Students falsified Peterson survey By Garth Stapley and John Coté The Modesto Bee Published 01/09/04 05:50:19
Several university students said Thursday that they fabricated survey results that factored into a judge's decision to move Scott Peterson's capital murder trial out of Modesto.
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"We falsified the info," said a 20-year-old criminal justice student at California State University, Stanislaus. "The stuff we submitted wasn't true."
He referred to the 10-county Peterson bias survey compiled by 65 students and overseen by professor Stephen Schoenthaler.
Informed Thursday evening of the students' claims, Schoenthaler said, "I'm stunned, and I find it hard to believe. It seems impossible that I could have missed something like that."
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The student and five others -- all seniors -- said Thursday that they made up every answer on all the surveys they submitted because they found it difficult to gather legitimate data.
They did it, they said, because they were short on time and money. They were required to participate in the survey for 20% of their grade and were given no money for dozens of lengthy long-distance phone calls, they said.
Another senior said she struggled to complete half of her required surveys, then gave up and faked the rest. Another said she refused to cheat but didn't have the resources to do the survey, so she didn't -- knowing that her grade could be lowered from an A to a C.
Three of the eight said they used answers from friends and relatives on some surveys, also in violation of survey ethics.
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On the witness stand Thursday, Schoenthaler insisted that his methodology was sound when prosecutor Dave Harris questioned the survey's integrity.
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Schoenthaler said that he required the students who were conducting the survey to include the phone numbers they supposedly called when submitting data but that he had not verified any by calling them himself.
Formulas developed to detect fraud didn't alert him to anything unusual, he said.
Before The Modesto Bee published the survey results Sunday, Schoenthaler said he used 65 students to poll 1,175 prospective jurors randomly by telephone in late November and early December. He said 114 to 122 people responded in each of California's eight largest counties, split evenly between Northern and Southern California, plus Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.
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A class syllabus given to the students at the beginning of the fall semester states that 20% of their grade would be based on a class project.
The description:
"Each student will be assigned to survey public opinion attitudes and knowledge on the telephone from 20 people in various parts of California to test hypotheses that will be done in class. The survey typically takes five or six hours to complete and an hour of practice."
Stephen Lubet of Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago said, "The point is to teach students, not obtain their labor."