The academic cookie jar

This review of Diederik Stapel’s autobiography quotes this interesting passage:

Nobody ever checked my work. They trusted me.… I did everything myself, and next to me was a big jar of cookies. No mother, no lock, not even a lid.… Every day, I would be working and there would be this big jar of cookies, filled with sweets, within reach, right next to me — with nobody even near. All I had to do was take it. (p. 164)

As the reviewers note, the committee which investigated Stapel agreed with this assessment of academic culture:

In his descriptions of methodological practice in psychology, Stapel appears to underscore the conclusions from the Levelt committee that investigated the fraud case: It was not just Stapel who failed, but the scientific community as a whole (www.tilburguniversity.edu/nl/nieuws-en-agenda/finalreportLevelt.pdf). And indeed, on a systemic level, the book provides cause for reflection.

To what extent do the current academic incentives encourage researchers to make their findings look better than they are? To what extent can we trust researchers, and leave them alone with a “big jar of cookies?” The Levelt committee concluded that social psychology needs to clean up its act as an academic discipline, but Ontsporing suggests that the Levelt advice might be relevant for other disciplines also.

Stapel has admitted to fabricating data in dozens of peer-reviewed articles.