Holiday Special - A Year of Scandals 2012

A bit delayed but... its that time of year again. Time to look back on the Year of Scandals in psychology. (Last year's edition of holiday joy can be found here, and here.) This past year has seen a number of problems with our field come to light. It has also seen a rise of public consciousness regarding these problems, and a host of suggested solutions. Much is still up in the air, but it does feel like we are moving in the right direction. In addition, there is growing consciousness of some wider problems in science and in academia.

What salacious stuff happened this year?

Cheating... it just got much easier, and much harder

Fascinating things to think about in a just-released Chronicle article about cheating at Harvard: http://chronicle.com/article/Harvard-Cheating-Scandal/134160

Basically, it is suspected that a bunch of students violated policy by collaborating on a take home, open book, open notes, open internet exam. I'm not so much interested in the details of the case (it was a class in which students were encouraged to collaborate in groups across the semester, but then told to do the exam alone, but there is a grey are where you talk to people a little... but not too much... etc.). Instead, I want to think for a bit about the implications of the "open internet" clause in a "web 2.0" world. Here is the rub: Anything another student posts on the internet is now, by definition, openly available. This has profound implication for how we think about and evaluate cheating on out-of-class assignments, perhaps even undermining our standard criterion for cases when the internet is not allowed! It is almost as bad as the case in Roy Sorenson's insightful essay about what can happen when a professor gives "Permission to Cheat." Why does this such a mess, well:

New Trends for Finding Fraud in Experimental Psychology

I have just returned from my first American Psychological Association meeting that I thought was worth attending. I noted in a previous post that APA meetings now feature a wide array of division activities, and that those are worth going to, regardless of the main convention. This time, however, there were a handful of talks (out of many) which were valuable enough to make me think the main convention was starting to turn things around. The highlight was a session organized by Joseph Simmons, and featuring talks by Leslie John and Uri Simonsohn.

Holiday Special 2 - More Scandals

I have gotten a few emails noting new information about some older scandals. Nikita Kharlamov sent a really great analysis of the infamous Tuskegee experiments, and Rossella Traversa reminded me about what Ian Nicholson's has been digging out of the recently opened Milgram archives. Here is the quick background, and the highlights of the new information....

Holiday Special - A Year of Scandals in Psychology

Feeling a bit of the holiday spirit, I wanted to reflect a bit about the three public scandals in scientific psychology this year, and on some of the responses to the scandals. The first was a carry over from last year, accusations of fraud that culminated in Marc Hauser's resignation from Harvard. The second was the high profile publication of Daryl Bem's article arguing for "Psi" (i.e. psychic) Phenomenon. The third was the exposure of Diederik Stapel's serial data forgery. Each of these cases has its nuances, and individual morals, but I think there is an overarching moral we might all meditate on as the new year begins.