Earlier this year the radio was buzzing with a new study from Holland that said if people have messy streets then when tested afterwards they tend to racially and socially stereotype people more. I see a lot of this type of research as dubious at best but this one really seemed absolute nonsense and wondered why it got as far as a serious study on something so thoroughly meaningless.

Today on the BBC they announced after all the hype three of the professor's students investigated further and found he'd made the whole lot up, which he freely admitted, saying the system was so easy then it was pretty much their fault for allowing it. Clearly not the slightest bit sorry about what he'd done, much like the burglar this week who blamed his victim for leaving a window open and living in a rough area.

The story itself is a travesty of science, but what worried me far more was the fact the professor said how easy it was to do, no one checked his data and turned out he simply said he was doing surveys on his own and sat down and wrote the results. It was not ever checked or even calculated as the figures didn't add up and some were copied from elsewhere. The students became suspicious as a few figures hadn't been hidden thoroughly enough to look innocent and as soon as they checked realised it was impossible to get the numbers from the survey sample.

The reporter said psychological studies were taken on trust and the original data was usually kept private, even from the peer reviewers, as a matter of professional practice. I am yet to discover the fate of the professor and whether the Dutch authorities will change their system or not now it's been shown as so easy to abuse.

If one can do it and get caught by chance, could he be unique? I wouldn't have thought so- this one was dean of the faculty so had absolutely no need to advance his career further and had already got that far possibly via similar routes. You don't become dishonest overnight I tend to find.

believe it or not

The study that tripped him up was one that said that people who think of meat are more "hufterig" (callous, blunt, antisocial) than vegetarians. Studies like this make good news articles, but have little scientific value. It is worse when it goes from a bar discussion topic to a reference in parliament used to advanced political positions (which in these days happens more and more).
The big shock of course was that Mr Stapel did not just fiddle with the numbers (something even great scientists have done) or skewed interpretations, he completely made up the numbers. As far as I can see, this is the worst blow to the science in my lifetime, and I am not the only one.
The shock, disbelief and outrage already has led to the Great Purge of 2011, where many papers are reviewed, one dean quit the job because her scientific integrity was questioned. It is good there has been action, but it won't help the students and promovendi who studied under him or got their PhD, their work will always be questioned, and his current PhD students may have to repeat years worth of work.
All in all Diederik Stapel may currently be the most reviled person in the country, and rightly so.

A few weeks later and it turns out it was a serial behaviour, he'd done it for years and only got caught on this one. The radio only mentioned the litter and racism study (which they all trumpeted loudly only months earlier when they thought it was genuine and I thought it was absolute nonsense and an insult to science) and the meat one only came out here a while later, of equal lack of quality.

He did not apologise, he just said how easy they made it to do so. Far worse it proves that if anyone in such a position wants to cheat then it's unlikely they'll be found out, and as he's shown the security to be almost non-existent then the potential was there for many more who may or may not ever be discovered. I only hope not just The Netherlands but the whole world sort out their review system now as this guy basically could do exactly what he liked as the whole thing ran on trust alone. Not a good method to use anywhere.