fraudbusting

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A fraudster’s “first time”:

I was alone in my tastefully furnished office at the University. . . . I opened the file with the data that I had entered and changed an unexpected 2 into a 4; then, a little further along, I changed a 3 into a 5. . . . When the results are just not quite what you’d so badly hoped for; when you know that that hope is based on a thorough analysis of the literature; . . . then, surely, you’re entitled to adjust the results just a little? . . . I looked at the array of data and made a few mouse clicks to tell the computer to run the statistical analyses. When I saw the results, the world had become logical again. (Stapel 2012/2014, p. 103)

This is Diederik Stapel, the famed and shamed researcher in behavioral psychology, reflecting on his “first time” – when he was “only” tampering with, and not yet wholly fabricating, data. Amazingly, while a fresh wave of researchers in Stapel’s field of “priming theory”[1] were tut-tutting Stapel’s exposed misconduct, some of them were busy manipulating their own data! Continue reading →