Harvard professor did not say Pakistanis are toxic, ill-mannered

The iVerify Pakistan team has checked this content and has established that it is false.

To arrive at this verdict, the iVerify Pakistan team examined Professor Matthew Nock’s X account and also ran the circulated image through an image manipulation detection tool.

HOW IT STARTED

On March 21, 2024, a post was shared on X by urban planning specialist Momin Sheikh with the image of a quote from Harvard University professor Matthew K. Nock from the Department of Psychology.

The quote said: “Pakistanis scored the lowest in ‘manners’ and the highest in ‘toxicity’. Our study showed that even the most educated don’t realise when they’ve crossed the line.”

Notably, the quote share did not share, cite or reference the purported study it was based on and neither did the post sharing the quote.

The post gained over 44,000 views.

An Indian user also shared the quote image on March 22 with the caption: “True,” gaining over 7,400 views.

Similarly, the same quote image was shared by another X user, gaining over 3,500 views.

The same post was shared here and here.

The image of the quote was also shared on WhatsApp groups.

METHODOLOGY

The iVerify Pakistan team sought to determine the veracity of the claim due to its virality and because it made supposed research-backed incendiary claims about the conduct of Pakistanis citing a Harvard professor.

To investigate the claim, the iVerify team checked Professor Matthew Nock’s official X account to see if he had posted anything of the sort or made any similar comment or mentioned the purported study.

However, the team did not find any posts from March 21. However, in posts from March 22, the team discovered that several questions had been asked of the professor regarding whether he had conducted such a study and released any statement.

In response, he had said: “This quote is made up and misattributed to me. I am a researcher focused on suicide prevention. I do not conduct research in Pakistan and do not study ‘manners’ or ‘toxicity’.”

In reply to another question, he wrote, “This is false. I did not say this and never conducted such a study.”

Furthermore, the iVerify Pakistan team ran the circulated picture on the image manipulation detection tool Fake Image Detector which also confirmed that the image was doctored.

CONCLUSION

The iVerify Pakistan team has determined that the claim regarding a Harvard University professor’s critical comments on Pakistanis based off a study on ‘toxicity’ and ‘manners’ is false.

The team examined Professor Matthew’s official X account and found that he himself denied ever having made such comments or having conducted such a study.