Harvard Professor Who Resigned Fabricated, Manipulated Data, US Says
Marc Hauser, a prolific scientist and popular psychology professor who resigned last summer from Harvard University, had fabricated data, manipulated results in multiple experiments, and incorrectly described how studies were conducted, according to the findings of a federal research oversight agency posted online Wednesday.
The report details the problems that triggered a three-year university investigation that concluded in 2010 that Hauser, a star professor and public intellectual, had committed scientific misconduct. The document, which will be published in the Federal Register Thursday, lists six cases in which Hauser engaged in research misconduct in work supported by the National Institutes of Health.
One published paper was retracted after Harvard concluded its investigation, and two were corrected. Other problems were found in unpublished experiments.
Although Hauser “neither admits nor denies committing research misconduct,” he does, the report states, accept that federal authorities “found evidence of research misconduct.”
In a statement, Hauser apologized and described the scrutiny of the past five years as a “long and painful period.”