Why Is Jesse Singal Whitewashing Harvard's Corruption?
Is he simply butthurt that I scooped him? Or is something more nefarious going on?
Yesterday, Jesse Singal wrote a hit-piece on me called How Not To Cover A Social Science Controversy in response to my EXCLUSIVE: Leaked Report Shows Harvard Professor Fabricated Data. The intention of his piece is obvious — Singal is giving cover to Harvard to sweep corruption under the rug. Let me explain.
First and foremost, though, thank you Jesse for the visibility boost! As a smaller Substack writer, the exposure from being featured on your top Substack publication is invaluable. Please consider subscribing for free to my Substack:
I know many of you love Singal, and think he is a genius. Heck, maybe you even listen his edgy culture wars podcast, “Blocked and Reported”. Great, another snarky guy with a culture wars podcast who thinks he is better than other people. I can assure you, none of you are as impressed with his intelligence as he is. This guy is just insufferable, and he’s a bully. Yes, dear reader, as is the case with most people who write for NYT and The Atlantic, you can rest assured that Jesse Singal loves the smell of his own farts.
Gosh, do you think a NYT/Atlantic writer might be biased against the Daily Caller? Is that possible?
In his latest piece, Singal sticks to attacking me personally, and ignores the missing Chicago precints data (which is the smoking gun!!!) altogether. No, seriously, his article is so weak that it doesn’t even mention the smoking gun data flaw. Let me repeat once more for emphasis: his article didn’t ackowledge the existence of the most important data inconsistency in this case.
🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 This is a huge red flag and indicates perhaps Singal isn’t an intellectually honest actor. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
Why would Singal want to shift the conversation away from the 800+ missing precincts in the Chicago dataset? Why make this about me? Why muddy the waters like that? Are there ulterior motives here?
Instead of talking about the Chicago data, he spends his article chasing red herrings and knocking down strawmen, all the while delivering a preachy sermon on ethics and professionalism. Singal’s main point seems to boils down to “you shouldn’t point fingers! That isn’t professional!” Well, guess what. The finger has already been pointed. Now the onus is on Ryan Enos to explain himself. J’ACCUSE!
Why didn’t you mention the 800+ missing precincts in Chicago, Jesse? This is the single most important fact in this case. Did you omit this because you have an agenda, or are you simply incompetent and unable to parse what is important in a dataset? The latter could be true, as you admit you never really looked into it this deeply:
"I should also note that I don’t love writing this type of halfway article where I criticize another journalist’s efforts but don’t fully investigate the claims myself,"
— Jesse Singal, yesterday
Okay… so… he is lobbing grenades at me while not even writing a piece on, mentioning, or understanding the single most important fact. Fucking hilarious.
Who is really the one playing it fast and loose here, J-dawg?
Not that Singal has the technical chops to put this puzzle together even if he wanted to in the first place… although a smart STEM undergrad could. Again, Singal is an utter wordcel who needs someone else to do his quantitative analysis for him. Can he run simple code? Can he merge two dataframes? I don’t know — I am too lazy to google to see if he has a github profile or whatever, but something tells me he has the quantitative skills of a potato. Singal really needs to rely on 3rd party experts when it comes to investigating data. I looked at his LinkedIn: philosophy + public policy school, followed by a career as a mainstream journalist. Sorry, Jesse, but some of us can easily read the straightforward R code in the leaked document. Learn to code.
Putting on my psychoanalyst hat here for a second: I think a big part of the reason Singal is so insecure + defensive here is that he can’t read the data/code himself and relies 100% on info from his elite sources to tell him what to think. He is too cowardly and lacking in technical skills to form his own opinion, and too lazy to put in the leg work (I heard he spoke to a grand total of 3 professors on background — I spoke with dozens). So he takes this frustration out on me in a hit-piece.
It puzzles me why Singal likes to portray himself as an authority on data. Why should anyone listen to yet another smug, preachy journalist with a public policy degree? I bet he unironically refers to himself as a “policy wonk.” He thinks he is hot shit because he broke the LaCour data scandal in 2016. He was clearly expecting this Enos data fabrication story to fall into his lap and be his next LaCour scoop, handed to him on a silver platter by Andrew Gelman. Here is what Gelman had to say about this case:
It would have been mathematically impossible for the maximum number of non-voters in a subsample, however peculiar, to exceed the official number of non-voters for the entire sample.
