Social psychologist loses his job after admitting academic fraud

Diederik Stapel, a prolific social psychologist at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, has just been fired from his job after admitting to fabricating data in some of his studies. This is serious scientific misconduct, and just like plagiarism or other academic misconduct by undergraduate or graduate students, it is not tolerated.

What makes it worse is that if he collaborated with anyone on these publications, they have to be included in the retractions, so that damages their reputation and also causes them to lose valuable publication credits, which are the currency of academics.

Details can be found in this article from Science magazine.

The only comfort in this is that at least we walk the walk – when we impress on our students the seriousness of academic misconduct, they can be sure we apply the same high standards to ourselves.

Published by

Dana C. Leighton, Ph.D.

I am a social psychologist, broadly interested in the psychological basis of peace and conflict. I am working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a Program Analyst, leading our survey research to better understand how our disaster response is promoting equity in service delivery, workforce readiness, and recovery and mitigation efforts.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *