himself not to do it again and begging to be able to continue in the group. However, when he falsified the sample and was finally expelled, he sheltered himself in anonymity and, in co-alliance with journalists who knew why he was lying, he spread through the media that he had never been allowed to leave the group, just the opposite to what had actually happened.
* This article is part of Omertá in the University, a series of publications that address the fierce law of silence that has been generated in some universities around sexual harassment.
