Talk:Geoffrey Marcy

Comments Welcome

Comments Welcome - re the "Geoffrey Marcy" article - a "WP:BLP" article afaik - is all *entirely* ok with the content of this article? - and in agreement with the very best policies of Wikipedia? - or not? - is there some better way of presenting the content of the article? - please understand that it's *entirely* ok with me to rm/rv/mv/ce my edits of course - Thanking you in advance for your help with this - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 23:36, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

BRIEF Followup - related relevant comments are copied below - hope this helps in some way - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 02:23, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Copied from "User talk:Drbogdan#Help me!":

--Help me!-- { {help me-helped}}

Please help me with... the "Geoffrey Marcy" article - a "WP:BLP" article afaik - is all *entirely* ok with the content of this article? - and in agreement with the very best policies of Wikipedia? - or not? - is there some better way of presenting the content of the article? - please understand that it's *entirely* ok with me to rm/rv/mv/ce my edits of course - Thanking you in advance for your help with this - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 23:25, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Are there any parts of the content you are particularly concerned about? I don't think you can expect someone to give the blanket approval you're looking for. I'd say the article inappropriately relies on primary sources and gives far too many quotes. It also seems to give a one-sided account of the sexual harassment issue, with Marcy's and his supporters' reactions covered in detail and the inappropriate conduct itself barely mentioned. I don't think that can be considered neutral coverage. Huon (talk) 00:57, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

@Huon: Thank you *very much* for your comments - they're *greatly* appreciated - seems you've covered all my concerns re the article - and more - your comments seem sufficiently worthy imo to be copied to "Talk:Geoffrey Marcy#Comments Welcome" - to help interested editors - please let me know if otherwise of course - Thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 02:08, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Woefully insufficient regarding his behavior

I'm not touching the article directly because I was way too involved, but despite them being recent events, there needs to be significantly more focus on substantiated allegations against Geoff that he, over a period of multiple decades, committed criminal sexual assaults against his students. This isn't a 1E issue - it's been picked up by way too many outlets (including in at least a dozen languages) or 1E issues to be a worry. He's not only been condemned by his own faculty, he's been condemned by the President of his own academic society, has been entangled with corruption among UCB's administration, has had public condemnations of his behavior (and UCB's admin) issued by an Australian astronomer with familiarity with his behavior, has been condemned by over 3,000 people who are primarily academics in related fields, and has been condemned in public by multiple prominent UCB faculty members, as well as entire departments at other schools. Although [www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1768 Michael Eisen]'s blog is an SPS and unusuable, Ellen Simms, prominent IB prof at UCB had published an oped in the Daily Cal, which has generally been found to meet the standards of WP:RS. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:49, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

• Correcting my original edit, since Michael Eisen's piece also ran on a UCB blog that has editorial supervision (though allows opinion, which is perfectly in compliance with NPOV,) Eisen's piece is usable (and in the article currently). Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:32, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Stick to the facts

You note that Marcy "committed criminal sexual assaults against his students". This statement is factually incorrect on two counts. 1) Touching someone on the shoulder is not a crime, neither is kissing someone on the cheek or making someone "feel uncomfortable". No matter how inaccurately it was reported in the media, this behavior does not qualify as "criminal sexual assault." 2) None of the complainants were "his students". He did not have a supervisory role over any of them.

Eisen's blog is opinion and doesn't belong as a reference. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WaterEarthFlowers (talk • contribs) 07:02, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• Hi Water: Wikipedia articles try to follow a neutral point of view, and are guided by reliable sources. Please do not make sweeping changes to the article against numerous Wikipedia policies before establishing consensus on the talk page that such changes are a good idea. Also, the article does not describe Marcy as having committed criminal sexual assaults against his students; I did so in a previous statement on this talk page. I'd be happy to give either you or Marcy's counsel my home address if he feels like suing me for libel, but as a limited public figure in the state of California he'd had to prove both that my statements were false and that I either knew they were false or acted with reckless disregard for the facts. I believe these facts are in fact pretty easily supportable by reliable sources. Neither of your numbered statements are supported by reliable sources talking about Marcy's behavior.