This seems like a big deal.
— Andrew Gelman
I broke the story on a Sunday night. On Monday morning, Singal send me an annoyed email. “I was actually looking into the same story,” he passive-aggressively clucks in my inbox. He follows up this clucking with a bitchy tweet:
I would argue that he badly botched *his* hitpiece by not even mentioning the smoking gun Chicago data once. Shameful. Really shameful stuff, Jesse.
He accuses me of botching this story. For who? Oh… okay. I botched Singal’s story with Chronicle of Higher Education. It is starting to make sense now. How dare I wander onto Jesse’s turf.
Sorry, J-dawg, but you were too slow. Maybe you are getting old.
“I woke up yesterday having decided to email my Chronicle editor and suggest we drop the story,” he kvetched on Twitter. “I am the victim here!”
While he is obviously being playfully sarcastic/ironic in this tweet, IMO it is revealing nonetheless. We are blessed with a little window into his mind. He clearly hates that I scooped what he considers to be “his” story, he is defending his little fiefdom. He is a petty, jealous little man.
Singal then tries desperately to discredit the source of these rumours, www.poliscirumors.com. He brushes this website aside as if it were a tinfoil hat conspiracy; something so kooky as not to even be entertained by serious people. Any tip or lead or rumour originating there is automatically trash that can’t formally be followed up on. Misinformation, even!
Three different people independently described PSR to me as a “cesspool.” No one knows exactly who the site’s primary denizens are, because hardly anyone will admit to perusing it, but it seems to skew young — mostly political-science grad students and untenured professors. While the ostensible purpose of PSR is to provide information about job openings, posts on it have a tendency to devolve into attacks, rumor-mongering, and bitterness fueled by an apocalyptic academic job market. “It is essentially the 4chan of political science,” a political-science researcher told me via email.
— Jesse Singal, yesterday
Yes, Singal is wayyyyy too professional to ever associate with www.poliscirumors.com… right? Surely, he himself would never deign to solicit a story from there?
Lmao. Here is a thread posted by Jesse Singal 6 years ago where he gets down on his knees and begs www.poliscirumors.com for leads:
So… Singal discredits me as unreliable because I use www.poliscirumors.com as a source, refuses to follow up on any leads from this website out of “professionalism,” and then it turns out that he himself famously used the exact same source 6 years ago to break an eerily similar story? He begged www.poliscirumors.com for help when it was convenient for him — literally asked them “where to go next?” — and now he denigrates me for doing the same? Eat shit, hypocrite. It reminds me of how Noah Smith began his career blogging on EJMR and now that he is mainstream he pretends like EJMR is cancer. Sorry, Noah and Jesse. This is who you are. You troll on anonymous bodybuilding forums just like I do. That is where you got your start. Accept it.
Did Singal think we forgot this thread from 6 years ago?
Not only has Singal revealed himself to be a total hypocrite, but also a huge coward. I presented him this set of inflammatory — albeit anonymous and baseless — accusations. An anonymous tip with a plausible narrative. Surely any honest journalist following this story would want to know if this paragraph is true, right?
How does Singal react to this tip? Like it would be the craziest thing in the world to follow up with Harvard to confirm the facts. Like *I* am the crazy one for wanting to find out if this paragraph is true. Jesse Singal refuses to confirm these facts with Harvard — once again blaming his lack of interest on the truth on “decorum” and “professionalism”.
I know you are reading this, Jesse. Why don’t you ask Harvard to confirm what I sent you? Are you interested in the truth, or not? At the very least — surely it would be egg on my face if this anonymous tip turned out to be totally wrong, right? Don’t you want to dunk on me? You have all the incentive in the world to get Harvard to debunk this supposedly baseless statement. Why don’t you do it? Are you afraid it might be true? Are you afraid this narrative might make elites at Harvard look silly? I noticed you yourself have Princeton pedigree… I guess Ivy league bros protect their own, eh? Bros helping bros?
Instead of mentioning the smoking gun data even one time, he spends time bullying me about employment.
