Scientific Fraud

 The New York Times coverage of a recent case of scientific fraud could be a good starting point for a discussion about how science is supposed to "work", and how dishonesty and lack of replication/ oversight, etc. can cause it all to go "wrong", at least for a while.

Brief summary of the article: social psychologist Diederik Stapel of Tilburg University in the Netherlands recently admitted to falsifying data for several of his published journal articles.

This controversy started a very lively discussion about implications and potential "fixes" on the PSYCHTEACHER listserve  - a good reason to join that listserve if you like to read those kinds of discussions

image credit: http://ktwop.wordpress.com/

posted by Rob McEntarffer