Posts Tagged ‘Scientific misconduct’

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Gaddafi Jr.’s PhD thesis from LSE being examined for plagiarism

February 24, 2011

After the success of the on-line analysis of Guttenberg’s PhD thesis from Bayreuth University which proved that more than two-thirds of the pages had plagiarised content, the suspect thesis of Gadaffi Jr. from the LSE is also being examined on line here.

It would probably be a good idea for LSE to apply some plagiarism software and get ahead of the curve.

From Wikipedia:

Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics in 2008. Through the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, Saif subsequently pledged a donation of £1.5 million to support the work of the LSE’s Centre for the Study of Global Governance on civil society organizations in North Africa. Following the political uprising in Libya in February 2011, the LSE has issued a statement indicating that it will cut all financial ties with the country and will accept no further money from the Foundation, having already received and spent the first £300,000 installment of the donation.

Saif’s Ph.D. thesis has been made available online and commentators have already identified several passages which appear to have been copied from other sources without attribution. There is speculation that the thesis was plagiarized and/or ghostwritten by another individual.

Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi

Analysis of Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi’s LSE Thesis:

“THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE DEMOCRATISATION OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE INSTITUTIONS”
(PDF)

In the Guttenberg case, Bayreuth University has now rescinded his PhD in an investigation which lasted less than a week. As Professor Debora Weber-Wulff points out this must be the fastest ever decision by a German University in over 400 years!!

Well, this has to be a record. I believe this is the shortest university decision process in the last 400 years or so. Last Tuesday evening the story broke, just over a week later the university commission for good scientific work at the University of Bayreuth reached a decision. They are rescinding his doctorate.

They didn’t go into details, and most important, didn’t decide if he plagiarized on purpose. He says he didn’t, the documentation found on the GuttenPlagWiki screams a different story. Since he has announced that he wanted to withdraw his doctorate anyway, he won’t contest it, so they don’t have to do the normal detailed analysis.

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Posted in Corruption, Education, Fraud, Germany, Libya, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »

Plagiarism and the morphing of a Minister

February 18, 2011

Misconduct in the scientific world takes months if not years to be investigated and sanctions – if any – are light. But for those riding high in the poltical world the consequences can be swift. It seems unlikely that Googleberg can continue as the German Defence Minister for very long.

Just 4 days ago he was

Baron Dr. Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, Defence Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Baron Dr. Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jakob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg (focus.de)

Then his plagiarism was revealed by the Süddeutsche Zeitung earlier this week, and his copying of some 24 passages for his PhD thesis has grown to be the copying of at least 78 passages. Even the first two paragraphs of his introduction appear to have been copied from a 1997 article in the center-right dailyFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Der Spiegel dubbed him Merkel’s Minister of Scandals.

Deutsche Welle decided that Googleberg was more appropriate than Guttenberg. Two criminal complaints have now been filed against him, claiming infringement of copyrights and lying in the sworn statement that accompanied the thesis. Others are claiming that he can’t be guilty of plagiarism – it must have been the fault of his ghost writer!

In a desperate damage control exercise after being read the riot act by Angela Merkel, Googleberg said on Friday that he would temporarily renounce his doctorate and relinquish his “doctor” title amid allegations that he plagiarized significant sections of his dissertation.

And now Der Spiegel has baptised him Merkel’s Copycat minister.

In the space of just 3 days,

Herr. Dr. Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, Defence Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany

has morphed to

Herr Theodor Googleberg, Merkel’s copycat minister.

But at least Googleberg has upheld the reputation of German politicians in the misconduct stakes and managed to reduce the lead that was being being taken by Bunga Bunga Berlusconi in Italy and by the “free loading” ministers of the French Republic.

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Posted in Corruption, Education, Ethics, Fraud, Germany, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

German Defence Minister accused of plagiarism in his PhD thesis

February 16, 2011
Picture of Karl-Theodor Freiherr von und zu Gu...

Image via Wikipedia

The Financial Times Deutschland carries this story today:

Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (CSU) has to defend himself against accusations that he had cheated on his doctoral thesis. According to the “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” (Wednesday) there are some passages in Guttenberg’s thesis which match literally formulations by other authors, and which have not been acknowledged.
The thesis is in several places “a brazen plagiarism” and “deception”, the paper quoted the Bremen law professor Andreas Fischer-Lescano, who had discovered the duplications during a routine examination. Fischer-Lescano teaches at the University of Bremen Public Law, European and international law.
…….
Guttenberg submitted his doctoral work in 2006 at the Law Faculty in Bayreuth. In 2007, he was then awarded the highest degree – summa cum laude doctorate in law (PhD).

