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9 months ago ::
Sep 09, 2011 - 1:36PM
#1
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Some local news, quite shocking for my professional community - I laughed a lot today :-)
Are you a meat eater? Then you can breathe a sigh of relief: you are not a selfish bastard.
When the papers one and all published social psychologist’s Diederik Stapel's findings, vegetarians the world over tucked contentedly into their tofu. They had known all along and now science had confirmed it: you can’t trust a meat eater. They think about a juicy steak and, boom, they turn into selfish bastards.
Their joy didn’t last very long, however. This week, Stapel (45) was shopped by two fellow researchers who thought his methods, although not unheard of in the scientific world, were a little unorthodox: Stapel made up his own data. He also made up a student who collated the non existent data.
The Gelderlander was one of the few papers who questioned the validity of the findings. It asked Stapel’s research partner social psychologist Roos Vonk, who is a vegetarian, if the research could possibly have been biased. At the time Vonk huffily dismissed this possibility as ‘insulting’ and described herself and her fellow researchers as ‘experienced scientists with an excellent track record’.
Vonk has since apologised to the paper. ‘It goes to show that even psychologists can be completely wrong about people’, she said ruefully. She didn’t like to speculate why Stapel, who has agreed to step down from his job at Tilburg University, did what he did.
It's always a relief when truth wins against lies. This may have direct repercussions on some of my colleagues, however, who collaborated with this guy...
“The problem with quotes on the Internet is
that it is hard to verify their authenticity”
- Abraham Lincoln.
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9 months ago ::
Sep 09, 2011 - 5:16PM
#2
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The scientific method may run into the occasional boulder, but for the most part self-corrects.
I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize what you heard was not what I meant...
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9 months ago ::
Sep 10, 2011 - 3:59AM
#3
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How unfortunate for those who supported his work with no idea that he was engaging in fraud.
But then, someone will value publicity over honesty in any field. Sad that this occurs in scientific research which is supposed to be devoted to truth.
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9 months ago ::
Sep 10, 2011 - 6:54PM
#4
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Of course the guy should be sacked. Faking data is a crime that should be punishable by the person losing his/her job, at the very least. He actually published falsified data supposedly showing that people who eat meat are boorish? What an idiot, and what nonsense. Dietary habits have nothing to do with a person's inherent personality traits. www.mydailyhealthblog.com/factors-that-i... As noted in the above link, people's eating habits 'are determined by cultural, social, religious, economic, environmental and even political factors.'
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9 months ago ::
Sep 10, 2011 - 7:31PM
#5
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I think this is another example of why we should avoid jumping on the first scientific bandwagon. This is another reason why you should be very carefull about throwing away your intuition. If your experiences and understanding run contrary to the latest scientific study there is probably a good reason for that.
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9 months ago ::
Sep 10, 2011 - 8:11PM
#6
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I think this is another example of why we should avoid jumping on the first scientific bandwagon. This is another reason why you should be very carefull about throwing away your intuition.
If your experiences and understanding run contrary to the latest scientific study there is probably a good reason for that.
Can go with this, Erey.................... J.
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9 months ago ::
Sep 10, 2011 - 8:41PM
#7
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This is why results must be reproducible, and why studies must be subjected to peer review. The fact that a scientist wears a white coat does not of necessity make him or her a saint...
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9 months ago ::
Sep 10, 2011 - 11:18PM
#8
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Of course any scientific studies should be able to be reproduced and subject to peer review. That is a given. However...There are some areas in which this is not possible. For instance, what about near-death experiences? This is something we've all read about, and researchers have documented literally thousands of examples of people who had been clinically dead but had been resusitated, and who told remarkably similar stories of what had happened to them during that time. Naturally, such an experience cannot be duplicated at will. But does that mean that it didn't happen? Or, what about reports of flying saucers? There have been thousands of such reports over the years, backed up with an enormous body of photographic evidence. Are the people who say they've seen something in the air lying? Are they mistaking it for some easily explainable phenomena? In most cases, yes, what they've seen can be explained. But what about that ten percent that are not explainable? Again, it cannot be duplicated, but does it follow, then, that it never happened? There are other areas of paranormal phenomena that have to be taken as reported, because they cannot be reproduced in a lab. Skeptics will dismiss them all, of course, but are skeptics always right?
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9 months ago ::
Sep 11, 2011 - 2:54AM
#9
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He actually published falsified data supposedly showing that people who eat meat are boorish?
It is a bit more subtle what he did. His falsified data supposedly show - in the first place - that thinking of meat makes people less social and more egoistic. That's the "root link" claimed to exist.
Further faked results, go into the category you mentioned: That a preference for meat eating (instead of fish or vegetables) is prevalent among lonely people, who are less sure of themselves (the bully candidates), presumably because meat eating symbolises power over other beings.
“The problem with quotes on the Internet is
that it is hard to verify their authenticity”
- Abraham Lincoln.
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9 months ago ::
Sep 11, 2011 - 8:19AM
#10
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Wow! What a relief! Meat eaters were right all along. They are not boorish. It is not fair to scare them like that. Some of them were probably trinking on cutting down on those burgers. People can be so cruel.
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