As an aside, please do not remove large chunks of well sourced information before establishing consensus to do so on this talk page. Wikipedia accepts opinion as fine in citations, as long as the opinion is printed in reliable sources, and since The Berkeley Blog (where I cited Eisen's post from) has editorial oversight, it meets our standards for a reliable source. Kevin Gorman (talk) 07:42, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Kevin, You note, " I believe these facts are in fact pretty easily supportable by reliable sources. " I'd like to offer that just because something is published in a newspaper doesn't make it a fact. The first article about the issue pretty clearly stated what at least a few of the allegations were (BuzzFeed, October 9 http://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/famous-astronomer-allegedly-sexually-harassed-students --- it seems that Gorashi is one of the few people who have actually seen at least some parts of the report, as she noted on the Michael Krazny show). The article noted that through his lawyer, Marcy denied the most damning claim--along with the fact that it was reported 8 years after it supposedly happened, this poses concerns about the validity of the claim. And yet, most media accounts after the first article presented that complaint as truth. While the behavior Marcy admitted to was inappropriate, it wasn't "criminal sexual assault". The general slippage by the media to something that grabs page views doesn't make it true.

I'd like to get another opinion on use of the Eisen blog as an RS. I tried to reference an opinion piece written by a group of Harvard law professors in the Boston Globe and Kazim27 said no dice, no opinions, even from the Boston Globe. This opinion piece clearly does not have an NPOV. I do not believe it belongs here. WaterEarthFlowers (talk) 08:18, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

This fact is relevant. "Although the complaints ranged from four to 13 years in the past at the time they were filed, they were filed simultaneously, prompted by Chiang's actions." — Preceding unsigned comment added by WaterEarthFlowers (talk • contribs) 08:37, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• As I just posted in a later section, I'm inclined to agree that the Eisen post need not be referenced. --Kazim27 (talk) 16:43, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• Water: there's nothing wrong with a piece being opinion. WP:NPOV explicitly allows it (and really, in this situation, mandates it. I'm guessing Kazim said no to your Boston Globe piece because it didn't directly mention Geoff Marcy - having done a full archival search, all I can find are pieces like this one, which do not relate to Geoff Marcy. I'm not at all wedded to the Eisen quote - I initially threw it in for balance since, with over three thousand academics publicly condemning Marcy's behavior, a quote from one of them seemed more than appropriate. There are tons of other quotes we could put in from tons of other academics condemning his behavior - I just happened to pick Eisen because he was the first or second (I don't recall the order) UCB professor to write a public post about the situation, because of his prominence in UCB's IB department, and because of his independent prominence as co-founder of PLOS. Ellen Simms (one of UCB's other first faculty to write publicly about the situation,) Daily Cal piece would provide another direct response from UCB's faculty to Marcy's behavior (and I'd prefer we include at least a response from a UCB faculty member,) although there are literally dozens of other quotes that could be appropriately substituted.

Water: Find a reliable source that describes the relevance of that fact. It's relevance is not inherently apparent, but if reliable sources deem it relevant, I'm not opposed to including it. It's not at all unusual for a complaint against a faculty member as senior as Marcy to be essentially a conglomeration of multiple complaints of various ages. We don't operate on our own opinions, but rather those things stated by reliable sources. You are obviously correct in stating that just because something is published in a newspaper doesn't make it fact, but Wikipedia operates off the principle of WP:NPOV, so for our purposes if a statement can be easily supported by multiple published newspaper articles for instance, we will generally treat it as fact in absence of a strong countervailing viewpoint.

If you read my earlier statement (which you'll note, I didn't include in the article,) you'll realize that you misquoted me. What I said was that there were "substantiated allegations against Geoff that he, over a period of multiple decades, committed criminal sexual assaults against his students." This is a statement easily backed up by sources, and, well, the facts. There are strongly substantiated allegations that Marcy committed criminal sexual assaults against his students - even Broughton's report, as easy as our administrators prefer to go on prominent faculty, states that it is likely the fact that "he placed his hand on her leg, slid his hand up her thigh, and grabbed her crotch" (with her being one of her students.) Although Marcy denied this, he did not do so through his lawyer - he did so directly (and the investigator did not find him credible.)