I never intended to post this email in public, but now that Singal is so publicly bullying me about my employment status, I want it on the record. Here is an email I sent yesterday about quitting (not being fired from) the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Interpret this email however you wish.
So, I guess I no longer work at the Daily Caller News Foundation — I flamed out after a grand total of 10 weeks. Haha. I guess that was predictable. Back to Substack. Please consider subscribing:
Wrapping things up… how do I feel about yet another pugilistic encounter with yet another snarky culture war podcaster/blogger? I walk away feeling underwhelmed. There is like a 5% chance I think Singal is a Straussian/Macheavellian mastermind who is stirring up public drama with me to raise the profile of this case so as to seek truth & justice at Harvard. If so — kudos — please carry on😉.
Sadly, I think he is not nearly based enough, slick enough, or interesting enough to pull off a tactic like that. Occam’s razor dictates that he is throwing a temper tantrum simply because I scooped him, and in the process of spazzing out, he sees an opportunity for himself to earn some goodboypoints from the Harvard elite while also being snarky and contrarian. Yawn. Another petty, vindictive, insecure, defensive, snarky, elitist, east-coast journalist? How cliché. When he initially dunked on me, I will admit my heart was aflutter; I secretly hoped he could’ve made for a worthy nemesis and sparring partner. I had such high hopes for him, but his shit turned out to be weaksauce. Wow, who’d have thunk it. The manipulative “culture wars” blogger who writes for New York magazine, The New York Times and The Atlantic turns out to be an elitist hack. Color me shocked.
I can only hope that Singal doesn’t succeed in providing the plausible deniability to the Harvard administration to whom he so eagerly seeks to ingratiate himself. It will be a shame if they succeed in sweeping this story under the rug because of Singal’s whitewashing attempt.
Why is Enos Still Silent?
It has been several days since Ryan Enos was publicly accused of fabricating data.
How has he responded to these accusations? By ignoring questions, scrubbing data from the internet, and going incommunicado on Twitter.
Is that how an innocent person acts?
You can be sure that if someone publicly accused *me* of fabricating data — and these were baseline accusations — I would immediately and loudly come to my own defence. In fact, that is what I am doing right now. Last night, in his takedown piece, Jesse directly questioned my integrity, and here I am less than 24 hours later vocally standing up for myself. That is how an innocent person acts.
Why is Ryan Enos silent? Why can’t he stand up for himself? Why does he need Singal to stand up on his behalf?
Earlier I called Singal a “huge coward.” Now I feel it is appropriate to call out Enos as a “huge pussy.” Defend yourself, Enos. Stand up and tell the world publically where the 800+ missing precincts in your dataset went. Give us a good explanation for this missing data, or retract your paper. The choice is yours. The silence, so far, is deafening. Every passing day you look more guilty.
P.S. I am working on formally replicating several Enos papers. That will take weeks/months. If anyone wants to help me with this replication effort, feel free to get in touch chrisbrunet@protonmail.com or text me 239-201-7405.
I started reading Singal's public tweets last year--don't remember how I found him, but current affairs are of particular interest in our current Era of Horrors so one Twitter acct. tends to lead to another.
His entire shtick, as it took me a bit of time to discover, is to be the reasonable man who wades bravely into the controversy du jour with the mantle of "I'm not mad at anyone and just want to understand." I read the piece and Twitter threads on the "trans" ongoing madness and began to feel a certain "earnest adorable puppy gently self-mocking insecure nerd-intellectual who never means any harm" persona working somewhat against any sort of intellectual rigor and strength of character. A sort of "wise man whose any mistakes come from naivete and not malice."
No--guy's a piece of crap. And I have found with great surprise that sites like Daily Caller, which I'd been conditioned to perceive as the bowels of hell, do in fact do some damned good journalism--not always, but when you're good you're good. (I may have found Jesse originally via Twitchy, which I've found an extremely useful signpost to interesting reads, though they don't always fully hit their targets. But who does?)
Reading your resignation letter, I wanted to offer approbation for being honest and leaving when you knew it wasn't working out. People often take such things very negatively, but there are many different types of company cultures and not all are going to work equally well with every person. (Some are probably poison to just about everyone.)
I am glad you are writing here on Substack; I have seen a lot of really bad academic stuff myself, and it is good to have the corruption demonstrated to a wider audience.