5 ms·

> The experiment — and others like it — didn’t give Stapel the desired results, he said. He had the choice of abandoning the work or redoing the experiment. But

> The experiment — and others like it — didn’t give Stapel the desired results, he said. He had the choice of abandoning the work or redoing the experiment. But he had already spent a lot of time on the research and was convinced his hypothesis was valid. “I said — you know what, I am going to create the data set,” he told me. > Sitting at his kitchen table in Groningen, he began typing numbers into his laptop that would give him the outcome he wanted. He knew that the effect he was looking for had to be small in order to be believable; even the most successful psychology experiments rarely yield significant results. The math had to be done in reverse order: the individual attractiveness scores that subjects gave themselves on a 0-7 scale needed to be such that Stapel would get a small but significant difference in the average scores for each of the two conditions he was comparing. He made up individual scores like 4, 5, 3, 3 for subjects who were shown the attractive face. “I tried to make it random, which of course was very hard to do,” Stapel told me. This sort of misconduct is shockingly common in academia, such that it is often not even seen as misconduct.

Kylekramer 14y ago
Really? The other elements (stopping once your data fits your hypothesis, ignoring contradicting data in analysis) are fairly common, but does any really think that making up data isn't misconduct?
- a_bonobo 14y ago
  As someone who works in science, I've never ever ever met someone who confessed to making up data (nor have I made up data myself). Generating data and passing that of as measured data = fraud = loss of contract.
  - spikels 14y ago
    Contract? Are we taking about business or science? Now I am really worried. Is the goal to produce "tangible results" (papers, press, professional aclaim, popular fame) or try and maybe, even probably, fail to uncover something new but true? Is everything corrupt?
    - a_bonobo 14y ago
      When you work in science as a post-doc or research assistant, you (usually) have a 1 or 2 year contract, tenure is just for a select few professors. If you cheat, that's the end of your contract. Where do you see corruption in this?
    - roel_v 14y ago
      "Contract? Are we taking about business or science?" Are you living under a rock? How do you think research is funded? The people actually doing research are funded through short-term contracts with "Tenure" being dangled in front of them as the proverbial carrot. However 1) most people starting out on this track never get tenure; and 2) those who do, mostly give up the nitty-gritty of research, because of a combination of reasons. Sometimes I find the apparent lack of understanding of how academia actually works (as opposed to how undergrads and the general public with a university degree but no real exposure of the behind-the-curtains of academic research think it is, or feel it should be) just as jarring as the way things go on universities.
      - spikels 14y ago
        Yes I must have been living under a rock while academic research (we are not talking about corporate R&D) became completely dominated by the persuit of funding. Yes I've heard that grant writing has become a key "research" skill. And I know about all the academic scandals, the frequent inability to reproduce published results, the bias against publishing negative results and general abuse of statistics. However as a non-academic science lover I still held on to the ideal that science was mostly about the pursuit of knowledge. I certainly got that impression from the few great researchers in medicine, economics, physics and math I happened to get to know. I guess they were just exceptions. Thanks for opening my eyes. Science is a business. And academic research is just as corrupt as every other human activity. Why should I have ever though anything else.
        roel_v 14y ago
        Look man, I don't mean to rag on you. It's just - how do people think academics make a living? They're normal people just like the rest of us, with grocery bills and mortgages, and daydreams of having enough time to watch their kids grow up. Money is tight everywhere, and has been before the crisis, because so little research can be shown to have actual uses. Dreary-eyed grad students flock to academia hoping to not have to think about such mundane things as gasp money, full of youthful idealism about Advancing Human Knowledge(tm) only to find out that their contributions, in all likelihood, will not matter at all, and after 10 years in their university coming to terms with the fact that they'd rather find other ways to give meaning to their life rather than wasting it on more of the same publish-or-perish grind. Obviously this is exaggerating things - some research is genuinely useful, and overall the state of the art advances in all fields, even if in very small increments; and very few academics (at least of the ones I know, which is a considerable number) drag themselves to their desks every day thinking about shooting themselves in the head. But the core point that academia isn't the romantic ideal that some have of it are undeniable, and won't be denied by anyone living the life (because that's what it is - a lifestyle, with advantages and drawbacks like any other).

Kylekramer 14y ago

Really? The other elements (stopping once your data fits your hypothesis, ignoring contradicting data in analysis) are fairly common, but does any really think that making up data isn't misconduct?

a_bonobo 14y ago
As someone who works in science, I've never ever ever met someone who confessed to making up data (nor have I made up data myself). Generating data and passing that of as measured data = fraud = loss of contract.
- spikels 14y ago
  Contract? Are we taking about business or science? Now I am really worried. Is the goal to produce "tangible results" (papers, press, professional aclaim, popular fame) or try and maybe, even probably, fail to uncover something new but true? Is everything corrupt?
  - a_bonobo 14y ago
    When you work in science as a post-doc or research assistant, you (usually) have a 1 or 2 year contract, tenure is just for a select few professors. If you cheat, that's the end of your contract. Where do you see corruption in this?
  - roel_v 14y ago
    "Contract? Are we taking about business or science?" Are you living under a rock? How do you think research is funded? The people actually doing research are funded through short-term contracts with "Tenure" being dangled in front of them as the proverbial carrot. However 1) most people starting out on this track never get tenure; and 2) those who do, mostly give up the nitty-gritty of research, because of a combination of reasons. Sometimes I find the apparent lack of understanding of how academia actually works (as opposed to how undergrads and the general public with a university degree but no real exposure of the behind-the-curtains of academic research think it is, or feel it should be) just as jarring as the way things go on universities.
    - spikels 14y ago
      Yes I must have been living under a rock while academic research (we are not talking about corporate R&D) became completely dominated by the persuit of funding. Yes I've heard that grant writing has become a key "research" skill. And I know about all the academic scandals, the frequent inability to reproduce published results, the bias against publishing negative results and general abuse of statistics. However as a non-academic science lover I still held on to the ideal that science was mostly about the pursuit of knowledge. I certainly got that impression from the few great researchers in medicine, economics, physics and math I happened to get to know. I guess they were just exceptions. Thanks for opening my eyes. Science is a business. And academic research is just as corrupt as every other human activity. Why should I have ever though anything else.
      - roel_v 14y ago
        Look man, I don't mean to rag on you. It's just - how do people think academics make a living? They're normal people just like the rest of us, with grocery bills and mortgages, and daydreams of having enough time to watch their kids grow up. Money is tight everywhere, and has been before the crisis, because so little research can be shown to have actual uses. Dreary-eyed grad students flock to academia hoping to not have to think about such mundane things as gasp money, full of youthful idealism about Advancing Human Knowledge(tm) only to find out that their contributions, in all likelihood, will not matter at all, and after 10 years in their university coming to terms with the fact that they'd rather find other ways to give meaning to their life rather than wasting it on more of the same publish-or-perish grind. Obviously this is exaggerating things - some research is genuinely useful, and overall the state of the art advances in all fields, even if in very small increments; and very few academics (at least of the ones I know, which is a considerable number) drag themselves to their desks every day thinking about shooting themselves in the head. But the core point that academia isn't the romantic ideal that some have of it are undeniable, and won't be denied by anyone living the life (because that's what it is - a lifestyle, with advantages and drawbacks like any other).