The Mind of a Con Man

[zimmer]

An interesting look at academic fraud of the highest order.

Zimmer correction to the NY Times text in red.

Diederik Stapel, a Dutch social psychologist, perpetrated an audacious academic fraud by making up studies that told the Socialists of the world what it wanted to hear about human nature.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/m...ious-academic-fraud.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

Stapel had committed fraud in at least 55 of his papers, as well as in 10 Ph.D. dissertations written by his students.

Stapel’s career took off. He published more than two dozen studies while at Groningen, many of them written with his doctoral students. They don’t appear to have questioned why their supervisor was running many of the experiments for them. Nor did his colleagues inquire about this unusual practice.

Stapel’s career took off. He published more than two dozen studies while at Groningen, many of them written with his doctoral students. They don’t appear to have questioned why their supervisor was running many of the experiments for them. Nor did his colleagues inquire about this unusual practice...

Rumors of fraud trailed Stapel from Groningen to Tilburg, but none raised enough suspicion to prompt investigation. Stapel’s atypical practice of collecting data for his graduate students wasn’t questioned, either. Then, in the spring of 2010, a graduate student noticed anomalies in three experiments Stapel had run for him... Each of them spoke to me but requested anonymity because they worried their careers would be damaged if they were identified.

What the public didn’t realize, he said, was that academic science, too, was becoming a business. “There are scarce resources, you need grants, you need money, there is competition,”... I am a salesman... I am on the road... It’s like a circus...

 

[DDD]

Sooner or later corruption knows no boundaries. To escape the power of grant issuers influence to bias the research the researcher should have resources to begin with.

 

[Zyphlin]

Moderator's Warning:

Incredibly interesting article, but not "News". Moved to correct location