A controversial psychologist has lost a bizarre paper which claimed that men who carry guitar cases do better with the ladies.
The article, which had appeared in the journal The Psychology of Music in 2014, was one of many papers by Nicholas Guéguen that have raised eyebrows among his peers and some data sleuths — notably James Heathers and Nick Brown — who believe the results don’t withstand scrutiny.
Guéguen, of the Université Bretagne-Sud, in France, was the subject of a misconduct investigation that in 2019 cleared him of wrongdoing. That finding came shortly after, as we reported nearly a year ago to the day, he lost a 2014 paper in the Archives of Sexual Behavior on how high heels really do make women sexier:
at the request of the Université de Bretagne-Sud. Following an institutional investigation, it was concluded that the article has serious methodological weaknesses and statistical errors. The data reported in this article are therefore unreliable
The guitar paper, “Men’s music ability and attractiveness to women in a real-life courtship context,” was hit with an expression of concern in July, 11 months after:
queries were raised concerning the methodological rigour and the lack of information regarding informed consent and ethical approval for the research
The journal’s slow tempo in dealing with the article disappointed critics of the research. In tweets about the case, Samuel Mehr, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, said of the study:
Indeed.
Here’s the notice:
At the request of the Journal Editor and the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE), the following article has been retracted.
Guéguen, N., Meineri, S. and Fischer-Lokou J. (2014) Men’s music ability and attractiveness to women in a real-life courtship context. Psychology of Music, 42, 545–549. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735613482025
Concerns with this article have been investigated by the Psychology of Music Editorial team. An Expression of Concern was published on 15th July 2020 (https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735620943366), drawing attention to serious ethical concerns and the possibility of unreliable data reporting. As part of a further investigation that involved requesting further information from the authors, reviews were completed by a panel of five new independent referees (all of whom are senior researchers in the field of Psychology of Music). The reviewers reached a unanimous conclusion that the reported data were not reliable, also noting ethical concerns relating to informed consent and research involving vulnerable participants. The article has now been retracted based on the panel’s unanimous conclusion that the reported data were not reliable.
Mehr told Retraction Watch he was happy with the eventual outcome:
The whole thing took awhile but the EIC and editorial board did act in good faith, it just took a while….
Guéguen has not responded to our request for comment.
Brown, who has been looking into Guéguen’s body of work for years, said he’s convinced the research deserves many more retractions:
For what it’s worth, I see absolutely no difference in plausibility between this [the guitar paper] and 90% of the 60 or so of Guéguen’s articles that I have examined. Apparently he has around 340 published articles, so you can see the potential implications for the Retraction Watch leaderboard if editors would start to take their jobs seriously.
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Unless the guitar case is filled with cash I don’t think it would greatly improve his chances. Peer Review has become very lax in reviewing.