The claim that Marcy denied through his lawyer was the statement by John Asher Johnson's (prof of astro at Harvard) that he "directly witnessed Marcy giving an undergraduate a back massage, with his hand underneath her shirt, alone and after hours in the lab." I had actually missed in previous readings that John Asher Johnson's claim involved an undergraduate - it's probably worth including that in the article, since the investigation itself focused on grad students. Any undergrad present in Marcy's lab would also be participating in an undergrad research program where Marcy had direct control over their work, and significant control over any future astro work they did. Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:08, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Spurious edits

Can I get another set of eyes on this edit?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geoffrey_Marcy&diff=prev&oldid=687850583

It is a very large change written in a highly opinionated and polemic style by a user named "WaterEarthFlowers" who has never contributed to Wikipedia other than editing this one article. Likely sock puppeting. --Kazim27 (talk) 04:43, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Responded to a private message from WaterEarthFlowers. I won't share all the details of this communication (I'll repost my message on request) but I still have some concerns about the adherence to Wikipedia:NPOV and the sufficiency of citations in certain claims that have been made in the sexual harassment section. I am not invested in Geoff Marcy's guilt or innocence, but the article as it stands seems to be distinctly slanted toward a point of view that the charges are invalid. For the time being, I'm just going to add some citation tags for clarification, but make no further edits until this has had some time for discussion.

• One of the accusations was denied by Marcy—this complaint was filed eight years after the alleged event and could not be corroborated.

The sources I am seeing do not say the event was not corroborated. On the contrary, this article which originally described the charges states: "She didn’t register an official complaint until eight years later, by which time she’d left astronomy... In the documents, the investigator wrote: 'Based on the preponderance of evidence, I find it more likely than not that [Marcy] acted as reported by Complainant 3.'" That appears to be an investigator asserting that corroboration was found. Do we have anything to go on besides the description of the investigation in the article? Is there any backup for the positive claim that it was NOT corroborated? If not, speculation on whether it's corroborated or not doesn't add to the article.

• Buzzfeed's reporting states that the investigation was corroborated, and as far as I know there's not a counterclaim except by Marcy himself. Buzzfeed obtained the direct internal investigation which was conducted by Janet Broughton and her office - the Executive Vice Provost for the Faculty at UCB. AFAIK, no other outlet has the direct internal investigation so far besides Buzzfeed. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

• Another complaint was from a woman who “felt uncomfortable” watching Marcy interact with a student at a conference gathering.

Odd choice of wording to put "felt uncomfortable" in quotes, when (a) the actual quoted text from the cited article is "felt FEARFUL AND uncomfortable," and (b) the rest of the paragraph describes him telling her about a previous sexual encounter, and "Then he began to rub the back of her neck." Why are her "feelings" treated as the central claim, rather than the alleged behavior?

• I believe you are on point here. The sources focus on his actions, so the article should focus on his actions (and removing fearful is certainly an issue.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

• The other two complaints were for a kiss on the forehead in a public place and a hug and kiss on the cheek on campus (in 2001), and touching someone on the neck (in 2005) while saying goodbye.

• You are correct that this description is not supported by the available sources. Buzzfeed's coverage which used the direct report doesn't claim this, and other outlets who spoke directly to the complainants also do not claim this. Geoff Marcy's publicly posted apology letter doesn't claim this, either. To the best of my knowledge, no RS does. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

While the Buzzfeed article is once again referenced, I cannot find any support for this reductive summary which implies that the students filed a complaint ONLY for a hug, a kiss, or a non-sexual touch. Can I get an actual pull quote in support of this? Even assuming that the charges do not have merit, I find it really hard to believe that this is the entire nature of the complaint, and I don't see this supported.

• None of the reported incidents involved students in Marcy’s classes or under his direction for research.

