Institutions like Duke benefit enormously from having people like this around. They can claim they have lots of highly cited and well published researchers, a bit of controversy is free publicity, etc. They make money off him and so they defend him. It helps support the myth that they are good educational institutions. US private universities are grift mills.
replyThis happens at any scale. Manager picks a bad candidate to join the team? Well now they are responsible for the decision. Their worth is tied to their bad decision and they will defend the bad choice to the detriment others on the team. So it’s an element of Duke also defending their honor since they invited and supposedly vetted him.
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