All of this started back a few years

Christopher Brunet (at the time a substack blogger and investigative journalist who follows academic stories - fraud, plagiarism, disputes on firing people, etc) was the one who raised it well before this fall. He was on to her flaws back when she was merely a Dean. But no one cared. A guy like Rufo simply expanded on and amplified what he had already done (Rufo probably now has access to significant resources). Brunet is a conservative Canadian, but not a widely read guy like Rufo. Ackman amplified what Rufo and Brunet subsequently collaborated on.

Interestingly, Ackman's current wife (2nd one) is Neri Oxman, a well known design guru / beautiful person who dated Brad Pitt before marrying Ackman in the last few years. Just today she was accused of plagiarism in her 2010 MIT PhD by Business Insider - problematic for her since she is currently a professor at MIT. [Edit: She left her MIT role in 2020, now running a design start-up...she has written her own response to Business Insider that people can review if they like]

The reality is that academia is rife with plagiarism and faulty data. Professors have the same cravings - fame, power, glory, etc - as anyone else and they cheat, lie, defraud, sexually harass at minimum at the same rate of the general population. Probably much higher given their ambition - so more like that of Wall Street types, Corporate Execs and high level Military and Religious figures.

The good news is the we are getting a bit of a Martin Luther moment here in terms of academia. Or at least we can hope. Time to clean out the Augean Stables of academia as they are rather polluted.