Committee Levelt: at least twelve publications and three PhD theses involved in Stapel fraud

It has been found that Diederik Stapel has, during his period in Tilburg, been involved in at least twelve publications which have been the subject of fraud. Three PhD theses have also been found to have used fabricated data.

The theses in question are ‘How the mind moods’ by Yana Avramova, ‘De ironie van gelijkheid’ (‘The irony of equality’) by L.M. van den Broek and ‘Consistency and the unexpected’ by Marret Noordewier.

This is shown by the first results of the investigation by the Committee Levelt (Tilburg University, data from 2007 until 2011) into the work by the former professor at the TU. The investigation is ongoing, as a result, the number of investigated and tainted publications and PhD theses may still rise.

A definitive report about the scale of the fraud will probably be published in the summer. In the meantime, the three research committees which have looked at the research executed by Stapel will also make the results of their investigation public. The Committee Levelt has now taken the first step, the results of the committees Drenth (University of Amsterdam, data from 1994 until 1999), North (University of Groningen, data from 2000 until 2006) will come out in April. It is expected that they will be followed by the next portion of results from the committee in Tilburg.

Not only has the research done by Stapel himself been subjected to investigation, but also all publications to which the former Tilburg professor has supplied data. Apart from that, the co-authors have been interviewed and Stapel has been given a chance to respond. The committee members have, when studying the data sets and surveys, been assisted by statisticians and have also done their own research and consequently made their own assessment.

The committees have worked with two separate lists in its publication: one list of names of all publications which have been investigated by the committee in question and one list of names of the publications of which it has been established that they have been the subject of fraud. “The latter list says nothing about the responsibility of the co-authors. The final report will however also look into issue of responsibility,” the universities have declared.

The results will be published here.

Both Pim Levelt and the Rector Magnificus of Tilburg University, Philip Eijlander were not available to comment this morning.