This is big news . . . we’re talking really big news . . . Social Psychologist Diederik Stapel has admitted to falsifying data in over thirty peer reviewed papers related to social psychology and the like. He provided falsified data to co-authors, PhD candidates, and others along with falsifying his own solo work.

Why is this big news?

Stapel’s work has been the sort of thing that has been passed around quite a bit and became the basis for public policy decisions, grants, and other scientists have used his work as a reference when doing their own work.

This means not only are Stapel’s results and conclusions compromised, those of a lot more folks are.

Currently, they’ve about thirty papers they have lined as having fraud attached. There may be more, perhaps many more but even at thirty this is one of the most devastating cases of academic fraud around.

See io9’s coverage at http://io9.com/5855733/psychologist-admits-to-faking-dozens-of-scientific-studies for a slew of resources for more information.

All the best,
Brian
http://www.briandavidphillips.com