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19 results

  • 3 - A Menagerie of Imposters and Truth-Tellers: Diederik Stapel and the Crisis in Psychology

  • Edited by Steve Woolgar, Linköpings universitet, Sweden, Else Vogel, Linköpings universitet, Sweden, David Moats, Linköpings universitet, Sweden, Claes-Fredrik Helgesson
  • Book:
    The Imposter as Social Theory
    Published by:
    Bristol University Press
    Published online:
    22 December 2021
    Print publication:
    26 May 2021, pp 53-76

  • Summary

    Introduction

    On 7 September 2011 the career of Diederik Stapel, social psychologist at Tilburg University in the Netherlands came to a sudden end. Twelve days earlier his colleague and friend Marcel Zeelenberg had confronted him with detailed evidence that he had fabricated results, evidence which had been meticulously collected by three young researchers of Stapel's own research group. Stapel thought he had managed to talk his way out of it, but Zeelenberg informed the vice-chancellor. After failing to convince the vice-chancellor in their first conversation Stapel, with mounting panic, travelled half the country to visit the places where he had supposedly collected his data, in order to construct a plausible story and make sure he got the details right. It was to no avail, and finally, accompanied by a lawyer, Stapel confessed: he had made up data, and had been doing so for many years. His house of cards, as he would later call it, had come tumbling down. In retrospect, Stapel's confession to the vice-chancellor was a rare moment of order and consensus in a saga that is otherwise characterized by differences of opinion, conflicting stories and a lack of confidence in the discipline of psychology as a whole. While they sat at a table in the vice-chancellor's home, for a brief instant, there was clarity: Stapel confirmed that the accusations were correct, he had fabricated data, he was a fraud. But as the story hit the press and became national news, questions started to be asked again. A few people rather hopefully speculated that it might be a hoax, perhaps perpetrated by Stapel himself. These fanciful speculations were quickly squashed, but many questions remained. How long had it been going on? How many of his papers were fraudulent? A commission had been created to investigate the matter, but it wasn't just Stapel who was under scrutiny. The Stapel affair hit psychology at a time when its research practices were already increasingly being examined. A reform movement was emerging that used Facebook and Twitter as its media to discuss the ways that psychologists produce publishable results. Inevitably the question arose to what extent Stapel's fraud was emblematic of what was starting to be called the ‘crisis of confidence’ in psychology.

Histories of Human Engineering
  • Tact and Technology
  • Maarten Derksen
  • Published online:
    08 June 2017
    Print publication:
    08 June 2017
  • The dream of control over human behaviour is an old dream, shared by many cultures. This fascinating account of the histories of human engineering describes how technologies of managing individuals and groups were developed from the nineteenth century to the present day, ranging from brainwashing and mind control to Dale Carnegie's art of dealing with people. Derksen reveals that common to all of them is the perpetual tension between the desire to control people's behaviour and the resistance this provokes. Thus to influence other people successfully, technology had to be combined with tact: with a personal touch, with a subtle hint, or with outright deception, manipulations are made palatable or invisible. Combining psychological history and theory with insights from science and technology studies and rhetorical scholarship, Derksen offers a fresh perspective on human engineering that will appeal to those interested in the history of psychology and the history of technology.