Michigan State committee finds misconduct by museum head in celebrated mummy case

An investigation into the director of the museum at Michigan State University has found him guilty of research misconduct and other behavior stemming from his meddling in efforts to repatriate a 500-year-old mummy of a young girl that came to the school from South America in the late 19th century. 

A committee at the East Lansing institution determined that Mark Auslander, an anthropologist and historian misappropriated the work of other scholars, fabricated data and committed other misconduct in his handling of the mummy matter, which made headlines last year.

Although the case involves several years of misbehavior, at its core are two main events: a repatriation ceremony in Washington, D.C. for the relic, and an official letter in which Auslander, as director of the museum published the ill-gotten work. 

According to a summary of the report provided to Retraction Watch which is consistent with official communications viewed by us: 

The preponderance of the evidence gathered from interviews, email correspondences, and other available materials leads us [the investigative committee] to conclude that [Auslander] engaged in plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication, and that these actions had serious consequences as demonstrated by the circulation of fabricated information in other published sources. The evidence also demonstrated that the respondent  participated in this activity recklessly in the publication of faulty information in the Directors Letter and intentionally erased the work of others including but not limited to the Claimant by failing to acknowledge their contributions …

Further, the Committee finds that the preponderance of the evidence demonstrates Questionable Research Practices, and that these practices had grave consequences.  The Committee is unanimous in its conclusion that Research Misconduct and Questionable Research Practices occurred.”

Auslander did not respond to a request for comment. 

‘Immediately started meddling’

The claimant in the case was William Lovis, a professor emeritus of anthropology at MSU and curator emeritus of anthropology for the museum. 

Lovis, who retired in 2018, told us that his troubles with Auslander began the moment the latter arrived in East Lansing in 2017 from his last position, at Central Washington University: 

He immediately started meddling in multiple research projects I was working with. 

Most of the issues centered on Auslander’s view of ethics in anthropology — and particularly in the project that was consuming Lovis’ time: What to do with the mummified remains that MSU had acquired in 1890?

We had never repatriated anything internationally, so that was a fairly significant decision to go ahead with.

In addition to working on the logistics, ethics and legal issues, Lovis was involved in gathering scientific data from the mummy, things like radiographic images and chemical analyses. In other words, a major effort. 

But Lovis said Auslander quickly took over the project, putting a halt on his research and getting the school’s administration to back the move: 

The director tried to turn this into something in his mind was associated with our internal national repatriation laws having to do with Native American tribes, which, of course did not apply. We knew where she came from.

Auslander then contacted the Bolivian embassy directly and resumed negotiations — steps that included coming up with a name for the mummy: Ñusta. Ñusta means “princess” in the Quechua language, which would be fine, Lovis said, except the mummy was Aymara, not Quechuan. 

Adding insult to injury, Auslander then arranged with the Bolivian embassy to hold a repatriation ceremony in January 2019 for Ñusta in D.C., to which he invited members of his family and others, but not Lovis, who stood on the sidelines, videotaping the event:

Auslander was  prominent in this ceremony, as were his father and his wife, and several friends and colleagues from the Smithsonian, all of whom were included in the offerings entourage.  None of them, nor the Smithsonian Institution or its programs, had anything to do with the repatriation.   

That rankled Lovis, who felt he and his colleagues, who had been working on the mummy project for years, deserved recognition: 

I had spoken to many administrators about his behavior. Finally, as a last resort, I sent out an email rant about his behavior

to members of the MSU administration. 

‘Literally cut and pasted’

But what happened next triggered the inquiry into Auslander’s conduct. Last January, Auslander wrote an official “director’s letter” from the MSU museum describing the mummy project. In it, he used the word “we,” Lovis said (the letter has been taken down from the museum’s website) to talk about work in which he played no part:

His letter had literally cut and pasted out of my administration reports … It was clear plagiarism. 

He had made up information and included information that was totally erroneous about the kinds of analyses that were done, the results of radiological reports — things he had never seen before and had no idea how to interpret. The people who did the radiography and the analyses, my work on the history — none of us were given any credit; there was no attribution of other people’s work.

Lovis said the misconduct investigation took the better part of a year to complete. A draft of the report arrived late last year. 

MSU officials have yet to reveal any punishment for Auslander. Stephen Hsu, the senior vice president for research and innovation at the school, has not responded to our requests for comment about what, if any, discipline Auslander is facing. 

Meanwhile, MSU instructed Auslander to apologize to Lovis. Which he did, sort of. Lovis said he received a brief email, replete with spelling errors, in which Auslander repeatedly dismissed the transgressions as “inadvertent.” 

Lovis rejected it as “unacceptable”: 

I expected a real apology, on letterhead, in which he took full responsibility for his volitional actions. I had to wait a whole year for him to tell me it was an accident. 

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].