Dear listeners,
The Data Colada crew is off the hook! Suspended Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino can proceed with her breach of contract claims over how the university investigated her alleged research misconduct. But she cannot sue Harvard or the researchers behind the Data Colada blog over their arguments that several of her studies contained fake data. As Judge Myong Joun explains, their analyses of her research constituted opinions based on disclosed facts — they laid out the aspects of Gino’s data that caused them to believe that it was fake, and any readers of their statements could draw their own conclusions about what those aspects meant. Thus, the statements could not be defamatory even if it were ultimately true that Gino hadn’t faked her data. This may be a surprising result, but it’s essential to allowing these kinds of academic investigations to continue — a good sign for the project of restoring research honesty in social psychology.
The New York Times, however, is not off the hook. Sarah Palin won an appeal of her loss in her defamation case against the paper, which baselessly accused her in an editorial of having inspired Gabby Giffords’ shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, through an inflammatory political mailing. Palin has a tough case — as a public figure, she’d need to show that the Times was not merely negligent but defamed her with actual malice — but a panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals said Judge Jed Rakoff made a series of major errors in the case leading up to her loss, most egregiously by issuing a directed verdict in which he answered questions that were supposed to be reserved for the jury while the jury was deliberating, causing them to learn Palin had already lost the case through push notifications on their phones. Palin will now get a new trial.
Judge Tanya Chutkan and Judge Juan Merchan have reached different conclusions about how the presidential election should affect the scheduling of the Trump criminal cases they preside over. Judge Chutkan has been clear — what’s before her is an indictment, not an election, and she’ll schedule Trump like any other defendant. But Judge Merchan has agreed to delay Trump’s sentencing in order to avoid any appearance that the action he takes is political. As Ken notes, these decisions reflect different philosophies, but also different circumstances. Judge Chutkan presides over a complex case in its early stages and needs to be on guard against what could be endless delay; Judge Merchan is already at the sentencing stage, and as he notes in his order, sentencings often get delayed for all sorts of reasons; the cost of waiting a few extra weeks is low.
Hunter Biden is pleading guilty to his tax charges, without having reached any sort of plea deal with the government. Ken and I talk about the rare circumstances in which this makes sense as a strategy, and also about Biden’s failed gambit to take an Alford plea, in which one pleads guilty without admitting guilt. Sounds weird? It is weird, judges hate it, the DOJ never agrees to it, and Biden didn’t get to do it. He’ll just have to plead guilty the regular way and hope Judge Mark Scarsi decides he’s gotten a bit of a raw deal with these prosecutions.
Plus, we take some listener questions about the Tenet Media FARA case and whether it’s okay to be an unregistered foreign agent if you’re the agent of a Belgian. And we look at the serious trouble that awaits New York Mayor Eric Adams and many of his aides.
Free subscribers get the discussions about defamation; paid subscribers get that plus the Trump case updates, Hunter Biden, FARA and more. If you’re not a paid subscriber, won’t you join us? We think you’ll enjoy the full, 51-minute version of this show.
Seriously,
Josh