Wikipedia:Relevance? Is Marcy not still in a position of authority simply by being a professor at a college they attend? Why is this even mentioned?

• This isn't likely to be true, and definitely isn't relevant even if it is. As one of the most prominent faculty members in their department at the school they were getting their doctorates at, although I'm unaware of a reliable source that explicitly states this, it's extremely likely that he was involved in some aspect of their work, and even if he wasn't, graduate students are in a unique position of vulnerability vis-a-vis senior tenured faculty. Berkeley's graduate assembly passed a resolution that directly comments on this last night. I have self-hosted a copy here, which I only link to because I can't figure out how to get a static link from the graduate assembly's website - but it can be found there, too. Katie Mack, astrophysicist at the University of Melbourne, and John Asher Johnson, astronomer at Harvard and former student of Marcy's have both commented on it - this article in the Sydney Morning Herald touches on both of their views, links further pieces written by them, and mentions that over 2,000 academics have publicly spoken out against or signed petitions about his behavior (the number now exceeds three thousand, but I don't have an RS for that off the top of my head. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

• The investigator found it unusual

Once again, the only source cited is the same Buzzfeed article, which does not appear to mention this at all. And even if the investigator had that opinion, would it be factually relevant?

• Correct - it's not reported in any reliable source. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

• The investigation occurred during the time the University was under serious scrutiny for failure to implement Title IX protections,[30] which suggests that UC was not being lenient in administering the discipline that they determined was appropriate for this particular violation of university policy that was 5-15 years in the past.

Again, Wikipedia:Relevance. If there were some indication that Marcy's representation brought up this as a likely source of bias, I'd like to see a direct citation for the claim. Otherwise, this is pulling in unrelated facts about the university to build an original argument, which would make the article distinctly non-neutral.

• Well, it's true that UCB is under serious scrutiny for failure to comply with Title IX, but I don't agree that that fact suggests the discipline was lenient. If we didn't have a chronic problem with failure to comply with Title IX, we wouldn't be under scrutiny for it to begin with, and if we started complying with title IX, the scrutiny would end pretty damn quickly. Also, our chancellor and one of our EVP's have publicly pretty much stated that they didn't think the discipline was appropriate but were curtailed in what they could do by internal policies. (This fact *isn't* true - they could've at least easily removed him from teaching duties and supervised his interactions with grad students, but that's tangential to the point.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

I welcome discussion on this subject. Please help keep this article consistent with established guidelines.

--Kazim27 (talk) 11:52, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Additionally:

• Colleagues and students, using BuzzFeed[31] as their primary source of information

This is weaselly at best. There is no way I can see to support the claim that students were only acting on information from Buzzfeed, after an official investigation "concluded in June when he was found to have violated campus sex harassment policies." Although -- and this may work to Marcy's benefit -- I also think the fact that the ruling "has angered some of Marcy's colleagues and former students" is of marginal relevance to this article and could be stricken entirely.

• Totally unsupported. Many of his colleagues and students were using their own interactions with him as their primary source of information, and many of those who haven't interacted with him directly were using the results of the internal investigation as first reported on by Buzzfeed as a major source of information, but that is much different than simply relying upon Buzzfeed - and the internal investigation has been massively buttressed by Marcy's colleagues and former students detailing their inappropriate interactions with him. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

• Professor Marcy was not allowed to attend the meeting to present his side of the story.

Citation? Relevance? Is Wikipedia in the business of deciding whether the investigation was unfair?

• It wouldn't surprise me if it is true, although I don't know whether or not it is. As far as I know it's not been claimed one way or another in a reliable source. It seems to make sense to exclude him from the meeting, because the presence of a substantiated abuser and senior faculty member at a meeting that included far less senior faculty and grad students about whether or not he could continue to effectively continue his role would be obviously inhibitory to open discussion. Even if it is true, the way it is worded there isn't compliant with NPOV, since we don't aim for neutrality rather than a sympathetic point of view or weird objectivity in a vacuum false balance - WP:GEVAL. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

• An attempt by a colleague to read a letter from a former graduate student in support of Marcy was shouted down during the meeting

Ditto. This is an awful lot of extra stuff focusing on actions regarding people with personal opinions.

