Foreword
The scientific fraud committed by Diederik Stapel, which came to light inTilburg in early September 2011, sent shock waves across the academic world in the Netherlands and internationally. Ultimately, trust forms the basis of all scientific collaboration. If, as in the case of Mr Stapel, there is a serious breach of that trust, the very foundations of science are undermined.
Is science’s purported self-cleansing ability really up to the challenge of dealing with such a serious infringement of scientific integrity? From the outset, the Rector Magnificus of Tilburg University decided to opt for full disclosure. He established a committee of enquiry, the Levelt Committee, charged with establishing the nature and extent of the fraud and examining the research culture that had allowed this fraud to persist over such a lengthy period. This picture could not be complete without involving Mr. Stapel’s previous places of employment within the scope of the investigation: the University of Amsterdam (UvA), where he studied from 1993 until 1999 and was awarded his doctorate in 1997, and the University of Groningen, where he held the position of full professor from 2000 until 2006. In mutual consultation between the three universities, the Drenth Committee was established in Amsterdam and the Noort Committee in Groningen. In this final report, the three Committees present their findings jointly.
When the fraud was first discovered, limiting the harm it caused for the victims was a matter of urgency. This was particularly the case for Mr Stapel’s former PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, whose publications were suddenly becoming worthless. In an interim report, published in late October 2011, the Committees reported on the extent of this harm and also concluded that none of these authors or co-authors had been accessories in Mr Stapel’s fraud. The report also outlined the nature of the fraud and of the research culture in which it had occurred. This interim report was made public immediately.
However, the Committees were of the opinion that the main bulk of the work had not yet even started. The case involved an extensive body of scientific work that was now tainted. In a well-functioning scientific world, the task now was to separate the wheat from the chaff. Journal publications can often leave traces that reach far into and even beyond scientific disciplines. The self-cleansing character of science calls for fraudulent publications to be withdrawn and no longer to proliferate within the literature. In addition, based on their initial impressions, the Committees believed that there were other serious issues within Mr Stapel’s publications, even if they were not fraudulent. These issues are referred to in this report as ‘sloppy science’: a failure to meet normal standards of methodology. This brought into the spotlight a research culture in which this sloppy science, alongside out-and-out fraud, was able to remain undetected for so long. This also necessitated a scientific self-cleansing operation.
Nevertheless, the most important reason for seeking completeness in cleansing the scientific record is that science itself has a particular claim to the finding of truth. This is a cumulative process, characterized in empirical science, and especially in psychology, as an empirical cycle, a continuous process of alternating between the development of theories and empirical testing. A theory has a provisional claim on truth/validity, as long as it has not been empirically disproven. Ultimately, cumulative evidence can result in consensus within the peer community on a theory’s validity. This fundamental cumulative process is seriously disrupted by interference from fraudulent data and findings based on questionable methodology. The scientific researchers and institutions involved are duty bound to call a halt to this disruption.
Sadly, some of the Committees’ findings are echoed in the recent open e-mail on the current situation in social psychology published by Nobel prizewinner Daniel Kahneman: ‘Your field is now the poster child for doubts about the integrity of psychological research. Your problem is not with a few people who have actively challenged the validity of some priming results. It is with the much larger population of colleagues who in the past accepted your surprising results as facts when they were published. These people have now attached a question mark to the field, and it is your responsibility to remove it.’ Kahneman can see ‘a train wreck looming. I expect the first victims to be young people on the job market.’ If this report and the wrong doings it highlights can contribute to this cleansing process, the Stapel fraud may still have a positive impact, alongside all of the damage and personal harm it has caused.
https://www.commissielevelt.nl/wp-content/uploads_per_blog/commissielevelt/2013/01/finalreportLevelt1.pdf
https://www.commissielevelt.nl/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/diederik-stapels-audacious-academic-fraud.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp
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