Psychologist admits faking data in dozens of studies

In one of the biggest cases of scientific fraud on record, a prominent psychologist has admitted fabricating data in dozens of studies.

Diederik Stapel, who was suspended from his post at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in September, was exceptionally productive. He was responsible for a succession of eye-catching studies on topics including stereotyping and discrimination, the effectiveness of advertising, and the circumstances in which people may perversely prefer negative feedback to praise.

Stapel was suspended after three junior researchers alleged scientific misconduct. But the extent of the problems became known only on Monday, when the university released an interim report concluding that dozens of papers, as well as 14 out of the 21 PhD theses Stapel had supervised, contain fabricated data.

"This is absolutely horrifying," says Laura King, a social psychologist at the University of Missouri in Columbia. "We are talking about research that has major impact in the field of social cognition." Social cognition is the field of psychology that investigates how our mental processes affect the way we relate to one another.

Hall of shame

In terms of the sheer volume of research implicated, Stapel's is one of the worst cases of scientific misconduct on record. The chair of the committee that has examined Stapel's work at Tilburg University told Nature that some 30 papers have so far been found to contain fabricated data. If these are all withdrawn, they will exceed the toll of retractions of papers by Jan Hendrik Sch?n, whose groundbreaking work at Bell Labs, New Jersey, on electronic devices made from organic molecules was found in 2002 to contain widespread fabrication and manipulation of data.

The ongoing investigation into Stapel's work also involves the universities of Amsterdam, where he gained his PhD, and Groningen, where he worked before moving to Tilburg in 2006. Given that he has more than 150 publications to his name, Stapel's case may yet come to rival that of cancer researchers Friedhelm Herrmann and Marion Brach of the Max Delbr?ck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, who were eventually found to have published 94 papers and book chapters that definitely or very likely contained manipulated data.

Improbable stats

Tilburg University's interim report explains that Stapel often gave his students data to analyse, or approached colleagues with results that addressed questions in which they were interested. The evidence of fabrication comes from anomalies in this material, including suspiciously large experimental effects and a lack of "outliers" in the data. Statisticians are now examining further studies for evidence of similar problems.

The case leaves red-faced collaborators cursing themselves for being so trusting. "I was duped," admits Hart Blanton of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, who expects to have to retract two papers he published with Stapel examining how "priming" people by showing them a picture of Albert Einstein can make them feel less intelligent.

The scandal could prove especially damaging for social psychology, sometimes attacked for promoting "sexy" studies likely to titillate the media.

"Our field is one where a great deal of currency is placed on surprising you," says Blanton, who is concerned about a dynamic that encourages researchers to progress from "counter-intuitive to cute, to provocative, to 'defies gravity'".

Some of Stapel's recent work was certainly provocative. A paper published in April in the journal Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1201068) claimed that disordered environments such as littered streets make people more prone to stereotyping and discrimination. Although the Tilburg inquiry has not yet identified the studies that contain fabricated data, Science has already published an expression of concern about this paper.

In a statement released to the Dutch media this week, Stapel admitted fabricating data and apologised for the damage done to his colleagues and the field of social psychology. "I have failed as a scientist," he said.

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