Everyday Research Methods

Ethics: New examples of fraud in psychology

Two more reports of research fraud have surfaced in the subfield of social psychology. You can read about two new suspected cases in this news piece by the journal Nature.

Read the article and think about these questions:

a) Are the cases described here examples of data falisification or data fabrication? (Is this possible to determine from the report?)

b) How did the UPenn researcher, Dr. Uri Simonsohn, use statistical techniques to detect suspicious data? 

c) What does this mean for the reputation of social psychology ? Will the public come to mistrust psychological research?  What are the costs and benefits to Dr. Simonsohn's investigation of others' data?

This blog has covered an earlier example of research fraud. You can read that entry here.

 

A recent case of research fraud

A social psychologist is in the news this month.  He admitted to fabricating and falsifying data: the data in dozens of published studies by this scientist are suddenly suspect.  

Here's a version of the story in the New York Times. 

a.) Data falsification and fabrication are two slightly different problems.  How are they different?  (see Chapter 4)  Which one is discussed in this story? 

b.) Reflect on why falsifying and fabricating data count as ethical violations.  Who is harmed by these actions?

c.)  The article discusses how the falsification case hurts psychology's public reputation as a science.  What do you think?  Do you think that stories like these will damage psychology's public reputation?

d.)  Data falsification also damages the process of science itself.  Reflect on how falsifying or fabricating data affects the theory-data cycle, the most important one in science. 

e.) After you read this article, think of changes that the field could make to the peer review or writing process that would make it less likely that psychologists would fabricate or falsify data.