Whoops. The Nursing School dean denies FC report she went to China

Letter to Fact Checker from Nursing School Dean Gilliss and our reply:

✔ I was surprised to read that I joined President Brodhead on his recent trip to China and beyond. Fact Checker did not get this one quite right. I was away from campus for part of that time, but on a personal vacation in the US. For the remainder of the time I was right here at my desk.

Dr. Bei Wu, from the School of Nursing, did visit China as part of the delegation. Her expenses were paid by the School of Nursing as she was negotiating new working relationships for the School with several Chinese universities.

In today’s “news” Fact Checker did not get the facts.

Catherine L. Gilliss DNSc, RN, FAAN
Dean, Duke University School of Nursing
Helene Fuld Health Trust Professor of Nursing
Vice Chancellor for Nursing Affairs

REPLY

✔ Dear Dean Gilliss,

We appreciate your writing and apologize for the error.

This would have been prevented had President Brodhead and Vice President Schoenfeld responded to our repeated requests for a list of people on the President's spree to Europe, Asia and Africa. Their failure to do so left us reliant on sources, and your name did appear on a list presented to us.

We also note that the "information brief" that appeared July 18 on the home page of the School of Nursing includes reference to you personally signing a Joint Agreement with Wuhan University. This story is accompanied by a picture taken at Wuhan University, showing President Brodhead and a Chinese official signing documents, and we interpreted that to mean the signing had occurred to provide a highlight of the President's otherwise unproductive trip.

We wrote our story at 2 AM and acknowledge that we did not attempt to contact you directly.

We correct all errors and will post. We hope your vacation in the US was great, and thank you for reading Fact Checker!

FC