Inside The Mind Of A Scientist Who Made Up More Than 50 Studies
Pseudoscience strikes again Wikimedia CommonsCheating in science When you hear about well-regarded scientists making up data in their studies, it's easy to wonder, What were they thinking? A New York Times Magazine piece has one answer. The magazine profiled Diederik Stapel, a psychologist, former dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and author of at least 55 papers with totally made-up data. He even made up data for the graduate students he supervised. He would tell them he was doing their experiments for them, an unusual move, as many professors prefer to leave that tedium for their underlings. The profile described a couple instances during which he fabricated data, going into detail about what he did. The first time he did it followed a predictable story line. He tested a hypothesis, he didn't find the answer he wanted, and then he didn't want to...