Amid criticisms this week that his former university didn’t do all it should have to investigate his work, another paper by Dirk Smeesters has been retracted.
Here’s the notice for “The effect of color (red versus blue) on assimilation versus contrast in prime-to-behavior effects,” which appeared in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.
It has been determined by a scientific integrity committee, commissioned by Erasmus University, that data in this article is fraudulent and invalid, and that the fraud was committed by author Smeesters.
The paper has been cited once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Hat tip: Commenter SF
According to Erasmus (on twitter), there is a committee currently investigating the fraud. They are almost done investigating all Smeesters work and are mainly focusing on the research-culture now. They were unable to give an estimate of when they expected to be done.
and here’s the (Dutch) press release that says so http://www.eur.nl/nieuws/detail/article/43343/
The first paragraph in english:
The Erasmus University of Rotterdam has decided to continue research into all publications of former professor Smeesters. This is a result of continuing doubts within the scientific domain about these publications. The Erasmus Medical Center is studying possibilities to judge all publication of Poldermans. With these measures Erasmus University and Erasmus Medical Center want to create as much clarity as possible about the scientific worth of the work of both professors.
In my opinion both these cases and the Stapel case reflect well on the persistence of Dutch universities to try and stamp out fraud. Hopefully other institutions will take this as a good example.