bripat9643
Diamond Member
- Apr 1, 2011
- 170,166
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I've been saying for years that the so-called "social sciences" are nothing but hocus pocuse. Here's the proof:
Scientific studies are used to support controversial social policies like same-sex marriage. But can we rely on them?
Even in scientific laboratories Georg Wilhelm Richmann is not a household name. But he ought to be. Richmann was an 18th century Russian scientist who died trying to repeat Benjamin Franklins famous experiment of attracting lightning to a kite. A ball of lightning travelled down the cord and struck him dead. The first martyr for the cause of science died trying to replicate another scientist's results.
The ability to reproduce the results of an experiment is a key step in the rapid progress that science has made since then. As any undergraduate in science knows, a true scientist observes, hypothesizes, predicts, and tests to reach a conclusion. We can be sure that his conclusion is unbiased and certain, because anyone can replicate it to see if it contains errors.
But what if no one bothers to replicate it? Is it really science?
This is the question which is shaking the whole field of social psychology after a Dutch professor admitted that most of his stellar career with papers in the worlds best journals was a gigantic con job.
Diederik Stapel, the dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, published dozens of articles based on fraudulent data over 15 years at three universities. He even forged data for the post-graduate students he was supervising, tainting their degrees.
Shortly before the secret of his stellar career was unmasked, he wrote three of the media-friendly studies which had made his work so well-known. In the leading journal Science he claimed that in a rubbish-strewn environment, people are more likely to be racists. In Psychological Science, he claimed that positions of power in work environments increase rates of infidelity among both men and women. And in another study he claimed that vegetarians are happier and more social than meat-eaters.
But in 2011 whistleblowers alerted authorities at Tilburg University about irregularities in his published papers. His reputation unravelled quickly. Stapel has admitted that he had fiddled his data and fabricated research results and has returned his PhD.
MercatorNet: Fraud threatens the integrity of social psychology
Scientific studies are used to support controversial social policies like same-sex marriage. But can we rely on them?
Even in scientific laboratories Georg Wilhelm Richmann is not a household name. But he ought to be. Richmann was an 18th century Russian scientist who died trying to repeat Benjamin Franklins famous experiment of attracting lightning to a kite. A ball of lightning travelled down the cord and struck him dead. The first martyr for the cause of science died trying to replicate another scientist's results.
The ability to reproduce the results of an experiment is a key step in the rapid progress that science has made since then. As any undergraduate in science knows, a true scientist observes, hypothesizes, predicts, and tests to reach a conclusion. We can be sure that his conclusion is unbiased and certain, because anyone can replicate it to see if it contains errors.
But what if no one bothers to replicate it? Is it really science?
This is the question which is shaking the whole field of social psychology after a Dutch professor admitted that most of his stellar career with papers in the worlds best journals was a gigantic con job.
Diederik Stapel, the dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, published dozens of articles based on fraudulent data over 15 years at three universities. He even forged data for the post-graduate students he was supervising, tainting their degrees.
Shortly before the secret of his stellar career was unmasked, he wrote three of the media-friendly studies which had made his work so well-known. In the leading journal Science he claimed that in a rubbish-strewn environment, people are more likely to be racists. In Psychological Science, he claimed that positions of power in work environments increase rates of infidelity among both men and women. And in another study he claimed that vegetarians are happier and more social than meat-eaters.
But in 2011 whistleblowers alerted authorities at Tilburg University about irregularities in his published papers. His reputation unravelled quickly. Stapel has admitted that he had fiddled his data and fabricated research results and has returned his PhD.
MercatorNet: Fraud threatens the integrity of social psychology