• Not reported in any reliable source. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

--Kazim27 (talk) 12:15, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm trying to leave plenty of time to add to the discussion about the above changes. There hasn't been any, but I still don't want people to think I am unilaterally trying to delete valid information. Because of this, I'm going to start gradually fixing one of the listed items at a time, which should make it easier to object to the individual updates. --Kazim27 (talk) 11:12, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

• Hi @Kazim27: - In absolutely full disclosure, I am significantly and directly involved in the real-world situation. I'm going to avoid making further direct edits to the article myself, but am going to comment on the talk page quite a bit more than I have. I made a couple of direct changes to the article that I would encourage you to examine the appropriateness of. I changed the section heading from "allegations of sexual harrassment" to "sexual harrassment scandal" for a few reasons - he's directly admitted to a couple of them so even from his own point of view they aren't allegations, an internal investigation by senior administrators substantiated them, and enough of his former students (including among others, someone who is now astro faculty at harvard) have commented on them that 'allegations' seems way too weak a word to use. I added 'scandal' just because an academic of this prominence falling from grace at such speed is more or less unheard of, and since it's been covered in hundreds of outlets from every continent on Earth, 'scandal' seemed appropriate. I added a line of information about previous allegations at SFSU, because they've both been widely reported on, directly confirmed to have been made by the person who was SFSU's sexual harrassment officer at the time, and pushed back the start date to his behavior by at least six years. I added a quote from Michael Eisen because he's both a prominent UCB faculty member, independently notable as a co-founder of PLOS, and was one of the first couple UCB faculty members to publicly comment on the situation. I would encourage you to adjust anything I've done to the article if it doesn't appear to be NPOV - my degree of direct involvement in the situation rightfully brings in to question my ability to follow NPOV.

I am going to directly interlace answers to your particular points in your post - I'm sorry for the awkward formatting, but it's the easiest way I can think of t directly answer each one. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:46, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

• Sorry again for the awkward formatting. In the interests of fairness, I should probably mention that the NYT did run a quite sympathetic article to Geoff, although the public editor and science editor of the NYT wrote what is essentially an apology for the overly sympathetic tone of the NYT's first article about Geoff after they received a letter from 278 astronomers and physicists angry about the tone of the first piece - the apology type piece, and the letter to the NYT itself (which is linked from the NYT apology type piece.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
• Hi @Kevin Gorman:,

I read your comments, but am not sure what to do with them since almost all the issues I raised had already been cleaned up. I can see that you are reluctant to edit the article yourself, but is there anything specific you believe is currently lacking from the text, that I can review and maybe add if it makes sense? --Kazim27 (talk) 20:02, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

• I will add a section in the next couple days detailing some of what I believe is missing - I've been in Berkeley for the last nine days or so, and get home tomorrow. Kevin Gorman (talk) 07:28, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

"Allegations"? Seriously?

Since he has published a mea culpa letter, and the University report found a decades-long pattern of harassment, I think using the term "Allegations" in the Sexual Harassment section title is entirely inappropriate and misleading. "Sexual Harassment Scandal" is more NPOV. 68.7.246.26 (talk) 00:52, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Recent edits

Hi @Drbogdan: - thank you again for your recent edits to this page. Although given the amount of COI involved on all sides involved, I fully support rollbacks of material that isn't explicitly discussed on the talk section, I think most of the edits were reasonable. I can't cite a policy offhand, but I definitely think it's reasonable to split off the lede paragraphs was done. The in the media section is a little bit more tricky since they are sometimes acceptable, but where they are included they should be written in prose, and the fact that the in the media selection included only positive mentions of Marcy (when by an absolute count of media mentions, certainly a large plurality if not majority of lifetime mentions are negative) presents WP:UNDUE issues. Such sections per MOS:POPCULT should generally also be written in prose instead of in bulletted points - but I see the WP:UNDUE aspect as being a bigger problem. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:22, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

