1 Boring Old Man

Marc Houser was one of Harvard’s more popular teachers and a heavily published researcher, studying the cognitive abilities of primates. He is on leave right now, and under investigation by various agencies for essentially fabricating data to support his belief that monkeys have similar abilities to discriminate sounds as humans.

Scientific Misconduct, and Its Aftermath
Harvard Magazine
November-December 2010

… Harvard’s investigation evidently began in 2007; the Chronicle of Higher Education obtained a statement from a former research assistant in Hauser’s lab who said he and other researchers had approached University authorities with their concerns about practices there. According to the Chronicle, the trouble started with an experiment involving rhesus monkeys’ ability to recognize auditory patterns. Hauser and one research assistant watched the monkeys’ responses to the sounds and “coded” the results, marking whether they seemed to respond to novelty [similar to the study with the cotton-top tamarins]. A second research assistant, who was asked to analyze the data, noticed a major discrepancy: the first research assistant’s coding found the monkeys didn’t notice the patterns; Hauser’s coding of the same videotapes indicated that they did. After Hauser resisted a request to have a third investigator review the data independently, one of the research assistants and a graduate student reviewed the tapes themselves without Hauser’s permission, the Chronicle said.

They each coded the results independently. Their findings concurred with the conclusion that the experiment had failed: The monkeys didn’t appear to react to the change in patterns. They then reviewed Mr. Hauser’s coding and…discovered that what he had written down bore little relation to what they had actually observed on the videotapes. He would, for instance, mark that a monkey had turned its head when the monkey didn’t so much as flinch. It wasn’t simply a case of differing interpretations, they believed: His data were just completely wrong.

Harvard did not announce anything about the affair until the Globe reported the Cognition retraction on August 10. By that point, Nature subsequently noted, gossip about an investigation of Hauser’s lab “had become standard cocktail-hour fare” at conferences of scientists. Other publications reported that, years earlier, SUNY-Albany psychology professor Gordon Gallup Jr. had publicly questioned a Hauser finding that monkeys could recognize their own reflections in a mirror; he reviewed the videotapes from Hauser’s experiment and said he saw no evidence of recognition…

Stories like that of Marc Houser occur in the scientific world more often than one might imagine, people giving in to the temptation to falsify their data to fit their wished for conclusions. You don’t get much credit in science when you set out to prove something, and don’t. It doesn’t get you tenure. It doesn’t bring in the book contracts. While it’s possible to get a Ph.D. with a thesis that fails to support some hypothesis, it’s not common. Anyone who has entered the Academic world of science knows what I’m talking about. And some people get caught up in that game because their false data raises such interesting questions, like that of Marc Houser. Once they’ve fallen, they just don’t rise from the ashes. They’re finished. I don’t know what Marc Houser is doing now, but his life as a respected evolution psychologist is behind him.

Yet in the peculiar world of politics, the standard is quite different. Joseph Wilson, a retired Diplomat, knew first-hand that at least some of the evidence the Bush Administration used to justify invading Iraq was not true. And he knew that the Administration knew it was untrue, because he had told them [Rarely mentioned is the fact that his wife was part of the C.I.A.’s attempt to gather that information, so surely she also knew that the evidence was being fabricated]. When Wilson exposed what he knew, his wife was "outed" by the Administration. One person, Scooter Libby, was convicted of lying. Otherwise, nothing else happened.

We now know that all of the evidence for the invasion of Iraq was fabricated – all of it. We now know that the enterprise was one of the most ill-conceived in our history. It was much greater than Marc Houser’s trying to get famous by showing that a monkey might be able to develop something like speech someday. Yet Marc Houser is under investigation because federal funds were used in his research and is fully discredited. Well, the Bush Administration used between a trillion and three trillion dollars to invade Iraq, started a war that killed thousands, and essentially assassinated the president of a sovereign country.

Harvard probe kept under wraps
^{Researchers call for the release of findings of the Marc Hauser misconduct investigation.}
Nature
by Heidi Ledford
17 August 2010

When news broke last week that famed Harvard University evolutionary psychologist Marc Hauser had been investigated for scientific misconduct, it was no surprise to many in the field. Rumours had been flying for three years, ever since university officials arrived to snatch computers from Hauser’s laboratory at the start of the inquiry. By the time Harvard completed its investigation in January, the gossip had become standard cocktail-hour fare at conferences…

Hauser studies the evolution of key human characteristics, such as morality, language and mathematical ability, by tracing the origins of these traits in non-human primates. A popular professor and mentor, his research output has been diverse and prodigious, generating about one peer-reviewed paper per month for the past four years and forming the basis for popular articles, books and media appearances.

Now that allegations of misconduct have surfaced, those working in related areas are adamant that a full account of any problems with Hauser’s published work is needed. "Scientists working in these areas, some of whom would like to build on Marc’s results, need to know exactly which may have been the results of misconduct," says Robert Seyfarth, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and one of Hauser’s graduate-school advisers. "Keeping things secret simply fuels rumours"…

Researchers close to those involved say that the Harvard investigation, launched after three of Hauser’s graduate students became troubled by how he interpreted his data and reported their concerns to the university, has discovered eight instances of misconduct. Hauser, who has taken a one-year period of leave from Harvard, has not responded to requests for comment. Harvard will not discuss its investigation, but says the results have been reported to the two federal agencies that provide funding for Hauser’s work…