Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands has released the final report on Don Poldermans, finding that the institution’s once-star cardiology researcher committed misconduct.
As Larry Husten of CardioBrief reports, Erasmus MC’s investigation included that Poldermans — perhaps best known for his work on beta-blockers — has admitted to acts of misconduct but not to fraud.
Diederik Stapel’s CV continues to crumble, with five more retractions for the disgraced Dutch social scientist who admitted to fabricating data in his studies.
The retraction count is up to 13 for Dutch psychology fraudster Diederik Stapel, with four more in the publications the Journal of Consumer Research, Motivation & Emotion,Psychology & Marketing, andSocial Cognition.
Two more papers from Dutch fraudster Diederik Stapel have been retracted. Both appeared in the journal Psychological Science in 2008, with the same, evidently unwitting co-author, Kirsten Ruys, of Tilburg University.
The social psychology community, already rocked last year by the Diederik Stapel scandal, now has another set of allegations to dissect. Dirk Smeesters, a professor of consumer behavior and society at the Rotterdam School of Management, part of Erasmus University, has resigned amid serious questions about his work.
According to an Erasmus press release, a scientific integrity committee found that the results in two of Smeesters’ papers were statistically highly unlikely. Smeesters could not produce the raw data behind the findings, and told the committee that he cherry-picked the data to produce a statistically significant result. Those two papers are being retracted, and the university accepted Smeesters’ resignation on June 21.
The release also takes pains to say that the university has no reason to doubt the work of his co-authors. You can read the complete report in Dutch, with Smeesters’ co-authors’ names blacked out, in an NRC Handelsblad story.
In 2011, Diederik Stapel, a Dutch researcher who at the time was a shining star in the world of social psychology, published an article in the British Journal of Social Psychology with the counter-intuitive claim that failure can sometimes be more emotionally gratifying than success.
We’re guessing this isn’t one of those times. As readers of this blog well know, Stapel has admitted to fabricating loads of data. The BJSP has now retracted the article.