The thesis is now under investigation by the Ombudsman for scientific self-regulation of the University of Bayreuth.

But this is an investigation concerning a serving Minister. I can predict with the greatest of confidence that the establishment will close ranks and that the investigation will come to the conclusions that:

  • no scientific misconduct is involved,
  • the lack of references were merely an oversight and an honest mistake, and
  • the degree award is not tainted in any way and
  • no further action is required except the insertion of an addendum acknowledging the plagiarised authors

Related:

Guttenberg’s slick image slips away

German Defense Minister Agrees to Inquiry Into Military Incidents


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Posted in Behaviour, Education, Germany | 1 Comment »

China retracts a national scientific award for plagiarism

February 14, 2011

From Xinhua News:

Li Liansheng: photo China Daily

BEIJING, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) — The recent revocation of a national scientific award due to academic fraud was the first of its kind in China, National Office for Science and Technology Awards told Xinhua Thursday.

China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, on Feb. 1, issued a statement revoking the State Scientific and Technological Progress Award (SSTPA) given to Li Liansheng, former professor of Xi’an Jiaotong University.

According to the statement, the investigation found Li had plagiarized others’ works and fabricated data in his winning project, and his prize will be canceled and money awarded retrieved.

Zhao Baojing, senior officer with the National Office for S&T Award, told Xinhua that it was the first time China had withdrawn a national scientific honor.

Li Liansheng, former professor and doctoral tutor of Xi’an Jiaotong University, received the second-place prize of the SSTPA in 2005 for his research on key technologies for designing and manufacturing scroll compressors.

In 2008, he was accused of plagiarism and providing false data in the winning project by six professors of Xi’an Jiaotong University. An investigation was later carried out.

Xi’an Jiaotong University suspended Li from working at the university and rescinded his employment contract in March, 2010.

AsiaOne.com writes:

News that the ministry is stripping him of his award for scientific and technological progress comes three years after six colleagues first claimed that the energy and power studies expert had plagiarized the work of others.

Wan Gang, the minister of science and technology, had earlier vowed that there would be a “zero tolerance” policy toward research frauds and academic plagiarism amid growing criticism about the country’s academic integrity.

“We will dig up the past of those researchers who fake their works and punish them,” he told China Daily in November 2010.

The country has more than 2.3 million workers in the science and technology field and the number of research papers published on the subject has topped the world.

The intense competition to get work published has led some researchers to exaggerate their achievements, said critics.

“In China, we care whether a paper is published in a magazine more than we care about the paper’s quality and academic influence,” Rao Yi, dean of the School of Life Sciences at Peking University, was quoted as saying in a report in China Youth Daily.

Universities and colleges are ranked according to the number of academic papers their staff can get published and the number of references they get in influential journals

Related:

https://ktwop.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/chinese-science-ministry-vindicates-academic-fraud-journalists/

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Very fishy: Dismissed from Cambridge, PhD from Imperial, misconduct at UCL, employed at UEL

February 9, 2011

The latest revelations about the chequered career of Jatinder Ahluwalia being dismissed from Cambridge for falsifying data seems like a film script for Leonardo DiCaprio and another Catch Me If You Can movie.

At Cambridge Dr M.D. Brand, Reader in Cellular Biochemistry was his advisor and in a letter dated November 10, 1997, wrote:

…I am no longer prepared to act as PhD supervisor for Jatinder Ahluwalia, and…recommend that he removed from the Board’s list of graduate students because I believe he has been inventing experimental results.

Brand sent Ahluwalia a copy of his letter, and offered again to let him repeat his experiments with witnesses. Ahluwalia evidently didn’t take advantage of that offer. He lost his studentship funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council at the end of 1997, and was dismissed from the graduate studies program
on February 18, 1998.

While the actions at Cambridge and UCL seem to restore some faith in academic integrity some questions arise about his stint at Imperial College where he received his PhD and at the University of East London where he is currently employed as Senior Lecturer & Programme leader in Pharmacology but is writing papers about plagiarism.

