UF law professor reacts internal committee finding "no merit" in COVID-19 data suppression - mycbs4.com

The University of Florida investigated claims of staff members feeling external pressure to delete COVID-19 data. That claim came from a faculty senate report.

Danaya Wright teaches Law at UF, she worked on the December Faculty Senate Report which started this investigation.

"We reported that there was external pressure to possibly destroy COVID data, but no data was destroyed," Wright said.

UF said they investigated the claim for about three months.

Wright stated, "Is it an appropriate amount of time to kind to try and figure out what happened in this incident? Probably."

The internal investigation found "no merit" to the allegation that state, or university officials applied pressure to destroy, or impede access to COVID data.

“I do disagree a little bit with the comment they found our claim to be meritless,” Wright said.

She said the faculty senate accurately reported what several employees told them.

“It actually confirms our report that our faculty was doing what we were supposed to do, which is not give into any kind of other pressure or anything like that,” she said.

CBS4 reporter Giselle Thomas asked, “Is there still that underlying question of were people still receiving pressure to potentially do something of that nature?”

Wright said, “I don’t think an investigation from us or from the Office of Research Integrity is going to cause that pressure to the extent it exists to go away.”

The report expressed that the committee could not identify who made the original allegations about COVID-19 data suppression. Wright said the employees have the right to remain anonymous.

"We could not give the names of those people to their committee, otherwise we would never have any kind of confidential reporting," she said.

Another investigation continues, as the university's accreditation agency plans to send representatives to Gainesville in four weeks to investigate the university's academic freedom policies.

“They may hear from people that there are comments, pressure, but they don’t feel that the climate is free,” Wright stated.

source: https://mycbs4.com/news/florida-news/uf-law-professor-reacts-internal-committee-finding-no-merit-in-covid-19-data-suppression

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