I saw this before, but this is the first I saw what class it was...
Data Science Discovery is an introductory course taught by statistics professor Karle Flanagan and the gloriously named computer scientist Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider, whose website features a logo that says, “Keep Nerding Out.”
The sheer balls to try and pull this shit on a statistician...
One of mine back in the day said:
Anyone can get numbers they want, the hard part is sorting through all the bullshit to recognize the one useful kernal. And telling people even if it proves you wrong.
Like, proclivity for ethics aside, no one would recognize this easier than a stats professor. They already knew the answer before they ran the papers thru the analyzer, but they had to verify first.
Then they're going to publicly disclose the findings.
In a roundabout way, this is a good lesson on what stats is all about, and why you don't piss off a statistician