Over at Big Questions, Heather Wax makes the connection between David Goodstein’s book On Fact and Fraud and the recent controversy surrounding Marc Hauser in a post titled “When Scientists Lie… and why they do it.”
She draws on Michael Shermer’s review of the book in Scientific American to argue that Goodstein’s book “helps explain the Marc Hauser story.”
Goodstein’s experience as vice-Provost at Caltech and head of their fraud squad gives him an inside track on what fraud is, who is likely to commit it, and why. In fact, as Shermer notes in his article, Goodstein identifies three risk factors for fraudsters:
The perpetrators, he writes, “1. Were under career pressure; 2. Knew, or thought they knew, what the answer to the problem they were considering would turn out to be if they went to all the trouble of doing the work properly; and 3. Were working in a field where individual experiments are not expected to be precisely reproducible.”
On September 2nd, 2010 at 10:07 pm Fannie Peczenik replied:
The risk factors are described in such mild terms. Are the prepetrators really so innocent? What do they do to the people who question their methods and results?
Aren’t the perpetrators more likely to be both highly ambitious — and accomplished con artists as well. Is it so easy to cheat in science and get away with it for months or years?
I don’t know the Hauser story beyond what was printed in the NY Times. But I do know of other incidents and the perps were thoroughgoing cheaters.
On September 15th, 2010 at 2:56 am Cristin replied:
For me is very clear that Marc Hauser has fabricated those data.. think about it, no tests of the control condition are present on the videotape!