Trouble for DeSantis As University of Florida Initiates Investigation into Claims from Researchers Who Were Pressured to Destroy Covid-19 Data

The University of Florida has initiated an probe into researchers’ claims that they felt pressured to destruct COVID-19 information aft a report said they were told “not to knock the Governor of Florida [Republican Ron DeSantis] oregon UF policies related to COVID-19 successful media interactions.”

A study by the Faculty Senate committee determined that unit felt “external unit to destroy” information and “barriers to accessing and analyzing” information successful a timely manner, noting that determination were “barriers to work of technological probe which inhibited the quality of module to lend technological findings during a world-wide pandemic.”

Earlier this week, the Faculty Senate committee said that they “did not person the resources oregon the clip to afloat analyse these reports oregon their ineligible and argumentation implications. Faculty did explicit discontent astir governmental interference with our mission, that world state is nether attack, and that we volition apt suffer module arsenic a result.”

However, that has since changed.

In a connection to The Hill, David P. Norton, Vice President for Research astatine the University of Florida, said: “Through a caller UF Faculty Senate report, UF Research became alert of imaginable violations of the UF Policy connected Research Integrity arsenic it relates to the reported demolition of COVID-19 probe information astatine UF.”

Norton added: “Pursuant to UF policies and procedures, and with the enactment of President Kent Fuchs, UF Research, successful collaboration with UF Office of Compliance and Ethics, has initiated a ceremonial investigation, the results of which volition beryllium made nationalist erstwhile completed.”

DeSantis has been accused for months of downplaying the pandemic’s severity and undermining the recovery, allowing COVID-19 to dispersed unchecked successful Florida, He has said that whether oregon not a idiosyncratic gets a COVID-19 vaccine comes down to “personal choice.”

The Florida Department of Health earlier launched an enquiry into the state’s reporting of COVID-19 deaths aft DeSantis suggested that the authoritative reports overstate the fig of deaths.