He writes on the UEL site:

I undertook my PhD training at Imperial College, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and Novartis London, studying the mechanisms by which cannabinoid (CB1) and vanilloid (VR1) receptors regulate nociceptive transmission at pre-synaptic nerve terminals.

I was based in Novartis (London) throughout my doctoral studies.

The question arises as to whether Imperial College were aware of his shenanigans at Cambridge. His apparent employment or  funding by Novartis during his PhD also raises questions about whether Novartis were aware of his dismissal from Cambridge and even about his discoveries for (or sponsored by) Novartis:

During my first year, we discovered that CB1 and VR1 receptors are expressed on pre-synaptic nerve terminals (Ahluwalia et al. Neuroscience 100, 685-688, 2000; Ahluwalia et al. Neuroscience 110, 747-753, 2002). The final year of my PhD was spent investigating the effect of the endocannabinoid anandamide on pre-synaptic neurotransmitter release from cultured dorsal root ganglion neurons  (Ahluwalia et al. Journal of Neurochemistry, 84, 585-591, 2003; Ahluwalia et al. EJN, 17, 1-8, 2003).

His paper on plagiarism while at UEL also has some obvious commercial implications.

Imperial College, UEL and Novartis ought to be worried and perhaps so also should be the editors of Neuroscience and the Journal of Neurochemistry.


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Sylvia Bulfone-Paus misconduct story stretches back to at least 1999

February 3, 2011

I have posted earlier about 12 retractions of papers concerning research done under the supervision of Sylvia Bulfone-Paus, a Director at the Research Center Borstel in Germany. Six of the retracted papers had been identified earlier and the next six are reported in Retraction Watch.

The retractions came after an investigation which confirmed the misconduct but put the blame squarely on two Russian researchers Dr. E. Bulanova and Dr. V. Budagian with comments that Bulfone-Paus bore responsibility as their supervisor but that she herself  had not committed any misconduct. The blogger / whistle blower represented by the Marco Berns / Martin Frost persona had commented that the singling out of Bulanova and Budagian was suspicious and hinted darkly at much earlier wrong-doings (and in fact had specifically mentioned the year 1999).

The latest 6 retracted papers  listed include one from 1999 giving some credence to the Martin Frost allegations:

Bulfone-Paus, S., Bulanova, E., Pohl, T, Budagian, V., Dürkop, H., Rückert, R., Kunzendorf, U., Paus, R., and Krause, H. Death deflected: IL-15 inhibits TNF-α-mediated apoptosis in fibroblasts  by TRAF2 recruitment to the IL-15Rα chain. FASEB J. 13:1575-1585 (1999, cited 118 times)

For this paper Bulfone-Paus was both first author and corresponding author. It would seem that any misconduct here cannot be passed off onto authors nos. 2 and 4.

After the investigation Martin Frost  wrote:

It was confirmed that the Institute Directors have been “snooping” on their workforce.  They have indeed viewed the log files of e-mails of the workers.  This deeply distressing news was compounded when it was revealed that the only person who the management arraigned after the Stasi-like “snooping” exercise was a member of der Betriebsrat (workers council) showing that the confidence essential for the worker – Betriebsrat relationship is now severely compromised.

The two other Directors are now discussing what to do next with Bulfone-Paus.

But as Retraction Watch describes, some damage control is being done by the institute with some assistance from the Editor of the EMBO Journal who includes the following sentence in his retraction notice:

The authors declare that key experiments presented in the majority of these figures were recently reproduced and that the results confirmed the experimental data and the conclusions drawn from them.

Why would the Journal publish a line so blatantly intended to white-wash some of the authors? Or does the editor mean that the retraction of the paper is somehow negated!

On this theme of the behaviour of Journals Martin Frost also wrote:

We have been sent the exchange of e-mails below from Dr. Karin Wiebauer.  They describe Dr. Wiebauer’s efforts to rid the scientific literature of the contamination of the mainpulated Bulfone-Paus papers. ….. One interpretation of the exchange is that the Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Immunology is stonewalling and attempting to bury the scientific miscconduct.

The sad saga goes on….


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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »

The strange and murky case of Silvia Bulfone-Paus: 12 retractions so far …..

