{"id":1667,"date":"2016-11-17T09:00:13","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T08:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=62016"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:22:07","slug":"crisis-in-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2016\/11\/17\/crisis-in-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Crisis in science"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Everyone knows them, the studies on Facebook and Nu.nl<\/em> which provide food for thought at the coffee machine: if you don\u2019t eat that biscuit, you\u2019ll be better at your crossword, sticking a pencil in your mouth puts you in a better mood, and if you think of old people, you\u2019ll automatically start walking more slowly. However, these studies, originating from social psychology, proved unrepeatable. The result: crisis.<\/p>\n

Rolf Zwaan, Professor of Biological and Cognitive Psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, is exploring how social psychology can move on from this crisis. Besides his regular work as researcher and tutor, he uses replication studies to test how reliable previous research is. Furthermore, he is embroiled in the struggle between \u2018old\u2019 and \u2018new\u2019 social psychologists.<\/p>\n

Pressure to perform <\/h3>

Let\u2019s start at the beginning. What exactly is happening in social psychology? The issues emerged a few years ago. \u201cIn this domain, a number of high profile cases of fraud were discovered, with Diederik Stapel being the all time low,\u201d says Zwaan, correcting himself immediately. \u201cI should say partly suspected cases of fraud. Stapel was the only one to admit it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rotterdam was affected too thanks to Dirk Smeesters. This Professor of Consumer Behaviour at Rotterdam School of Management no longer had his raw data available for two of his articles. \u201cThe former rector, Henk Schmidt, called me and said: \u2018We\u2019ve got our own Stapel\u2019. He asked me whether I\u2019d head the committee which was going to conduct enquiries into this case.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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\n\t\t\u2018The rector called me: \u2018We\u2019ve got our own Stapel\u201d\n\t<\/blockquote>\n\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

And although cases of fraud are rare, they highlighted a structural problem. Many researchers apply \u2014 often unconsciously \u2014statistical methods incorrectly. \u201cOften, they looked for as many test subjects as possible and did as many experiments with them as possible. And then they said: \u201cAt the end of term, we\u2019ll see what effects are significant.\u2019 So they established the hypothesis afterwards. In other words: they fired first and then drew the target.\u201d However, he doesn\u2019t think that these scientists were all aware that they were being fraudulent. \u201cIn their environment, that was normal, that\u2019s how you did things. They thought that they were doing the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

more about smeesters<\/h2>