Ten years ago, it became known that Stapel was cheating on search results. A social psychology professor has done this in dozens of studies. For example, his research could have shown that meat eaters are more selfish than vegetarians. When the fraud became known, the fraud investigations were withdrawn.
Despite this, these studies have been cited at least 115 times in new scientific studies in the past five years De Volkskrant. This happened, for example, when scientists wanted to prove a theory or explain a research method.
The paper spoke to several of these scholars. They said they were not aware of the article’s retraction. The scientists indicate that they did not use the results of these fraud investigations for further research.
The fact that the retracted studies are still showing up in new research is a bigger problem with science. VU Professor Emeritus of Methodology and Integrity Lex Bouter tells the paper these mistakes can have serious consequences.
