DrugMonkey notes that Marc Hauser has offered an explanation for faking data (as reported on the Chronicle of Higher Education Percolator blog). His explanation amounts to:
- being busy with teaching and directing the Mind, Brain & Behavior Program at Harvard
- being busy serving on lots of fancy editorial boards
- being busy writing stuff explaining science to an audience of non-scientists
- being busy working with lots of scientific collaborators
- being busy running a large research lab with lots of students
DrugMonkey responds that busy is part of the job description, especially if you’re rolling in the prestige of a faculty post at Harvard, and of being a recognized leader in your field. I would add that “I was really busy and I made a bad decision (but just this one time)” is an excuse we professors frequently hear from students we catch cheating. It’s also one that doesn’t work — we expect our students to do honest work and figure out their time management issues. And, we’re expected to work out our own time management issues — even if it means saying “No” to invitations that are sometimes tempting.
By the way, Marc Hauser didn’t actually admit that he faked data, or committed research misconduct of any kind, so much as he “accepts the findings” of the Office of Research Integrity. Moreover, his comments seem to be leaning on that last bullet point (the rigors of supervising a big lab) to deflect what responsibility he does take. From the CHE Percolator:
He also implies that some of the blame may actually belong to others in his lab. Writes Hauser: “I let important details get away from my control, and as head of the lab, I take responsibility for all errors made within the lab, whether or not I was directly involved.”
But that take—the idea that the problems were caused mainly by Hauser’s inattention—doesn’t square with the story told by those in his laboratory. A former research assistant, who was among those who blew the whistle on Hauser, writes in an e-mail that while the report “does a pretty good job of summing up what is known,” it nevertheless “leaves off how hard his co-authors, who were his at-will employees and graduate students, had to fight to get him to agree not to publish the tainted data.”
The former research assistant points out that the report takes into account only the research that was flagged by whistle-blowers. “He betrayed the trust of everyone that worked with him, and especially those of us who were under him and who should have been able to trust him,” the research assistant writes.
So, Hauser is kind of claiming that there were too many students, postdocs, and technicians to supervise properly, and some of them got away from him and falsified methodology and coding and fabricated data. The underlings challenge this account.
In the comments at DrugMonkey’s, hypotheses are being floated as to what might have spurred Hauser’s bad actions. (A perception that he needed to come up with sexy findings to stay a star in his field is one of the frontrunners.) I’m more inclined to come up with a list of options Hauser might have fruitfully pursued instead of faking or allowing fakery to happen on his watch:
- He could have agreed not to send out manuscripts with questionable data when his underlings asked him.
- He could have asked to be released from some of his teaching and/or administrative duties at Harvard so he could spend the needed time on his research and on properly mentoring the members of his lab.
- He could have taken on fewer students in order to better supervise and mentor the students in his charge.
- He could have sought the advice of a colleague or a collaborator on ways he might deal with his workload (or with the temptations that workload might be awakening in him).
- He could have communicated to his department, his professional societies, and the funding agencies his considered view that the demands on researchers, and operative definitions of productivity, make it unreasonable hard to do the careful research needed to come up with reliable answers to scientific questions.
And those are just off the top of my head.
I’m guessing that the pressure Marc Hauser felt to get results was real enough. What I’m not buying is the same thing that I don’t buy when I get this excuse from student plagiarists: that there was no other choice. Absent a gun to Hauser’s head, there surely were other things he could have done.
Feel free to add to the list of other options someone facing Hauser-like temptations could productively pursue instead of cheating.
E-learning for underprivileged children?
Are weird things showing up in the AdSense here? (Am I going to have to blog about them?)
That’s what he was apparently doing when he left Harvard.
One could also ask what others could have done instead. For example, funding agencies (and study sections) should have reasonable ask what is the maximum laboratory size that would allow a PI to properly monitor the research activities. Why not make such assessment part of the review process?
Because it is a red herring and a false excuse, DR.
“properly monitoring” has less to do with it than setting a culture of honesty versus …. something else.
In Hauser’s case, the blame of others is not that credible and since the conclusion of the investigation was that he himself was faking at least some data one would point to the culture first.
Agree that the big job of advising is less about fact-checking and more about setting the tone — ideally, a tone of uncompromising honesty about the data and the conditions in which it is collected.
And, that the evidence suggests that Hauser was an active party in the cheating.
That said, the “OMG pressure!” excuse for making this kind of ethical bad call is pretty common. What is it holding people like Hauser back from finding non-cheater-pants ways to cope with that pressure?
I think these are really good points. We are all under pressure – but also, I really did not like the way he implied he was not himself the main source. In fact it was people from within his lab who really got this whole thing to start coming out.
I’d like to add some more detail to the “pressures” as someone who worked in a related field around the same times. One of the things that the more general levels of this discussion is missing is how theoretically hot these issues were (a specific form of the nature vs. nurture issue) and how religious and nasty the innateness side was about the whole thing. I was working in related fields around the time of some of the retracted papers. A lot of powerful innateness people like Hauser were vocal and visible in the field writing popular books (Chomsky, Pinker), but also acting as paper and grant reviewers, editorial boards, conference organizers. They had a cohesive, supportive group among themselves – mostly east coast US – and were quite brutal to other viewpoints. I am biased since I am on the other side (west coast!) but we were definitely the underdogs. (And afaik, some of this continues to this day – look up how Daniel Everett’s research has been badmouthed so vehemently, and eventually his access to the population he’s been working on for decades has been thwarted). My initial PhD advisor was someone who they called “wicked witch of the west”. After a few years I became interested in slightly different topics. But the nastiness and dirty fighting in that field was likely also a factor in me leaving the field.
