They are both serious but data manipulation is a more serious issue than plagiarism

Following the last post, it is worth noting something in the Claudine Gay affair which seem to get overshadowed.  A couple of things in fact.

The first is an aspect of the plagiarism allegations.  Many defenders are latterly trying to define deviancy down (by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, another Harvard man).  Some of the allegations do seem to be trivial errors.  Many of the allegations seem mostly laziness rather than a deliberate attempt to steal someone else's ideas.  A few of the allegations do seem more substantive, more like deliberate efforts to appropriate the words and ideas of others for one's own benefit.  

Some of Gay's defenders want to make all the instances mere matters of carelessness.  I don't think that is actually a good defense and it does smack of defining deviancy down.   

While everyone seemingly is still willing to acknowledge that plagiarism as fraud (deliberately and actively misrepresenting the work of others as one's own) is wrong, the Gay defenders are trying to define deviancy down by claiming that the historic strictures currently in place in terms of protocols for citing the work of others and acknowledging sources are too strict and that Gay's clear transgressions are victimless crimes.  

Possibly, but that is not to say that there are no victims.  Gay has been in the position of enforcing those protocols on others, to the extent of expelling students who transgress those established standards.

Those defenders of Gay who are trying to work the "it was just sloppy work, no big deal" angle are deliberately ignoring that they are trying to create a two tiered form of justice.  Famous people such as Gay are held to a lighter standard than mere students who must suffer under a stricter standard.

I think for some of us, there is a separate and possibly legitimate debate about exactly how the protocols for plagiarism need to be defined.  Possibly there are some legitimate issues at the margin.  

What is not acceptable is the desire to create two different rules of law, differentially enforced.  If students were expelled from Harvard for the types of plagiarism committed, then Gay should be fired as both president and as a professor.  A nation of laws with equality before the law remains a Classical Liberal ideal worth protecting and I am repelled by those who are effectively making the counter argument.

The second issue is that there is an important distinction between plagiarism and data manipulation.  This seems to be overlooked as well.  

Gay has been accused of both plagiarism and data manipulation but all the headlines are about the plagiarism.  Plagiarism can be a serious crime   Data manipulation is definitely a scholarly crime.  At the margins there is much more gray area as to what constitutes plagiarism than there is as to what constitutes data manipulation.  It may take a while to catch it but if data manipulation has occurred, it is virtually always wrong.  

The one detailed account I read of the allegation seems to focus on a couple of instances where she might have changed the reported data from a pre-print version to the final public version.  In both instances, the data was changed in a fashion to make the conclusion stronger without any notation that the data had been changed at all.  Not an airtight accusation but a highly suggestive one, and, if true, far more serious.