Recently, a news report clip has been circulating on social media that claims to quote Dr. Eric Geddes, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. According to the report, he said, "By copying my country, India lost its joint family, culture, and social prosperity… and by neglecting the elders, it got addiction and loneliness.”
Is it true?
This is a misleading news report. The University of Michigan has confirmed that no person named Eric Geddes has worked as a Professor of Sociology. Additionally, the image used in the report is of another academician, Peter Clarkson, a Professor of Accounting and Finance at the University of Queensland, Australia. We were also unable to find any credible news sources reporting the statements mentioned in the image that is being circulated.
How did we find out the truth?
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| An image of the claim used as a WhatsApp status |
First, we ran a reverse image search of the newspaper clipping with the help of Google Lens, which led to several social media posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter sharing the same image. Some of these posts show an e-paper clipping of the news report, which shows that it was published on 8 August 2022 in the Dainik Bhaskar (Indore city) edition.
We were able to confirm this by spotting the news report on the epaper edition of the Dainik Bhaskar (Indore city)published on August 8, 2022. However, the report does not give details about whether these statements were made in a public event or an exclusive interview with the reporter, except that the said academician was on a personal visit to India.
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| Screenshot of a tweet with the claim |
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| City Bhaskar Indore (8th August, 2022) Epaper |
To find if this was from a public event, we searched for other news media coverage in Indore about the person during the time. We were not able to find any other reports quoting this person during that time. We have emailed Dainik Bhaskar, Indore, for details and will update the story once we get a response.
Further, we contacted the University of Michigan to verify the institutional affiliation of the person mentioned in the report. Brian Taylor, Communications Manager with the Office of Public Affairs, University of Michigan, confirmed that there is no record of such a person having worked at the University of Michigan since 2001. "The university has no record of the individual referenced in your email as having been employed at the University of Michigan", he said over email.
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| News report from the University of Queensland featuring Professor Peter Clarkson, whose image was misidentified as 'Dr. Eric Geddes' in the viral post. |
When we ran a search for the image given in the news report, we found that the same image was used in a news report on the University of Queensland's website in 2019. According to the report, the person in the photograph is Professor Peter Clarkson, a Professor of Accounting and Finance with the University of Queensland, Australia.
We have reached out to Professor Peter Clarkson via email to verify whether he visited India during the stated period or made the statements cited in the news report. We will update the story upon receiving a response.
Conclusion: We conclude that the Dainik Bhaskar news report, which claims that a Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan lauded Indian cultural values, is misleading. Our investigation found that no such academician has been affiliated with the University of Michigan, and the photograph used in the report is of a different academician whose field of expertise is not sociology. Moreover, there are no reports from credible news organisations corroborating the statement.
