Comments on: “Morality” guru guilty of research misconduct

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:08:38 +0000

Funny coincidence: one of the two female offenders in the book I mentioned is Doris Kearns Goodwin, a teevee historian.

Maybe we should formulate “Goodwin’s Law?” Something about how people arguing about researchers named Goodwin losing the argument as soon as one of them compares the researcher to a Nazi?

By: blue e

blue e — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:14:12 +0000

Historiann – I didn’t mean to imply that your point wasn’t valid. I was responding to Tony Grafton’s request for some examples of women who got in serious research trouble. For what it’s worth, I agree with your point – that “men can have a sense of entitlement born of their domination at the top.”
I should have stopped after giving the example instead of rambling on with qualifiers – sorry. The Goodwin case sticks in my mind because it (somewhat) sparked a conversation in the scientific community of how to protect grad student whistleblowers – though you’ve prompted me to think more about that, and why it was this particular case that sparked that conversation when there are other cases that could have.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:05:55 +0000

blue e–does the exception prove the rule or does it negate my point entirely? The list of research transgressors is predominately male not just because there are more men at the top ranks of academia, but because men can have a sense of entitlement born of their domination at the top.

For example, in a 2005 book by Jon Wiener, Historians in Trouble, he wrote about eleven cases of research and/or professional misconduct by historians. Two of his examples were women, nine were men. The numbers are probably even more skewed male in science misconduct cases.

CPP–you’re right. Hauser painted himself into a corner, and didn’t find a way to branch out into other projects. Talk about a hedgehog!

By: Comrade PhysioProf

Comrade PhysioProf — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:30:47 +0000

Hauser is the poster-child for a seriously fucked-up way of strategizing a scientific research program: the truth of your iconoclastic theory gains you recognition and its appurtenances, every experiment you do is aimed at “proving” your iconoclastic theory, and if your iconocastic theory stops being considered true, you will lose those appurtenances. For obvious reasons, this way of structuring your own research program provides overwhelmingly strong incentives to–from least to most egregious–be sloppy, ignore contradictory data, or fake data.

By: blue e

blue e — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:26:56 +0000

No, it’s not always a man.
This story was hitting the papers in Wisconsin a few years back.
http://www.uwalumni.com/home/alumniandfriends/waa_awards/worms.aspx
Elizabeth Goodwin, who studies (studied) nematode genetics, was caught falsifying data in a grant application.
I believe it’s more likely that it’s more often a man, but how much of that is due to the higher numbers of male researchers, and how much is due to different gender socialization, I don’t know.

By: Tony Grafton

Tony Grafton — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:33:02 +0000

It is always a man, isn’t it? Or at least usually. I’ve been trying to think of cases of serious research misconduct with female perps and haven’t come up with anything but a few bad books. Others? Is it all us boys?

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:55:38 +0000

Interesting. I’ve heard similar stories of people who were eventually done in by their belief that the rules didn’t apply to them. (I think Ward Churchill is a good example of that. I heard rumors about him for years before his “roosting chickens” speech became the lever the right could use to eject him from CU.)

It makes sense that that kind of professional entitlement doesn’t grow up overnight, but rather is a part of the package from the beginning. What frustrates me is that men like this–and it is always a man, isn’t it?–get rewarded for their behavior so richly and for so long.

By: Ruviana

Ruviana — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:50:37 +0000

True story–I went to grad school w/ Marc Hauser, and actually felt a bit of grad-schooly pride when he became so “famous” (as that’s defined for professors). But he was an asshole and a jerk in grad school, cutting out on stuff he didn’t want to do, mocking his students (we were all TA’s), and generally thinking his shit didn’t stink. I’ve been watching this whole thing unfold, and somehow, I’m not surprised.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:24:21 +0000

I do have a little problem with the Times header “found guilty,” since in serious judicial cultures that language implies the end result of some kind of specified procedural protocols and some measure of due process thereunder. Harvard’s close-to-the-vest approach to the entire matter makes it pretty hard to know just what that procedure was, or even what the conclusion was, beyond the press release boilerplate. What was the nature of the original pre-publication peer review? Was it based on replication of the experimental results in other labs, or was the field itself so arcane that there was nobody to do that? The whole corpus or retractions, partial retractions, and the repetition of research by the original parties is sort of foreign to most humanistic disciplines. The students in one’s lab may well be the best source of insight into what’s going on there, but differences of “interpretation” into things like primate attention spans and/or expressive behaviors, and “reservations” thereon seem like a pretty weak foundation for an indictment much less a conviction. I think this one will simply bear more watching and waiting. The investigator did, of course, issue some pretty substantial-sounding expressions of remorse, but those too might have had their origin in undisclosed “settlement” negotiations, with sanctions hanging in the balance.

By: comparatrice

comparatrice — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 20:39:31 +0000

The more I follow this story, the more I find myself wondering about Hauser’s motivations. I understand that falsifying data is easier than doing real work. But why these experiments in particular? Why are these results important enough to lie about? Why does his research empire specifically need to be built on rhesus monkeys distinguishing among musical patterns? It seems like such an esoteric thing to stake your reputation on — does his theory of innate morality stand or fall on certain capacities being common to all primates, or what?

With something like faking cold fusion, it’s a bit clearer what the stakes are. But I don’t see how monkey attention functions as the same kind of holy grail…