A squalid stream of vice does nicely to describe the now-released details of Harvard’s Marc Hauser, one of a number of naughty psychologists whose misdeeds keep hitting the newspapers.
It’s rather heartbreaking to read this email exchange, revealing as it does what happens when a person of integrity blunders into the lab of a powerful, crooked scientist.
In 2007, a member of the laboratory wanted to recode an experiment involving rhesus monkey behavior, due to “inconsistencies” in the coding.
“I am getting a bit pissed here. There were no inconsistencies!” Hauser responded, explaining how an analysis was done.
Later that day, the person resigned from the lab. “It has been increasingly clear for a long time now that my interests have been diverging sharply from what the lab does, and it seems like an increasingly inappropriate and uncomfortable place for me,” the person wrote.
This of course is the way in which dirty labs get dirtier and dirtier. Legitimate people leave, and even schools as burnished as Harvard find themselves harboring high-profile fraud.
January 24th, 2024 at 9:56AM
[…] SO reminds UD of an earlier tinpot dictator, Harvard’s disgraced Marc Hauser: […]