Harvard Professor Found Responsible For Scientific Misconduct

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard University says a faculty committee investigating the work of a psychology professor has found him "solely responsible" for eight instances of scientific misconduct.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael Smith says in a letter sent to faculty Friday that the inquiry found three studies conducted by Marc Hauser needed to be corrected or retracted.

Five other studies were not published or had problems that were corrected before they were published.

Smith says the experiments had problems involving data acquisition, data analysis, data retention as well as the reporting of research methodologies and results.

Smith says "such misconduct strikes at the core of our academic values."

The U.S. Attorney's Office and federal agencies that funded Hauser's research are also investigating.

Hauser is on leave until next year. His home number has been disconnected.

The Boston Globe reports that Hauser apologized to the university in a statement last week, saying he was "deeply sorry" for the problems the case has brought the school and acknowledging his errors.

According to the Harvard Crimson's reading of Smith's letter, Hauser faces "involuntary leave, the imposition of additional oversight on a faculty member's research lab, and appropriately severe restrictions on a faculty member's ability to apply for research grants, to admit graduate students, and to supervise undergraduate research" -- and possibly consequences outside the university.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Hauser is at work on a book titled "Evilicious: Why We Evolved a Taste for Being Bad."

Comments

[LadyXoc]

11:12 AM on 08/28/2010

This is an example of research which, because of it's purported applicability to human development, is rushed into print before adequate peer review, and which the media just LOVE to publish. And then it becomes something quoted over and over again in living rooms throughout America.
Much of the problem comes about because few media outlets can hire scientists to review press releases for experiment design (or even basic plausibility) so that these get passed on as written. There is a long line of discredited "research" some of which was actively harmful.

[TonyKohmy]

01:43 AM on 08/26/2010

The main Department of Commerce Building is located a half mile from my house. NOAA and NCAR are also located very near. NCAR houses the newest Cray computer and is the main weather modeling center in the world. Bush instructed the scientists to either falsify or delete data to negate the evidence for global warming or face dismissal. My neighbor across the street was furious. All publications of research being done was to go through the White House before being released.

We have two Nobel winning scientist here in town and one of them had to go to Washington to explain to Bush's scientist what a Einstein-Bosen Condensate was before Bush would allow the research to be published. They won the Nobel prize in physics. The other won his prize in genetics.

I don't think laziness and bad judgment comes anything close to the morally reprehensible behaviors of the Bush administration.

[squirrely girl]

03:18 PM on 08/24/2010

I feel like it's his grad students that will suffer the most. It's really hard to get accepted to graduate school in psychology and then you rely heavily on the reputation of your advisor to get your foot in the door.

[PCMinistry]

01:32 PM on 08/24/2010

You know you're a smart ^%$#^ when you get busted for scientific misconduct!

[3dtrix]

11:53 AM on 08/24/2010

Academics are constantly smeared by politicians, but think about it - imagine if policies and legislation were reviewed to ascertain that programs were effective, that data were accurate, that monies were well spent. Ours would be a very different nation...

[rjaxone]

12:17 AM on 08/24/2010

At Harvard? Et tu brutus...

[StinkPickel]

09:50 PM on 08/23/2010

Oops, here's the link: http://chronicle.com/article/Document-Sheds-Light-on/123988/

[StinkPickel]

09:49 PM on 08/23/2010

The recent article on the Chronicle of Higher Education is much more precise (): people from his lab make it very clear that this guy just forged the data. Two people independently coded the head movements of the tested monkeys and came up with completely different counts, and he just discarded those. Read that article and you will see how "misconduct" is not nearly the most appropriate word for this. The fact that Harvard is so tight-lipped with this is most embarrassing and I would only wish that my own university would fire such a fraudster ...

[Cindy Fogle]

08:48 PM on 08/23/2010

Rene Descartes, (1596-1650) "Discourse on the Method
of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth"

Chapter VI p5 ..."And further, I have never observed that any truth
before unknown has been brought to light by the disputations that
are practiced in the schools; for while each strives for the victory,
each is much more occupied in making the best of mere verisimilitude,
than in weighing the reasons on both sides of the question; and those
who have been long good advocates are not afterwards on that account
the better judges."

p6 "In this respect they are like the ivy which never strives to rise above
the tree that sustains it, and which frequently even returns downwards
when it has reached the top"...

Not hard to see why Rene Descartes is seldom a reading assignment in College.