January 25, 2011

Twelve papers where Sylvia Bulfone-Paus was the senior author have been retracted.

Silvia Bulfone-Paus: image retraction watch

That itself is sufficiently unusual and remarkable. But the story seems to go back a long way. Retraction Watch has been following the story.

In September 2010 Nature carried the story of a formal investigation which had started in July 2010 of scientific misconduct being carried out at the Research Center Borstel in Germany (Forschungszentrum Borstel, Leibniz Gemeinschaft, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Medizinischen Fakultäten der Universitäten Lübeck und Kiel). The story however was not about the investigation but about a destabilising influence:

But events around such an investigation in Germany have taken a troubling and damaging turn from such good practice in the past few months. An unknown agitator using the presumed pseudonym Marco Berns is engaged in an e-mail and Internet offensive against two biomedical researchers whom he accuses of scientific fraud.

Berns’s libellous messages are targeted at dermatologist Ralf Paus and immunologist Silvia Bulfone-Paus, a married couple who both hold joint positions at the University of Manchester, UK, and the University of Lübeck, Germany.

The trial-by-Internet is disturbing a formal investigation, organized by the Research Center Borstel in Germany and begun in July, into some of the pair’s publications.

“Marco Berns” and his accomplice (or alter ego?) “Martin Frost” were posting articles on the internet since at least the end of 2009 and had also been subjected to “cease and desist” demands from lawyers representing the Research Centre. Some of these articles questioned Sylvia Bulfone-Pause’s use of academic titles among other wrong doings.

It does seem that the formal investigation started in July 2010 partly – if not wholly – because of the allegations which had been made by Berns and Frost in 2009. Formally the reason for the investigation was that Bulfone-Pause herself had reported some manipulation of data in papers published about research carried out under her supervision but how and when such manipulation had been discovered is not very clear.

In any case the investigation was completed and the results were published by the Research Centre on 2nd December 2010.

The Commission concludes that scientific misconduct (has ocurred) within the laboratory group “Immunobiology” for years. In 6 out of 8 of the analyzed publications in which, the two former research assistants, Dr. E. Bulanova and Dr. V. Budagian, recorded as first authors, manipulation of images found that the manipulation of the reproduction of scientific results. Data corruption within the meaning of “independent inventors” of results are not available. Given the primary responsibility of the first authors in data collection and data presentation in a scientific publication, these two first authors of these publications (bear the) main responsibility for scientific misconduct.

The blame was put squarely on Drs. Bulanova and Budagian – both Russian – and as their supervisor, Bulfone-Paus received a firm slap on the wrist:

The 6  publications complained of (were) produced under the senior authorship of Prof. Dr. Bulfone-Paus………  The Commission considers that this a lack of supervision which must be expected from the senior author / group leader, even if the first author of the offending publications are experienced scientists. The senior author / research group leader, therefore, carries a key responsibility for the scientific wrongdoings within their work group.

Nature reported:

An external investigation, launched in July and chaired by Werner Seeger, a biomedical researcher at the University of Giessen, Germany, found that two former postdocs with the centre’s immunology group were guilty of using pictures of protein blots from unrelated experiments to support their findings on signalling in cells involved in allergic reactions such as asthma. The pair’s supervisor, Silvia Bulfone-Paus, who chairs the centre’s immunology and cell biology department, bears “substantial responsibility” for the manipulations, the committee found, but added that they found no evidence of data fabrication.

The three Directors of the Research Centre are Prof. Dr. Dr. S. Bulfone-Paus, Prof. Dr. U. Schaible and Prof. Dr. P. Zabe. And the elusive Martin Frost continued his writings implying that the Russian scientists could actually just be scapegoats for the more senior authors involved and that some of their wrongdoing could be traced back to 1999!!

Now the six retractions have grown to be 12 papers — so far.

This story is not over yet……..

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Posted in Ethics, Germany, Science, scientific misconduct | 2 Comments »

Another perversion of science: Confirmation bias in the name of global warming dogma is also scientific misconduct

January 25, 2011

A new paper has been published in Ecology Letters

Ran Nathan, Nir Horvitz, Yanping He, Anna Kuparinen, Frank M. Schurr, Gabriel G. Katul. Spread of North American wind-dispersed trees in future environments. Ecology Letters, 2011; DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01573.

