Ed Brayton has post up about the Souder report which is more thorough than the one I posted on Saturday.
Ed points out, as I did, that Sternberg was subjected to no material harm whatsoever as a result of his unethical practices surrounding the Meyer paper. At most, Sternberg suffered from people thinking he was an idiot, and such sentiments appear to have been expressed almost entirely in private. A point that I think needs to be made very forcefully here is that people have a right not to like you. There is no guarantee that your colleagues will think highly of you, and contrary to the Souter report, it does not mean there is discrimination, harassment, or the existence of a hostile work environment just because your coworkers think you screwed up. There isn't one office in the country that could continue to function if an investigation were opened every time there was bad blood between two or more of its members. And I should point out that Sternberg wasn't part of the same office or lab as the Smithsonian people in question; he basically worked by himself.
I'll have more to say about this later.
