Please commit more blatant academic fraud

Often, yes (though usually not to the point of actually dying). Overcoming survival fears is behind every act of physical courage, e.g., saving a friend or stranger, or exploring any new zone that will normally kill you (mountaineering, undersea, space, etc.).

You have got to suppress your naive survival instinct (or remain massively ignorant) to climb on top of a rocket with thousands of tons of explosive material...

I partly agree, at the risk of sounding too callous. One of the reasons that reading about this suicide (and so many others) is painful, is because with our outside perspective we can see that he could have moved past it. He could have changed some aspects of his life, and very possibly had a happy future. He succumbed to short-time thinking.

But... that doesn't mean that the conditions that led him to suicide aren't worth examining and correcting. Even if he didn't kill himself, they would still be causing misery and undermining scientific progress.

Persky sounds like a good example of… being made an example of. Maybe not fair, but definitely useful: it very likely had a real effect on the remaining judges.

> If you think you can swing the creation of effective training programs or other more real interventions

Actually, I'm totally for utterly destroying the reputation of an individual, or an institution. It just have to be done for the right reasons. Take for instance rape culture as was prominent 5 years ago in several French business schools (it's not over yet), that I've learned about just this week. I confess I seriously had no idea. So the problem had (still has) several facets. First there's the general mood, which is blatantly sexist and demeaning to female students. Then there are a shocking string of sexual assaults, as well as many rapes and rape attempts (like 10% of all female students being victims of attempted or actual rape during their stay at the school —possibly more, probably no less).

It would appear the only way this can change is external pressure. What happens needs to be publicly visible, so we can have a scandal and apply popular pressure. The problem is what exactly what we should be scandalised by, how much, what punishments we wish to exact. If we fire a student or a professor for making a sexist joke, there's going to be serious backlash, downplay, and objections —including from me, see this whole thread above.

Which is why I believe it is best to punish the worst offences first: rape, attempted rape, failure to properly punish those, sexual assault… in roughly that order. Few will seriously object to a public scandal involving a strong presumption of rape. Few will seriously object to dissolving student organisations that routinely (or even just once) set up the conditions for repeated sexual assaults (to give one example: invite the girls first, give them free unlimited strong drinks for 2-3 hour, then let the boys in, all worked up and horny).

Once you get the ball rolling, it's easier to crack down on the sexist jokes. React with disgust, make them uncool, not fun any more, passé. And give a serious slap on the wrist if such happens at a public event (like a temporary suspension). Just focus on the rapes first, if only to gather sympathy.