[Cindy Fogle]

09:27 PM on 08/23/2010

p7 ... "And as for the experiments that others have already made, even although
these parties should be willing of themselves to communicate them to him (which
is what those who esteem them secrets will never do), the experiments are, for the
most part, accompanied with so many circumstances and superfluous elements,
as to make it exceedingly difficult to disentangle the truth from its adjuncts--besides,
he will find almost all of them so ill described, or even so false (because those who
made them have wished to see in them only such facts as they deemed conformable
to their principles)""

There are many more studies that need scrutiny, and many have to do with issues
far more serious than what monkey's think. If the academy or the agency funding
the project agree with the premise of the study...it gets pushed through. If there
is some kind of fundamental disagreement (Like what happened to Galileo when
he supported Copernicus) it get's blocked, unfunded, perhaps even censored.

In light of that, the vagueness is suspicious here.

[Cindy Fogle]

09:47 PM on 08/23/2010

- That is suspicious on BOTH sides.

Oh dear, I hope you don't think I'm a filibuster, but I think this is an important point
that needs brought out!

1000's of scientific studies are being churned out from the Academic mill EACH DAY.
The results are then accepted with only peer review. What about public scrutiny?
No, the public must often pay to download, or subscribe to see these documents.

I could right a book on errors and studies that have been reversed. The researchers
only prove what their funding sources allow. While 9/10 Research Thesis projects go
unfunded.

[justlw]

04:26 PM on 08/23/2010

Well, clearly this disproves global warming.

[Candid One]

09:33 PM on 08/23/2010

Yep, global warming is psychological conundrum best discussed over vodka martinis, to beat the heat.

[NoraHuffposter]

09:27 AM on 08/23/2010

The article is vague. Are problems with 'data acquisition' code for making up data figures? Won't be the first or the last time someone makes up numbers. I'd be surprised if Hauser ever a faculty position again. If the charges against him are true, then what he did is a disgrace.

[Vacationland]

10:08 AM on 08/23/2010

Problems with data acquisition can mean anything from making up data wholesale to not obtaining necessary releases from study subjects to transferring sensitive data over non-secure connections. I used to work at one of the grad schools in a data-focused department and there are a lot of controls in place to ensure none of those things happen.

Hauser's a tenured professor, as far as I can tell from his faculty listings on Harvard websites, so it's not as simple as just booting him out. He may have his tenure revoked (pretty rare, and it would mean kissing his sweet University pension goodbye) or he may be allowed to stay based on certain conditions, but his reputation will be shot and he will have difficulty obtaining research funding going forward. This kind of thing is looked upon as a disgrace at the University itself and in the academic community at large. This guy's career in academia is circling the drain.

[NoraHuffposter]

10:18 AM on 08/23/2010

Indeed. Thanks for the information.

It seems that if he stays, he would have to contend with oversight over his research and not being able to get any graduate students. Can't think of any student who would want to be associated with his lab.

[jcy22]

05:18 PM on 08/23/2010

In a previous article from The Chronicle, the story seemed to have come from some of his grad students and research assistants.. supposedly Hauser was closer to the "making up data wholesale" (mis-analyzing behavioral videos on purpose in order to come up with significant findings)

Sucks for Time, whose animal intelligence cover story a few weeks ago quoted him and his findings extensively. Also sucks for his grad students and other lab members, I imagine, who might be stuck with no projects/funding going forward while their livelihoods and careers depend on it.

[Fabini]

11:00 AM on 08/23/2010

Vague indeed. Is there a link to the actual report AND the letter to the faculty?

[NoraHuffposter]

12:10 PM on 08/23/2010

You would think they would at least reference the report or provide a link before they smear his name this way.

[slobone]

12:28 PM on 08/23/2010

Here's an article that includes the full text of Harvard's letter:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/08/marc-hauser-harvard-science-misconduct-/1

As best I understand it, Hauser's research was with rhesus monkeys, to determine how good they were at pattern recognition. It involved analysis of videotapes that showed the monkeys' reactions to various events. The researcher is supposed to watch the tape and mark down the times when the monkeys react in various ways (obviously monkeys can't tell us what they're thinking, so you have to go by their physical reactions).

Hauser is accused of writing down some reactions that did not actually appear on the tape, possibly intentionally. This was called to his attention by his research assistants, but he overruled them and published the data anyway.

In other words -- he sweetened the data to make an inconclusive study sound more conclusive. Highly tempting and highly improper...