@Kevin Gorman: - Thank you for your comments - yes - agree w/ all you noted - no problem whatsoever - *entirely* ok w/ me to rv/mv/ce my own edits of course - Thanks again - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 21:46, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi @Drbogdan: - if you agree with the gist of my post, I'd love it if you made the edits yourself. For various reasons related to my extreme degree of direct involvement in real-life models related to Marcy, I'm extremely hesitant to edit the article myself directly. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 07:30, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

@Kevin Gorman: Thank you for your post - comments/edits from others welcome as well - esp after 1st discussing major edits on the talk page of course - in any case - Thanks again for your post - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 12:00, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm looking at some recent edit history in which there seems to have been a series of reverts and disagreements between @Kevin Gorman: (who has identified himself as "significantly and directly involved in the real-world situation") and @WaterEarthFlowers: (whom I have good reason to believe is someone with a close personal connection to Geoff Marcy). I want to make sure both parties get fair input into the article and communicate appropriately on the changes. Here are my personal thoughts about the disputed edits.

1. "According to UC Berkeley's internal investigation, Marcy was found to have sexually harassed his students, engaging in behavior that prominent colleague Michael Eisen referred to as 'abominable sexual violence'." (Added by KG, removed by WEF.) In keeping with my previous deletions of links that contain excessive editorializing, I'd prefer to see this gone. In an earlier talk section, KG defended the inclusion of this link saying that the blog "has editorial supervision." Nevertheless, an opinion about his character is not the same thing as a factual story, and I think the article is completely fine without it. IMHO this page will be better off it doesn't become a constantly growing compendium of warring opinions links.
2. "At least three additional allegations were made against Marcy as early as 1995 while he was at San Francisco State University, as corroborated by Penny Nixon, then SFSU's sexual harassment officer." (Added by KG, removed by WEF.) That the reports were made is factual information that was relevant to the findings in the investigation. I would leave this in.
3. "Although the complaints ranged from four to 13 years in the past at the time they were filed, they were filed simultaneously, prompted by Chiang's actions." (Added by WEF, removed by KG.) Does anyone want to dispute that this is factually correct? If not then I think it's fine to leave in, but I'd like a citation, and agreement that it is not redundant to anything else in the article. (I haven't reread everything.) I dispute WEF's claim in the edit note that complaints which were not filed directly by students are not "real complaints"; but the edit note is not part of the article.
4. "The university announced that it had warned Marcy about his behavior and would consider automatic suspension or dismissal for future violations." (Added by WEF) This is no longer mentioned in the article as of right now, and I think it is relevant.
5. "allegations" replaced by KG with "scandal", WEF wishes to revert: While I recognize that WEF does not want the article to unfairly take a position against Geoff Marcy, I think KG has correctly pointed out that the investigation concluded he was guilty, even while they initially chose to keep him on staff. It is not an allegation any more once there is an official conclusion. Is there another word besides "scandal" that you'd like to provide?
6. "his students" (KG wishes to leave in the word "his", WEF wishes to remove it, argument being that the students may not have been under his direct instruction) If someone could supply a source showing at least one student was in his class or worked in his lab, I would leave "his" in; otherwise remove it.

I think that's everything. It seems like, despite some controversy between those personally involved, we can come to a pretty good consensus on what can stay, without just flipping the same paragraphs back and forth. How about it? --Kazim27 (talk) 16:34, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• The fact that one of the BZ stories linked above has John Asher Johnson, prof of astronomy at Harvard and former student of Marcy's, claiming that he saw Marcy engaged in inappropriate behavior with an undergraduate in Marcy's lab means that it almost certainly involved at least some of his direct students. 99.9% of the time, an undergrad present in someone's lab is participating in URAP or a similar program, where Marcy would've directed their research, graded them, and effected their future potential in the field. The same piece also talks about the experience of Sarah Ballard, who was complainant #2 in the investigation, who says that as an undergrad in Marcy's class, he told her "about having sex outdoors with a woman he once dated," and in a further encounter began to rub the back of her neck while giving her a ride home in a way that made her feel "fearful and uncomfortable." So - these are definitely Marcy's students

• I agree that it's not an allegation once there's an official conclusion, and scandal is the simplest word I can think of that conveys the ensuing firestorm.

