This is great news for Harvard! It implies that it's taking academic honesty and rigor seriously, and deserves praise for that. Just as police departments deserve praise for firing/suspending/charging bad officers, just as state bars deserve praise for disbarring bad lawyers, we need to see more of this not less. It concerns me that such news is often used as evidence of systemic problems when this sort of news signals the exact opposite.
We should be more concerned when there are NO instances of malpractice reported by institutions. This doesn't mean there isn't malpractice, but that the institution has lost the will to enforce its own rules. Reacting to this news negatively provides a perverse incentive to institutions, and should be quelled.
We should be more concerned when there are NO instances of malpractice reported by institutions. This doesn't mean there isn't malpractice, but that the institution has lost the will to enforce its own rules. Reacting to this news negatively provides a perverse incentive to institutions, and should be quelled.