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Dutch Psychologist Faked Data In At Least 30 Scientific Papers

Attila Dimedici writes "A professor at Tilburg University has been caught using fake data in over 30 scientific papers. Diederik Stapel's latest paper claimed that eating meat made people anti-social and selfish. Other academics were skeptical of his findings and raised doubts about his research. Upon investigation it was discovered that he had invented the data he used in many of his papers and there is a question as to whether or not he used faked data in all of his published work."

33 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Clearly by Moheeheeko · · Score: 2, Funny

    If we look to the teachings of Freud he did all this to bone his mother. Clearly.

  2. Published in Science by timeOday · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think the worst thing about this is that he was published in Science. Obviously the researcher's career ends here, but this is a big black mark on the journal as well.

    1. Re:Published in Science by crmarvin42 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not really. The peer review process isn't about catching fabricated data, but about editorial quality. It may not be obvious that the two are different, but they are.

      Reviewers make sure that the experiment is described clearly and completely enough for it to be replicated, which is the best way to verify the dates authenticity/accuracy. They also strive to make sure that the methodology was sound, conclusions don't over reach what the data can support, and that the discussion was complete with regards to the pre-existing relevant literature. Those checks can find fabricated data, but aren't designed to necessarily.

      Journals have no way to verify that you ran a trial, never mind that the data wasn't massaged or flat out replaced with fabricated data. That part is just taken on faith because it is the authors reputation that is on the line.

      --
      Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
    2. Re:Published in Science by Tim+C · · Score: 2

      Actually the filter is when other researchers go "oh, that's interesting/weird/bullshit" and try to recreate or refute the results.

      Science is a process, it takes a lot of work and a long time to be able to sit back and say "ok, we've pretty-much got this figured out from the looks of it".

  3. Re:Obviously by Adriax · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Guessing he's a vegan with an agenda. Probably make a good study case for a paper on meatless diets increasing bad decision making.

    I mean really, they already made the huge mistake of giving up tasty animal flesh, someone should study what other bad decisions vegans make.

    --
    I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
  4. All in the name of science by robot256 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sounds like it was all just one big meta-study--now that he's got thirty fake papers to use as data he can write a paper on the psychological factors involved in publishing fake papers. Could be an interesting treatise on the nature of trust, the peer review process, ulterior motives and such, but it's too bad because everyone would dismiss it as fake.

  5. Sokal Affair by paugq · · Score: 5, Informative

    Obligatory reference to the Sokal Affair.

    The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax,[1] was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the publication's intellectual rigor and, specifically, to learn if such a journal would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if it (a) sounded good and (b) flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."

    1. Re:Sokal Affair by nedlohs · · Score: 2

      But it's completely different.

      One is an obviously ludicrous paper that anyone looking at objectively would dismiss.

      The other is reasonable papers for which the raw data they are based on was fabricated.

      The peer review process should reject the former, but not the later. The later will be found out when others take those papers and attempt to confirm them with their own work.

      Sokal was showing that the journal in question was garbage in terms of what they would publish. This says almost nothing about the journals since (and I admit I haven't read them I'm going on the article) the papers were fine other than that minor point about the data they were based on being made up.

    2. Re:Sokal Affair by CRCulver · · Score: 2

      Is it a "kneejerk" reaction when people ridicule homeopathy, creationism, or politically motivated climate change deniers?

      No, it's a kneejerk reaction when people make claims that e.g. postmodern literary criticism is all bullshit, which is the context where I usually see mention of the Sokal affair. While there are some publications in this field that lack merit -- and Sokal's own comments about misuse of scientific comments are worth reading -- generally people bringing up the Sokal affair throw out the baby with the bathwater just because they can't be bothered to learn what is baby and what is bathwater.

  6. Re:But, but, but by tmosley · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They don't get their grant money from vegan societies, nor are the upper echelons of the Western mental health complex infested with militant vegans who refuse to accept that eating meat can be anything but evil and destructive to all of society.

  7. Re:How did they catch him? by tulcod · · Score: 2

    Among other peculiarities, his research results made sense.

  8. Re:But, but, but by RingDev · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would recommend that instead of spouting this ignorance proving drivel, that you spend some of your time learning how most grant systems work.

    I'll give you a hint, other scientists' grant money would not be threatened by blowing the lid off someone who is abusing the system. In fact, since that person would be excluded from future grants, the other scientists would be more likely to aquire grants in the future if they DID expose frauds.

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
  9. And by Lord+Lode · · Score: 2

    > Diederik Stapel's latest paper claimed that eating meat made people anto-social and selfish.

    And eating shellfish makes you ...