• That material should probably be included, yeah. My understanding is that they essentially reached an agreement to remove a lot of the protections tenured faculty members normally receive. I'm not sure what the best source for this would be.

• I don't know of a source for this information, but more importantly, don't know of a source talking about the relevancy of this information. All of the complaints would have been filed by students - UCB doesn't have a mechanism other than the students filing the complaints themselves. I'd much rather not leave this in the article, because it reads like a WP:COATRACK suggesting that Eugene Chiang was responsible for plotting Marcy's demise, rather than Marcy's own actions. Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:47, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Recent rv of WaterEarthFlowers' comments

I just reverted the comments of @WaterEarthFlowers: because they made it VERY difficult to tell what author said what. Water, please feel free to readd your comments (you can find them in past versions accessed through the view history button,) but please do so in a way that leaves it clear what I said vs what you said vs what someone else said. Additionally, please do not make any changes to the article that have not been discussed and agreed upon by at least one editor who does not have a conflict of interest (preferably one established editor, since almost all new editors at this article will have a COI.) Given the magnitude of your own COI, I'd actually go as far as to request that you do not edit the article directly yourself - at all - and rather we both leave direct article edits to those without COIs. (Unless I'm drastically mistaken, your COI is actually bigger than mine, which is an impressive statement.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 09:19, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Release of Title IX Investigation Documents from UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley released the documents related to the Title IX investigation of Geoff Marcy on December 17, 2015, in which the investigation report for the case as well as several new documents were made available through a Public Records Act request to the University. The original documents released by UC Berkeley, as well as a summary of the incidents are posted here. Note that the Title IX investigation report shows that much of what @KevinGorman, BuzzFeed, Michael Eisen, and numerous other sources wrote about Geoff Marcy is incorrect. This is the first time that the actual facts of the case are available. Since Wikipedia is going for truth rather than hearsay, my edits serve to clarify what is documented about the case.

I would like to revert @KevinGorman's reversion of all of my changes and allow any editing to start from there.

Major changes include:

-Addition of link to Breakthrough Listen project that Marcy brought to UC Berkeley in the intro section.

-Addition of link to PRA documents from the Title IX investigation and a link to Geoff Marcy's web page where he has posted the UCB documents and his response to the investigation

-Clarification that none of the allegations involved sex or request for sex.

-Correction that Marcy did not resign from UC Berkeley, but retired, effective December 31, 2015.

-Updated link to Marcy's website.

-Addition of information showing that one complainant retracted her statement and the supposed "victim" of the incident submitted an email to "clear up misconceptions and unintentional lies" about the incident. Emails from the complainant show that the she only retracted her statement after Marcy had stepped down. This is noteworthy, and the record should be corrected to show this. My previous edits that @KevinGorman wiped out were a good-faith effort to do so, as well as provide links to the original documents that the University released. The actual text I added is:

The UC Berkeley documents associated with the investigation were released on December 17, 2015, showing that one of the remaining complainants (who felt harassed by watching Dr. Marcy help an intoxicated woman at a party) "corrected" her statement after Marcy stepped down from his faculty position. The woman receiving assistance (who never filed a complaint) submitted an updated statement to "clear up the misconceptions and unintentional lies that were included in the report."

For reference, here is a comparison of the complainant's original statement (p. 71ff in the PRA documents) to the corrected statement (p. 48-50 in the PRA documents).

