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Sloppy science?
Stapel had published fraudulent papers, co-authored by leading figures in the field, in the
major social psychology journals without being noticed at all. The Levelt committee therefore
raised the question why this fraud and the widespread violations of sound scientific
methodology were never discovered in the normal monitoring process in science []
Virtually nothing of all the impossibilities, peculiarities and sloppiness mentioned in this
report was observed by all these local, national and international members of the field, and no
suspicion whatever arose. (Levelt committee, 53) Therefore they concluded that there are
certain aspects of the discipline that should be deemed undesirable or even incorrect from the
perspectives of academic standards and scientific integrity (Ibidem, 54).
Confirmation bias
The main target of the committees was the so-called verification (or confirmation) bias: One
of the most fundamental rules of scientific research is that an investigation must be designed
in such a way that facts that might refute the research hypotheses are given at least an equal
chance of emerging as do facts that confirm the research hypotheses. Violations of this
fundamental rule, such as continuing to repeat an experiment until it works as desired, or
excluding unwelcome experimental subjects or results, inevitably tend to confirm the
researchers research hypotheses, and essentially render the hypotheses immune to the facts.
(Ibidem,.48)
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