“Bust Size and Hitchhiking” author earns five expressions of concern

A journal has issued an expression of concern about five papers by a psychology researcher whose studies related to women’s sexual behavior and perceived attractiveness have raised eyebrows. 

As we’ve previously reported, sleuths have identified seemingly impossible and likely fabricated results in the work of Nicolas Guéguen, a professor of marketing at the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France, leading to the retraction of four of his papers.  

The latest expression of concern relates to five articles in Perceptual and Motor Skills, a SAGE title, which has published eight studies of Guéguen’s, including several on which he is listed as the sole author.

The notice applies to:

• Bust Size and Hitchhiking: A Field Study (published 2007, cited 14 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science)
• Women’s Eye Contact and Men’s Later Interest: Two Field Experiments (2008, cited 1 time)
• Hitchhiking Women’s Hair Color (2009, cited 14 times)
• Touch, Compliance, and Awareness of Tactile Contact (2007, cited 32 times)
• Touch, Awareness of Touch, and Compliance with a Request (2002, cited 45 times)

The expression of concern states:

SAGE Publishing has been made aware of scientific concerns regarding the work of Dr. Nicholas Guéguen. Multiple concerns have been raised regarding the integrity of the research including but not limited to concerns around data fidelity, replicability of findings, and ethical consent and oversight for studies involving human participants. SAGE Publishing’s Research Integrity Team, in cooperation with this journal’s editors, are currently conducting an investigation into these articles.

This expression of concern will remain in place until the investigation is completed and any further needs for appropriate action have been taken.

Guéguen did not respond to an email from Retraction Watch. 

In 2017, researchers Nick Brown and James Heathers published a report on 10 of Guéguen’s studies published prior to 2015, not including the five in Perceptual and Motor Skills. They found many examples of impossible or implausible standard error measures, result distributions, effect sizes, fieldwork scenarios, and response rates. 

In 2019, the Université de Bretagne-Sud investigated Guéguen’s work and cleared him of wrongdoing. 

As a result of the investigation, Guéguen said he would retract two studies that contained data collected as part of his undergraduate fieldwork. One, “High Heels Increase Women’s Attractiveness,” published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, was indeed retracted in 2019. 

The other paper, published in Color Research and Application and titled “Color and women hitchhikers’ attractiveness: Gentlemen drivers prefer red,” has not yet been retracted, but another paper on the same topic, “Color and Women Attractiveness: When Red Clothed Women Are Perceived to Have More Intense Sexual Intent,” which was published in The Journal of Social Psychology, has been removed. (We posted about the retraction last December, but the notice didn’t appear online until a few days ago.)

All of the studies cited in the expression of concern are over a decade old, and one was published over two decades ago.. We asked the editors of Perceptual and Motor Skills why they took so long to issue an expression of concern for the articles. J.D. Ball, the editor in chief of the journal, told us:

All of these articles were published under previous editorial leadership – Perceptual and Motor Skills was acquired by Sage Publications in 2016 and I began as its Editor in Chief in the fall of the same year.  The articles came to my attention through others within Sage within the last month, and we quickly issued an Expression of Concern while we embark on a closer study of their content and the concerns raised by them.

Brown told Retraction Watch: 

I welcome these expressions of concern. If the authors do not produce satisfactory responses within a reasonable time, I hope that Perceptual and Motor Skills will proceed to retract all of these articles.

To the best of my knowledge, I have only read one of these five articles previously, namely “Bust Size and Hitchhiking: A Field Study”. However, I have now read the other four, and they are every bit as implausible as the other 50 or more articles from Dr Guéguen that I have read since 2015.

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