So I would add to the above the pressures: to prove your theory right and squash the opponent ideas right up there in why this happened. As scientists we are supposed to be impartial. While this may be impossible to achieve perfectly for any one, that’s what we strive for. To me Hauser’s case shows that he simply did not strive, did not try. He just wanted to keep on being “right”. It’s almost tragic how hard people were working on all sides of the theory (and how much science funding was being poured into) to really nail things down in this area – when it turns out one of the major voices was simply faking data.
This is one of the reason I think we need to be careful about scientists being quasi-religious about certain theories. I don’t mean we should question evolution or anything like that. But the culture of science should be to reduce our biases and try to discover things as opposed to let our biases drive what we do (sometimes to such fraudulent extremes).
It’s no different than Newt: “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.” It’s no different than any drug-seeking junkie’s or alcoholic’s excuses. It’s all self-serving nonsense, made possible by an ego that blocks him from seeing the situation as others see it.
The question which is nagging me is this :
What prompted the particular students – who still remain anonymous – to report their Professor to those ‘higher up’ at Harvard ?
They must have known the huge repurcussions in their decision to report.
It wouldn’t have been in their interests as students to do so.
As I see it, most most students who have a serious grievance first talk it through fully with their professors,
Things are not as they seem, I fear. I sense something else was going on – a kind of elephant (or monkey!) in the room which nobody is prepared to acknowledge.
From the accounts the Hauser-underlings have given, they made serious efforts to express their concerns to Hauser and to get him to address them. While I imagine Hauser would downplay their efforts, some of his email correspondence that came out in the coverage looks to support the underlings’ side of the story.
As for why they might plausibly decide to come forward as whistleblowers despite the real risk to their careers from doing so: Maybe they care more about scientific knowledge-building than academic politics? Maybe they were unwilling to be “successful” in Hauser’s lab and beyond if it meant living a lie? Maybe they recognized that it was the right thing to do?
For the record, each of those motivations makes more sense to me than “I’m pressed for time and want to maintain my star status; better start making stuff up!”
And, Marc is a sociopath.
Rita, there was a documentary last year making a very powerful case that most business people at high levels were “sociopaths”.
Our disgraced ex-Prime Minister Bliar has been described as a “sociopath”, so goodness knows what Bushit & his Henchmen (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz etc) cab be described as.
Janet, I don’t buy your idea of the angelic, caring student – especially knowing (in this case) the whistleblowers were “older research assistants”, and other students who worked with them were “highly critical” of their actions – and still are.
Who Will Speak For Hauser ?
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/9/21/hauser-hausers-case-data/
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Another option that, while difficult, should be included – leaving Harvard for a less-demanding position at a less-prominent school.
Yes, it’s “a step down”, but if the options are “take a step down” and “fall down the whole flight of stairs”, the former becomes a lot more palatable.
I’m still in grad school, but I must admit that, when the time comes, I’ll probably not even apply to ultra-top-tier schools, simply because I know that the demands will be too much. Even if I never cheat, I’d work myself into an early grave.
From : XYZ321
To : Richard W. Symonds
I find interesting parallels with Ministerial Responsibility in this country. In theory a Minister
is responsible – answerable and sackable – for everything done or omitted by his department.
In practice we recognise that there is a grey area. If a policy fails which the Minister has
personally initiated, then he’s clearly responsible. If a clerk steals data and sells it to the media
or to a foreign power, then the Minister can’t reasonably be held responsible. It’s too far down the
line from what he can personally control. Between these extremes it can be and often is uncertain
how far a Minister is to be held accountable.
Back to Hauser :
Hauser released a statement Wednesday, saying that although he has fundamental differences with the findings, he acknowledges that he made mistakes.
‘I let important details get away from my control, and as head of the lab, I take responsibility for all errors made within the lab, whether or not I was directly involved,’ he stated.
‘I am saddened that this investigation has caused some to question all of my work, rather than the few papers and unpublished studies in question.
‘I remain proud of the many important papers generated by myself, my collaborators and my students over the years. I am also deeply gratified to see my students carve out significant areas of research at major universities around the world,’ Hauser said.
It seems that Hauser denies personal dishonesty in any respect. He does, however, concede that there were errors
in the data on which some published papers were based; and that as head of the unit he must carry the can. It’s a
tricky one. He can hardly be expected to check all data that his team produces. But if the erroneous data occurred in a
paper that was attributed solely to himself, then the paper shouldn’t have been thus attributed. Equally if the data occurred in a paper that he joint-authored, I feel he has to take the blame. It’s badly careless to let unchecked work go out under one’s name even as part-author, especially when he ran the unit.
My sense is that he was unlucky rather than dishonest. Where Harvard is at fault is not in any conspiratorial way
but in cultivating a climate in which there is such enormous pressure to publish. I suspect that some of Hauser’s
juniors fiddled or were careless with data in order to make names for themselves, to get published papers on to
their CVs. I’m rather sorry for Hauser, who seems to me a decent sort and no kind of fraud. But of course this is just
my impression; I have no special knowledge.
As I see it, most most students who have a serious grievance first talk it through fully with their professors,
You are clearly unfamiliar with the power relationships in a graduate training relationship.
“His underlings”? Is he Dr. Evil?
That sort of thinking could be a large part of the problem: “I must protect my fiefdom from incursions by other professors’ underlings! Raise the drawbridge! Prepare the boiling oil!”