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From the Opinions page in the Modesto Bee - 1/13/04:

University's falsified survey results another blot on the region's character

By John Michael Flint

The CNN talking head says "In Modesto, California, today..." and you wince. What now?
This now: To the sad list of names forever linked to a Modesto dateline -- think Cary, think Gary, think Scott -- add that of Stephen Schoenthaler and at least eight of his criminal justice students at California State University, Stanislaus (as Turkey Tech prefers to be called these days).

The T.T. Eight have admitted falsifying "results" of a survey on attitudes here and in the Bay Area relating to the Scott Peterson case. When they discovered that Schoenthaler had presented these data to the court as evidence in a change of venue motion, they 'fessed up.

The students, all of whom are anonymous as this is being written, offered two excuses for cheating.

First, they claimed that it was too time-consuming to be dumped on them at the time of final exams. This sounds a lot like sniveling when you consider that there were more than 60 students involved in the survey, and most of them seemed to have managed the task. On the other hand, it isn't safe to assume that those who've admitted the deception are the only ones who did it.

The other student complaint definitely resonates: that they were expected to pay for the long-distance calls out of their own pockets. Given the number of calls required, this could have amounted to a considerable pile of change, especially for those students with little or no change to spare. Having been one such, long ago, I can testify that the prospect would have been daunting, if not impossible.

As news of this latest local stain spread, additional criticism was leveled at Schoenthaler, specifically at the lack of controls involved: students were simply "on their honor" to actually make the calls -- there was no supervision and no call-backs to verify that the people supposedly called really had been called.

When he first heard about his students' admissions, Schoenthaler said it "seems impossible" that he could have missed the fakery. Really? Given the absence of oversight, one has to wonder exactly how the professor thinks he might have caught it.

The T.T. Eight did wrong, no doubt. They cheated, and they'll pay for that. But when they realized the use to which their creativity was being put, they owned up to what they did, knowing it would cost them. They didn't get caught -- they stepped up.

Schoenthaler also needs to answer for his part. To take data collected (or, as it turns out, not) in such a loosey-goosey mannner, and then present it as fact to a court in a case involving a charge of premeditated murder requires a detailed and compelling explanation.

The school will eventually render judgment, the media will move on to the Next Big Thing and it will once again be safe to watch TV. But a bad taste is going to linger.

Leonard Henry Courtney observed (Mark Twain quoted him, misattributing it to Benjamin Disraeli) that there are three types of lies: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics." This episode neatly rolls all three into one.

Flint is a Modesto resident and frequent guest columnist to the Mod Bee.