Science holds article Stapel against the light

International sciencific journal Science is going to re-examine an article by Diederik Stapel. The article is about a study showing that people are more likely to discriminate when they live in a messy, polluted environment, for instance, with trash left on the streets.

Stapel co-wrote the article with professor Siegwart Lindenberg from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. He does not doubt it: all the collected data came from Stapel. “I myself have not done any experiments”, Lindenberg says in the paper edition of regional newspaper Brabants Dagblad. He refuses to make any comment while awaiting the outcome of an investigation, done by a scientific committee, into the research work of Stapel.

Last spring, before publication, the article was thoroughly checked for inaccuracies. It is a standard procedure, a spokesman for Science says in the regional newspaper. “Our control policy is one of the strictest in the world. Each study is reviewed by independent editors, a special assessment board and scientists in the rest of the world who are well -known in the field of study.”