I can't comment, but it's a truly bizarre spectacle to see research integrity being upheld by three public-minded researchers (one of them based in Spain) and a defense fund on GoFundMe organized by an Australian academic. The academic publishers didn't fund them and neither did the funders of the research. We need a discussion about frameworks to fund misconduct researchers (including related legal defense), also about pressures to publish irreproducible results with mediagenic, counterfactual findings.

The entity with the least incentive to fully investigate HBS is, paradoxically... HBS itself... because questions have been raised about multiple other coauthors, the reputational and financial consequences and wrongful termination claims look set to run for a decade. Some have conjectured that whenever the full facts are finally disclosed, this scandal will take out the reputation of Harvard in general (not just HBS, or Behavioral Economics as a field, or priming), or all the Ivies, at least for business-school.

I was the victim of a pretty bizarre super in-your-face academic theft. Someone snooped a half-finished draft of mine off GitHub and...actually got it published in a real journal.

https://forbetterscience.com/2023/10/30/stephensons-alternat...

My institution completely brushed it off as a no problem, and said that it wasn't worth pursuing it at all.

It was very traumatising (and still is). I lost all faith in academia.

The universities might've deemed it to be an important enough PR situation and low risk enough to do it.

Alternatively maybe they were obligated to back them up if the work was done in their official capacity as faculty?