Ulrich Lichtenthaler, a management professor at the University of Mannheim who has had to retract 16 papers for data irregularities, has resigned his faculty position.
According to a terse release from the university (translated from German):
Prof. Dr. Lichtenthaler informed the Rector of the University of Mannheim that he wants to leave the University of Mannheim on March 31, 2015. The state of Baden – Württemberg has agreed with his wishes.
Hat tip: John
Laconic, better than terse, I think. There is an account in Herodotus where the Spartan king sends out a delegation requesting military aid several times because they used too many words. In the end the delegation came to the king and said “Help” and he sent a force out immediately.
The embarrassing alternative is that he wished to spend more time on his garden rather than engage in teaching and research and the University reluctantly had to accede to his wishes.
We may never know.
Actually Lichtentaler was untenable even if the university wanted to keep him. According to this article (in German), he lost his Habiltation (a German qualification for a university professorship) already in 2013, due to misconduct.
http://www.zeit.de/studium/hochschule/2013-09/lichtenthaler-wissenschaftliches-fehlverhalten-whu-mannheim
He retracted many papers.
Although I have long felt that Ulrich ought to resign, I can only wish him well in his non-academic life. He is still young (40?) and can make a positive impact in another area. He is certainly very smart and quite ambitious and he can turn that into a force for good rather than dwell on the past.
Pardon? Which areas of society or economy can objectively profit from his talents of manipulation and deception? Of course he will find something well paid, nobody is worried about his future. This exactly is actually the problem.
Yes. I’m more worried about whoever missed out on Lichtenthaler’s current job because Lichtenthaler got it.
Marketing?
I wonder if there will be consequences for professors Miriam Muethel and his PhD advisor Holger Ernst – both are affected by several of his retractions and both professors at the WHU Koblenz.
If retraction 7 arrived in November 2012, why did the rest of the process take so long? Frankly, I think a scientist who fabricated or falsified data severely should pay back some of the income received during that period. I’d suggest about 33%, so they can keep one third for teaching and another one for faculty duties, or any tasks that they really have accomplished.