In this paper the authors have assumed that climate change will cause changes to CO2 concentration and wind speed. They have assumed also that increased CO2 will “increase fecundity and advance maturation”. They have then modelled the spread of 12 species as a function of wind speed.

So far so good – they have actually modelled only the effect of wind speed  which they assume will reduce due to climate change.

Their results basically showed no effect of wind speed:

“Future spread is predicted to be faster if atmospheric CO2 enrichment would increase fecundity and advance maturation, irrespective of the projected changes in mean surface windspeed”.

And now comes the perversion!

From their fundamental conclusion that wind speed has no effect and that therefore any CO2 increase resulting from climate change will enhance the spread of the trees, they invoke “expected” effects to deny what they have just shown:

“Yet, for only a few species, predicted wind-driven spread will match future climate changes, conditioned on seed abscission occurring only in strong winds and environmental conditions favouring high survival of the farthest-dispersed seeds. Because such conditions are unlikely, North American wind-dispersed trees are expected to lag behind the projected climate range shift.”

This final conclusion is based on absolutely nothing  and their modelling showed nothing and yet this paper was accepted for publication. I have no problem that a result showing “no effect of wind speed” be published but suspect that it needed the nonsense, speculative conclusion to comply with current dogma.

Science Daily then produces the headline: Climate Change Threatens Many Tree Species

when the reality is

This study Shows No Effect of Wind Speed But Yet We Believe that Climate Change Threatens Many Tree Species

“Our research indicates that the natural wind-driven spread of many species of trees will increase, but will occur at a significantly lower pace than that which will be required to cope with the changes in surface temperature,” said Prof. Nathan. “This will raise extinction risk of many tree populations because they will not be able to track the shift in their natural habitats which currently supply them with favorable conditions for establishment and reproduction. As a result, the composition of different tree species in future forests is expected to change and their areas might be reduced, the goods and services that these forests provide for man might be harmed, and wide-ranging steps will have to be taken to ensure seed dispersal in a controlled, directed manner.”

Whether the perversion is by the authors themselves anticipating what is needed to get a paper published or whether it is due to pressure from the Journal Ecology Letters or by their referees is unclear.

Abstract:

Despite ample research, understanding plant spread and predicting their ability to track projected climate changes remain a formidable challenge to be confronted. We modelled the spread of North American wind-dispersed trees in current and future (c. 2060) conditions, accounting for variation in 10 key dispersal, demographic and environmental factors affecting population spread. Predicted spread rates vary substantially among 12 study species, primarily due to inter-specific variation in maturation age, fecundity and seed terminal velocity. Future spread is predicted to be faster if atmospheric CO2 enrichment would increase fecundity and advance maturation, irrespective of the projected changes in mean surface windspeed. Yet, for only a few species, predicted wind-driven spread will match future climate changes, conditioned on seed abscission occurring only in strong winds and environmental conditions favouring high survival of the farthest-dispersed seeds. Because such conditions are unlikely, North American wind-dispersed trees are expected to lag behind the projected climate range shift.

In essence this paper is only based on belief and the results actually obtained are denied. It seems to me that denying or twisting or “moulding” results actually obtained to fit pre-conceived notions is not just a case of confirmation bias but comes very close to scientific misconduct.

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Environment, Media, Peer review, Science | Comments Off on Another perversion of science: Confirmation bias in the name of global warming dogma is also scientific misconduct

“Set a thief to catch a thief”?

January 22, 2011

Earlier posts have dealt with the case of Jatinder Ahluwalia – a pharmacologist – who was found to have deceived his colleagues and probably sabotaged other’s research whose paper published in Nature was retracted. Ahluwalia was then at University College London but is now employed at the University of East London.

Retraction Watch now points out that he has published a new paper – not on pharmacology this time but about plagiarism! The paper appears in Bioscience Education, “Students Turned Off by Turnitin? Perception of Plagiarism and Collusion by Undergraduate Bioscience Students.”

Ahluwalia and his co-author, Andrew Thompsett, did the study

to provide qualitative data on the perceptions of plagiarism and collusion of final year Pharmacology students.

