Harvard Mack Inquiry (1994-95).
documentedgovernment_studyAbduction Research
First Harvard inquiry of a tenured professor; affirmed Mack's academic freedom while censuring his abduction methods as not 'rational and scholarly'.
In 1994 Dean Daniel Tosteson appointed a peer committee under former NEJM editor Arnold 'Budd' Relman to review Mack's clinical research - unprecedented for a tenured Harvard professor. After 14 months (concluded August 1995) Harvard reaffirmed Mack's academic freedom but a letter censured his methodology. The episode became a public academic-freedom dispute: Dershowitz attacked the inquiry; Relman insisted ideas need peer-reviewed evidence. It permanently damaged Mack's standing among colleagues.