Comment by steelframe
4 years ago
Some people are questioning whether banning the entire university is an appropriate response. It sounds to me like there are systemic institutional issues that they need to address, and perhaps banning them until they can sort those out wouldn't be an entirely unreasonable thing to do.
I think banning them for now is appropriate. Its a shot across their bow to let them know they have done something wrong. Moving forward if it was me I'd later re-evaluate such a wide ban because of the collateral damage. But at the same time, there needs to be redress for wrongdoing since they were actually caught. I'd definitely not re-evaluate until apology and some kind of "we won't waste time like this again" agreement or at least agreed-upon understanding is in place. Whatever shape that needs to be.
As for systematic issues, I'm not sure. But moving forward they'd want to confirm there aren't glaring omissions to let this happen again. Giving them suitable Benefit-of-doubt niceties might imply these are isolated cases. (But both of them?! Perhaps isolated to a small group of academics.)
Messy situation.
The university should be policing its researchers. Banning the whole university reinforces the incentive to do so. Otherwise the fact that a contribution comes from a university researcher would bear no added trust versus a layperson.
The ban was 100% political. Greg wanted to shine the spotlight as negatively as possible on the bad faith actors so enough pressure can be out on them to be dismissed. I guarantee hell reinstitute it the moment these people are let go.