Original statement: The rest of this story I know by talking to the student afterwards, but I did not witness myself: By the end of the evening a friend saw Geoff walking the student out of the club and getting into a cab with her. The student was so drunk she could barely walk. Her friend grabbed her and put her in a different cab to get her away from Geoff. Apparently Geoff then followed her back to her hotel room and asked to enter the room. He got into bed with her and started massaging her. The other student she was sharing a room with came home and walked in on him in bed with the student. He tried to convince the student to come back to his room with him, but she said she was too drunk to move, so he left. After the incident, I emailed the student recounting what I witnessed in the cab and at the club and asking her if she was OK or needed help. She said that Geoff Marcy was writing her letters of reference for graduate school, and while she did feel very uncomfortable with what happened, she didn't want to do anything about it because she really needed his letters.

Once confronted by the "victim" of being helped back to her hotel room, the complainant retracted the worst part of her story in an email that was sent to the Title IX office on October 14, after Marcy had been hounded out of the astronomy department. In that email, she said:

The student never worked with Geoff and she didn't have him write letters for her for graduate school. She had told me he was "helping her with grad school stuff" which I thought she meant writing letters, but apparently he was just giving her advice, etc.
   The student says she was not wearing a skirt that night.
   The part of the statement from the hotel room is wrong. I had heard that part of the story from another Berkeley grad student, but the grad student told me something different that what the undergrad student and the witnesses remember. She will be giving you a corrected report about what happened, but she is asking that I remove that section from my statement.

Corrected Statement: I left the party before the student, but I heard from other graduate students that people saw Geoff leave with her and they ended up back at the conference hotel together. After the incident, I talked to the student about what I witnessed in the cab and at the club and asking her if she was OK or needed help. She said that while Geoff's behavior that night was weird, and made her uncomfortable, he had been nice to her otherwise and was very helpful with advice about graduate school.

Emails from the "victim" (who did not file a complaint) and her roommate (see p. 51 in the PRA documents) show that Marcy and another woman helped the drunk student back to her hotel room and dropped her off with her roommate.

WaterEarthFlowers (talk) 04:21, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

• Hi WEF: Wikipedia relies on secondary sources, not primary ones. Given that UCB is still denying CPRA requests for the investigation to me, the Oakland Tribune, and everyone else but apparently Marcy, primary source material he posted himself that makes him look better cannot be used to ignore WP:RS and WP:PRIMARY. Due to unrelated incidents I am currently barely editing mainspace, but am undoing your edits again because they are not compliant with our sourcing policies. However, I am @Kazim27: and @Drbogdan: to bring this to the attention of two unrelated editors who don't have the conflicts of interest that we both have so they can look at it. User:Kevin Gorman | ^{talk page} 06:15, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

• • To Kevin Gorman: The documents from UCB are the exact release from UCB of all documents concerning the case. The documents were released to 22 requesters, including yourself, but the only place they are publicly available is on Marcy's website. They are the original source material. Your statement "Wikipedia relies on secondary sources, not primary ones" is incorrect, according to Wikipedia guidance. If you wish to have only secondary sources listed as citations in this article, most of the newspaper articles cited on this page would have to be deleted because they would be classified by Wikipedia as primary sources. I agree that we need a third party editor here. It appears that you have an agenda of censorship.

WaterEarthFlowers (talk) 22:28, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

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Still inadequate re: his inappropriate behavior

GM’s behavior is a trending topic on Twitter at the moment, and the information is new to me. But it’s clear to me I’m out of the loop for an astronomy nerd, so came here for more information. At first I thought the subject wasn’t even covered. It is, buried within his career section, and based on what I am reading, it doesn’t adequately cover his actions, and the actions/inactions of those in a position to stop his despicable behavior.

This part of his biography needs it’s own section & must be expanded. Someone with better knowledge of this should do this. It’s clear there are plenty of people out there who have the knowledge necessary - they’re posting threads on Twitter. SiobhanElizabeth (talk) 04:53, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussions on twitter or other social media aren't reliable sources. If you have published reliable sources that cover aspects of the issue that aren't addressed in the article, please post them here. Schazjmd (talk) 14:33, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

moved sexual assault information out of academic career section. Academic career should focus on career accomplishments, not topics outside their area of specialty. Moved sexual assault info to a new H2 section. Jonkatora (talk) 22:37, 6 March 2024 (UTC)