  10. Re:Obviously by zero.kalvin · · Score: 2

    Observations done on apes ( specially on chimps) showed extra cooperation and leveling of the hierarchical order when the animals were hunting/eating meat. If anything meat should make you more sociable. Seeing how much we resemble them, I would be sceptical about these results as well.

  11. Psychology is a science. by schwnj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Every time a story appears that involves psychological research, numerous people make comments about how psychology is a sham, not a science, fluffy, or some other degrading adjective. I usually find that these people haven't the foggiest idea what psychology actually is. I'm willing to bet that many people here that are claiming psychology as a non-science are thinking about what is actually therapy or counseling. I suggest any doubters read actual psychology journals before they make such claims. Much of the advancement in our understanding of neurophysiology, sensory systems, cognitive processing, decision-making, social behavior, and human development is due to research conducted under the umbrella of psychology. The problem is that the public isn't aware of psychology's breadth.

    1. Re:Psychology is a science. by schwnj · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Your comment betrays you. Why on earth do you think that psychology does not involve controlled and reproducible experiments? Why do you think it is based on post-hoc reasoning? Like I said, you need to merely look into psychological research to see your error.

    2. Re:Psychology is a science. by JoshuaZ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There's a tremendous amount of reproducible, controlled experiments in psychology. One area that in the last thirty years has been particularly successful is in quantifying and detecting cognitive biases. There have been very careful, clever experiments documenting the conjunction fallacy and when humans do it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy, the framing effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology), confirmation bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias, and many more. Moreover, there are now being developed general theories that explain what sorts of errors in reasoning humans will make, and those theories are often falsifiable. Psychology does have problems and especially had problems historically. It probably has one of the worst signal to crap rates of any of the soft sciences, but that doesn't make it a science and doesn't mean people aren't doing very good work in it.

    3. Re:Psychology is a science. by LateArthurDent · · Score: 2

      How about you cite something enlightening... If it's more advanced than the AC above suggested, you might change my mind, but I am seriously skeptical. I've read enough on sociology and political science to say that those fields are hopeless as far as hard science goes. Maybe there's something special about psychology that we've all missed...

      How about the classics?

      On obedience to authority figures

      On conditioning

      And, of course, the Pit of Despair.

      The only reason it's difficult to reproduce some psychology experiments is because of ethical concerns. There's nothing about the data being measured or the methodology used that is unscientific. I mean, I'm sure you can find bad experiments out there, but you can say that about any field, what you consider to be a hard science included. I'm an EE, and I've read some pretty bad papers in my field.

  12. Re:Meat and caveman psych by crakbone · · Score: 2

    Obviously you have never picked berries. They are just way to yummy to let anyone near you.

  13. Re:This has happened before. by Smallpond · · Score: 2

    "A top social scientist, Diederik Stapel, of Tilburg University, has been suspended after an investigation showed that he’s been fabricating his data for years"

    In what other field can you publish made-up crap and become a top scientist? You might be able to get away with it in some fields for a few years as an unknown, but psychology is a field where papers are not making repeatable, scientific predictions.

  14. Re:This has happened before. by Filip22012005 · · Score: 2

    Psychology is rather broad. The committee that evaluatued Stapel's fraud did conclude that the science system failed for social psychology. In particular that research in social psychology is almost never replicated.

    --
    When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
  15. Im not sure which is worse... by SuperCharlie · · Score: 2

    Faked data like this or studies/data that are suppressed by the legions of lawyers at Monsanto and Pfizer. One is simply fabricated, the other is more boot-to-the-neck.

  16. Re:But, but, but by ISoldat53 · · Score: 2

    If a vegetarian eats vegetables. What does a humanitarian eat?

  17. Re:This has happened before. by jellomizer · · Score: 2

    Yes it is. The fact that his data cannot be trusted is a a shame is true. Because he may have a lot of real good and honest data. But because he has lied and made up some data means we need to go out and retake more data.

    The scientific community shouldn't be apologetic to this type of behavior. They really need to crack down on this type of stuff. because it gives science a bad name. When a "Scientist" makes a "bold discovery" using made up data, is the reason why people don't trust science as much as they should, because there is too much lets make a political point "Science" going on.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  18. Re:How did they catch him? by Anneco · · Score: 2
    Some of his students did not trust the results. They did study his data carefully, and find some inconsistency. Also they found some "copy/paste" in the data.

    Then they told the boss of Stapel their findings.

  19. Re:But, but, but by tbannist · · Score: 2

    ...

    Just a clue-in here: Anthony Watts is famous (among some circles) for his denouncement of climate change and one of his big reasons for denouncing it is his claim that the scientists are all colluding to steal grant money from credulous governments. But you did a good job of explaining the point of the guy you responded to, and why it's really Anthony Watts who's the credulous schmuck.