That he is no longer at UCL is understandable but that he is employed in the position he has at the University of East London is less understandable – not least from the perspective of the University. East London University has a history going back to 1898 as an educational institution but only became a University in 1992. It is the 3rd largest university in London in terms of student numbers and the 18th largest in the United Kingdom. But it ranks around 108th of the UK’s 115 Universities. I have difficulty to see how this University (which clearly needs to improve its ranking) could enhance its reputation by employing Ahluwalia. But perhaps Ahluwalia is a good teacher even if his reputation as a researcher in his own field is irrevocably tarnished.

The subject of his latest publication being more a social study rather than hard-core pharmacology is also understandable. And unlike many other sociologists he may have some unique qualifications to study plagiarism.

The paper itself is somewhat negative about a particular commercial product (Turnitin) and therefore of some benefit to its competitors – and that itself rings some alarm bells.

Unfortunately for Turnitin,

The results from the pilot study suggested that students did not find Turnitin (UK) easy to use neither did they perceive it as a useful learning tool.

But some questions also arise as to the the publishing Journal’s wisdom of publishing such a study  – which could be considered  “negative advertising” – and by such an author. Especially since they say that one of their objectives is to disseminate “good practice”.  Even consumer magazines are wary of reviewing just one product in isolation without also subjecting competing products to the same tests. From their website:

Bioscience Education is an online, bi-annual electronic journal owned and published by the Centre for Bioscience. Its aims are to promote, enhance and disseminate research, good practice and innovation in tertiary level teaching and learning within the biosciences disciplines.

Set a thief to catch a thief is a well tried concept but it does require some modicum of common sense.

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Hausergate: In scientific misconduct “confirmation bias” or “fudging data” are equally corrupt

January 2, 2011

The Scientific American carries an article about the Marc Hauser case at Harvard. (Marc Hauser was found to have committed 8 cases of scientific misconduct).

Scientific American

Scott O. Lilienfeld argues that Hauser may only be guilty of “confirmation bias” and that it is premature to ascribe deliberate wrongdoing to him:

Hauser has admitted to committing “significant mistakes.” In observing the reactions of my colleagues to Hauser’s shocking comeuppance, I have been surprised at how many assume reflexively that his misbehavior must have been deliberate. For example, University of Maryland physicist Robert L. Park wrote in a Web column that Hauser “fudged his experiments.” I don’t think we can be so sure. It’s entirely possible that Hauser was swayed by “confirmation bias”—the tendency to look for and perceive evidence consistent with our hypotheses and to deny, dismiss or distort evidence that is not.

The past few decades of research in cognitive, social and clinical psychology suggest that confirmation bias may be far more common than most of us realize. Even the best and the brightest scientists can be swayed by it, especially when they are deeply invested in their own hypotheses and the data are ambiguous. A baseball manager doesn’t argue with the umpire when the call is clear-cut—only when it is close.

Scholars in the behavioral sciences, including psychology and animal behavior, may be especially prone to bias. They often make close calls about data that are open to many interpretations…….

………. Two factors make combating confirmation bias an uphill battle. For one, data show that eminent scientists tend to be more arrogant and confident than other scientists. As a consequence, they may be especially vulnerable to confirmation bias and to wrong-headed conclusions, unless they are perpetually vigilant. Second, the mounting pressure on scholars to conduct single-hypothesis-driven research programs supported by huge federal grants is a recipe for trouble. Many scientists are highly motivated to disregard or selectively reinterpret negative results that could doom their careers.

But I am not persuaded. When “eminent” scientists use their position and power to indulge in “confirmation bias” it is merely a euphemism for what is still cheating by taking undue advantage of their position. It is “corruption” in its most basic form. I reject the notion that such “confirmation bias” is a form of  “unwitting behaviour”. It may well be behaviour which resides in the sub-conscious but that is not “unwitting” behaviour. Neither is it excusable just because it may be in the sub-conscious. It gets into the sub-conscious only because the conscious allows it to do so. When any behaviour residing in the sub-conscious conflicts with the values and morality of an individual it is inevitably ejected into the conscious.  Being sub-consciously immoral but consciously moral is not feasible.

In the case of Marc Hauser, even assuming that his faults were due to “confirmation bias” then either it was behaviour which remained entirely in the sub-conscious in which case his values and morality are suspect, or it was triggered into the conscious and he continued anyway in which case it was simple cheating.

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