Misconduct Shakeup

The ongoing saga that led to psychologist Dirk Smeesters’s resignation from the Erasmus University Rotterdam has the scientific community discussing new ways to detect data fraud.

Written byJef Akst

| 2 min read

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Late last month, psychologist Dirk Smeesters of Erasmus University Rotterdam resigned from his post after an investigative committee concluded that it had “no confidence in [his studies’] scientific integrity.” On June 25, ScienceInsider reported that the wrong-doing was first brought to the university’s attention by “an anonymous fraud hunter.” Three days later, the university identified Uri Simonsohn, a social psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, as the anonymous whistleblower. His technique: a statistical analysis that looks at the effect of removing extreme data, according to a blog post by Richard Gill of Leiden University in the Netherlands, who evaluated the technique.

Simonsohn also notified a US university about another psychology paper flagged by his method as possibly being fraudulent, and the ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
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Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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