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  20. Re:This has happened before. by GodInHell · · Score: 2

    In particular that research in social psychology is almost never replicated

    If you can't replicate the results, then what good is it?

    "can't" and "does not happen" are not the same thing. Psychology tests are repeatable (consider the Milgram experiment which has been repeated quite a bit see: wikipedia for example). But who's going to bother repeating the "messy workplace makes you racist" test? (yes, that's a rough and unfair summary of one of his papers)

    -GiH

  21. Re:But, but, but by kdemetter · · Score: 2

    "Science ! I kill you ..."

  22. Re:The Seven Sins of Pseudo-Science by clifyt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "shows that parts of the foundations of some psychology is a sham, not a science"

    So, looking at Freud and then applying these tests of pseudoscience to him is an indictment of psychology because some of the roots of the field have not panned out?

    So what does that say about the alchemists in conjunction to modern chemistry or physics? Quite a bit of scientific understanding of the world and what it is made up of and how it all fits together were put together by men whose methodology was on par with sorcery.

    You go far enough back in any field and you realize that someone important probably got something so wrong that it would invalidate their whole work if applied to todays standards.

    That said, I find most of what Freud professed to be utter bullshit...and it pissed me off through most of my undergrad and into my postgraduate work...people would bring up theories of his and I would just shudder. And then I realized that without the application and expansion of his beliefs, psychology may be 50 to 100 years behind what it is today. And we realize that even with his flawed beliefs, we can make a pretty accurate assessment of the world, or more to the point...the people that live within it. We know that with his talking therapies, even with his overemphasis on genitalia and the mommy problems, people are around 60% more likely to have measurable healing compared to those that receive nothing. We know that some interpretations of dreams or beliefs while inaccurate using the Freudian perspective, can lead to a better understanding of the person. In some ways, until imaging scanners and technology to analyze this comes into place, we realize we will most certainly be wrong...but in some ways correct.

    In 50 years from now, discoveries made through things like the Hadron Collider may show that the gods of physics may have been wrong...will that mean they are not scientists because they are only postulating that which they have not yet been able to observe? Until the first atomic bomb was detonated, we could not observe, let alone replicate what we had believed. And yet, it worked.

    That said, I pretty much moved from psychology to another science and I really don't have a dog in the fight any more. However, the more I deal with other sciences, the more I realize that they are grasping at straws in much the same fashion psychology has done...simply waiting for technology to catch up so that things can be proven or disproven...luckily, most other fields don't have to deal with quite as much human subjects protection / IRB that stop us from finding the truth. Not to go Godwin on things, but if you want to see true science in psychology, one only need to look back at Nazi Germany where one didn't need approval to do bad things to people to be able to reproducibly get results under a number of scenarios and stimuli. I think most would agree that the pseudoscience nature of psychology today is far more civilized and humane even while limiting the research and validity of what could be.

  23. Re:But, but, but by publiclurker · · Score: 2

    Human beans

  24. Re:Heavily cited too by Filip22012005 · · Score: 2

    The report goes into quite a lot of detail as to why these people didn't or couldn't check the raw data. Now, I'm not defending anything, but the explanations are that Stapel was quite an authoritarian mentor. These PhD-students learned about what it's like to be a scientist from him. They designed the studies together, and then Stapel conducted the research with assistants. In fact, he simply made up the data. The PhD-candidates were then provided with a dataset. As far as they knew, this is what getting a PhD is like. According to the report, some candidates protested. These candidates got into heavy arguments. Being a PhD-candidate can make you quite dependent of your promotor. This dependency is also mentioned as a serious flaw in the science system.

    --
    When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
  25. Uh oh, a scientist lied by efalk · · Score: 2

    Well, I guess this proves there's no such thing as global warming. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-26-2011/weathering-fights---science---what-s-it-up-to-

  26. Re:This has happened before. by geekoid · · Score: 2

    You have no clue of science or the scientific method, do you?

    "When one side finds something, and another finds proof to partially refute it, both have failed, and must start again,"
    this is stupid, and a simpletons views of the process.
    What is one side has a long history,a nd many many papers to base his conclusion on and the others doesn't? do we wipe out a whole branch of science?

    It is never 2 papers, it is field of research picking out data to come to a conclusion, and sometime finding seem to contradict each other. You don't 'start again'. YOU look at why and develop new test designed to weed out the conflict.

    Your personal anecdotes are worthless. However, there are good doctors and bad doctors. two bad doctors doesn't mean a whole field is bad. Also, your anecdote doesn't involve science, in involves treatment.

    " Yet they both carry a strange delusion that they are "happier!" and "better!.""
    Or you have a strange delusion based on your personal bias not to trust Psychologist.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect