Adam's Blogroll: click through to the author's blog
A social psychology journal has added an expression of concern to a paper by prominent social psychologist Jens Förster, whose work has been subject to much scrutiny. This is the latest in a long-running saga involving Förster. The 2012 paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology had been flagged by a 2015 report describing […]
The post Journal adds concern notice to paper by psychologist Jens Förster appeared first on Retraction Watch.
We all know replicability is a problem – consistently, many papers in various fields fail to replicate when put to the test. But instead of testing findings after they’ve gone through the rigorous and laborious process of publication, why not verify them beforehand, so that only replicable findings make their way into the literature? That […]
The post What if we tried to replicate papers before they’re published? appeared first on Retraction Watch.
Following questions about the veracity of multiple papers by his former employer, high-profile social psychologist Jens Förster has agreed to retract two papers as part of a deal with the German Society for Psychology (DGPs). Last year, Förster had a paper retracted at the request of his former employer, the University of Amsterdam (UvA). In May, an investigation commissioned by UvA found […]
The post Psychologist Jens Forster settles case by agreeing to 2 retractions appeared first on Retraction Watch.
A correction to a 2011 paper doesn’t change its main conclusion: Hearing song lyrics about violence — “let the bodies hit the floor,” for example — can prompt aggressive behavior, even more so than violent imagery in music videos. The correction follows an investigation by Macquarie University that found errors in data analysis to be an “honest […]
The post Violent songs can lead to spicy food, and other lessons we learned from corrected graphic appeared first on Retraction Watch.
Two more papers by Diederik Stapel — who was profiled by The New York Times Magazine this weekend — have been retracted, both in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
The notice for “Hardly thinking about close and distant others: On cognitive business and target closeness in social comparison effects,” by Stapel and David Marx, and cited six times:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.
The Noort Committee established fraud in this article, committed by author Stapel. For full information, please see https://www.commissielevelt.nl/.
And here’s the notice for “Unfinished business: How completeness affects the impact of emotional states and emotion concepts on social judgement,” by Stapel and Marcus Maringer and cited six times:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.
The Levelt Committee established fraud in this article, committed by author Stapel. For full information, please see https://www.commissielevelt.nl/.
In case anyone’s wondering, Stapel is in no danger of overtaking the current retraction record holder, Yoshitaka Fujii — with 183.
Hat tip: Rolf Degen
Correction (8 a.m. Eastern, 5/2/13): When originally published, this post referred to three new retractions, for a total of 54, but as commenter CH points out we had already reported on one of them. We have deleted the duplicated retraction, and the correct total is 53, so we have edited the headline accordingly. Apologies for the error.
Rewards may vary
Quick updates on work by two people whose names appear frequently on Retraction Watch: Diederik Stapel and Ulrich Lichtenthaler.
Last month, we reported on the 50th retraction for Stapel. Here’s number 51 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, for “The flexible unconscious: Investigating the judgmental impact of varieties of unaware perception:”
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.
The Noort Committee concluded from the statistical analyses of author Stapel’s publications and in accordance with the decision rules given in Section 2.4.2 of the report found at https://www.commissielevelt.nl/wp-content/uploads_per_blog/commissielevelt/2012/11/120695_Rapp_nov_2012_UK_web.pdf that there is evidence of fraud in this article.
For full information, please see https://www.commissielevelt.nl/.
The paper has been cited 19 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Lichtenthaler’s ninth retraction appears in Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Here’s the notice for “Technology commercialization intelligence: Organizational antecedents and performance consequences,” which was first reported on the Open Innovation blog:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the authors. The first author proactively informed the editor that the paper uses data from the same dataset as other articles by the first author, including Lichtenthaler, U. and Ernst, H., Research Policy, 36(2007)37–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2006.08.005. The first author takes full responsibility.
Lichtenthaler is the first author of the now-retracted paper, which has been cited 11 times.
Hat tips: Rolf Degen and Philipp Hermanns (who wrote a piece on Lichtenthaler in Telepolis)
Two more retractions for Diederik Stapel, his 33rd and 34th, by our count.
The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, which has been a frequent subject of Retraction Watch posts recently, has retracted “Similarities and differences between the impact of traits and expectancies: What matters is whether the target stimulus is ambiguous or mixed:”
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.
The Drenth Committee (https://www.commissielevelt.nl) has found evidence of fraud in this article, committed by author Stapel. His coauthor was unaware of his actions, was not in any way involved in the generation of the data, and agrees to the retraction of the article.
The study has been cited 12 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
And Social Psychology Quarterly has retracted “The Norm-Activating Power of Celebrity: The Dynamics of Success and Influence,” cited twice:
Social Psychology Quarterly retracts the article “The Norm-activating Power of Celebrity: The Dynamics of Success and Influence,” by Siegwart Lindenberg, Janneke F. Joly, and Diederik A. Stapel, which appeared in the March 2011 issue (74(1):98–120; DOI: 10.1177/0190272511398208). This retraction stems from the results of an investigation into the work of Diederik A. Stapel (https://www.commissielevelt.nl/noort-committee/publications-examined/), which finds strong evidence of fraud in the dataset supplied by Stapel. His coauthors had no knowledge of his actions and were not involved in the production of the fraudulent data.
Hat tip on JESP: Rolf Degen
Earlier this week, we reported on retractions six and seven , in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, for Lawrence Sanna, the former University of Michigan psychologist who resigned last May after questions were raised about his work. Retraction eight has now appeared, also in the JESP.
Here’s the notice for “When thoughts don’t feel like they used to: Changing feelings of subjective ease in judgments of the past:”
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Author.
The data reported in this article are invalid. According to the first author, the responsibility for this problem rests solely with the first author, Lawrence J. Sanna, and the co-authors are in no way responsible for this problem.
The study has been cited three times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, including once by another Sanna paper in 2012.
Hat tip: Rolf Degen
Posted by in elsevier, faked data, freely available, j exp social psychology, lawrence sanna, psychology, united states
Diederik Stapel has another retraction, his 32nd.
Here’s the notice, for “”Information to go: Fluency enhances the usability of primed information,” which first appeared in 2010 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.
The Levelt Committee (https://www.commissielevelt.nl) has determined fraud in this publication, committed by author Stapel.
The paper has been cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
If you’re so inclined, you can read a review of Stapel’s autobiography, Derailed. According to the review, the book — which is only available in Dutch — is “unique, devastating, and a must-read for anyone with an interest in science.”
Hat tip: Rolf Degen
Three new retractions — two of papers by Lawrence Sanna and one of work by Dirk Smeesters – have appeared in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The retractions come along with a hard-hitting piece by the journal’s editor.
In a tough soul-searching editorial called “On Fraud, Deceit, and Ethics” (unfortunately only available behind a paywall), journal editor in chief Joel Cooper writes that “Fraud committed by any social psychologist diminishes all social psychologists.” He continues:
The overwhelming preponderance of investigations in our field is impeccably honest and fastidious. It is the way we were trained and the way we train our students. We cut our metaphorical teeth on being creative with ideas but respecting what our data tell us about those ideas. We trust each other to act with respect to the data we collect and to the analyses we perform.
On rare occasion, that trust is betrayed. No one can get into the minds of those who act unscrupulously. Perhaps it is self-aggrandizement, self-promotion or self-delusion that motivates some to betray our trust. Like other major journals in our field, JESP has been betrayed.
The Sanna retractions are for “Rising up to higher virtues: Experiencing elevated physical height uplifts prosocial actions,” published in 2010 and cited 4 times since, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, and “Think and act globally, think and act locally: Cooperation depends on matching construal to action levels in social dilemmas,” also originally published in 2010 and cited 6 times.
Sanna resigned from his post at the University of Michigan in May of last year. These are his sixth and seventh retractions, by our count.
The Smeesters retraction is of “The effect of color (red versus blue) on assimilation versus contrast in prime-to-behavior effects,” published in 2011 and cited just once, by a Nature profile of Uri Simonsohn, the social psychologist who investigated the work of both researchers.
Smeesters resigned his Erasmus professorship last July. This is his fourth retraction.
Hat tip: Rolf Degen
