Doubts About Research Make Headlines

Along with the Coca-Cola funding scandal, several other cases of alleged impropriety have put research credibility in the spotlight. Here are a few high-profile examples from the past year:

• Concerns were raised about the truthfulness of the sociologist Alice Goffman’s notable book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. Ms. Goffman said she had destroyed her field notes in order to protect the anonymity of her subjects, making it difficult — if not impossible — to fact-check her statements, including the claim that she had witnessed a murder. Her case prompted a discussion about whether field notes and other supporting evidence should be preserved.

• Michael LaCour’s well-publicized study on shifting attitudes toward gay marriage earned the UCLA political-science graduate student a job offer from Princeton University. The key finding was that a brief, face-to-face conversation could turn an opponent of gay marriage into a supporter. But an analysis of his data showed that it had almost certainly been fabricated, and the grants he claimed to have received didn’t exist. Mr. LaCour’s evasive defense of his work and his methodology did little to mollify skeptics. In the end, the study was retracted, and Princeton rescinded the job offer.

• How much of what’s published in peer-reviewed psychology journals can be replicated? That’s what the organizers of the Reproducibility Project set out to discover, attempting to replicate findings in 100 studies from three top psychology journals. The results were not encouraging: Only 39 percent of the studies passed the test. The project, led by Brian Nosek, executive director of the Center for Open Science, brought together more than 270 researchers who attempted to mirror the methods of the original researchers. They double-checked the science by painstakingly re-creating it.

Tom Bartlett is a senior writer who covers science and other things. Follow him on Twitter @tebartl.