Investigation discovers fraud in more than half of first tranche of psychologist’s research papers

The first in a series of academic investigations into the “unprecedented” scientific fraud committed by Dutch former professor of social psychology Diederik Stapel has judged more than half of his publications to be fraudulent. The investigating committee chaired by emeritus professor in psycho-linguistics Pim Levelt has so far only investigated a small part of his research published while employed by Tilburg University (www.commissielevelt.nl). The information is being published online as soon as the results become available as a service to the scientific community. Out of 20 publications dating from 2008 to 2011, fraud was determined in 12. …