The other shoe drops.

There’s nothing unique about Hauser’s case (unfortunately), except for the degree of publicity generated (which is not so common).

I understand that Hauser’s friends and collaborators have lots of trouble accepting the obvious – betrayal is always hard to accept – and in some cases some of their own papers may be thrown into question (although Hauser had a pattern of producing hard to reproduce results and drawing questionable conclusions from limited data, so perhaps some of these folks ought to look at the basis for their respect for Hauser), but the honest thing is to take a hard look at the circumstance. When a guy’s own students are denouncing him to the university for fabricating data, something is very seriously wrong. By the way, this whole process began in 2007, but I suppose Hauser continued to take on students – all of whom are now thoroughly screwed by his behavior – that’s perhaps the most distressing aspect of this entire episode. (This is what the `solely responsible’ part of the Dean’s statement is aimed at).

Finally, for all those who distrust the media, big institutions, etc. – Harvard (and any other big US university) is like the Catholic Church – it goes to extraordinary effort to conceal the slightest hint of the most egregious misconduct. There are legal reasons for this, but there is also the motivation of protecting its reputation. When Harvard publicly disciplines a professor and there is no concomitant protest from any sector of its professorate, it is reasonable to assume that the truth is far worse (not better) than what Harvard says.

“I totally agree that double blinding is the appropriate solution, but there are some cases in which even the clever experimenters like Marc have a hard time figuring out a practical way to implement it.”

http://chronicle.com/article/Document-Sheds-Light-on/123988/

Although Marc is definitely a clever experimenter, it seems clear that he wasn’t committed to finding the best, least biased ways of implementing experiments and interpreting data. Just because one researcher isn’t committed to this, it doesn’t mean the rest of us aren’t. Please be aware that your experiences with Marc may have given you a very skewed view of the field.

As far as Harvard is concerned, and this I say not from inside knowledge but from having been associated with Harvard since the early 90s, it’s water under the bridge. Harvard will have determined how much could possibly be proven and acted accordingly. The slap on the wrist is intended to appease Hauser’s colleagues (all other FAS faculty) who would not accept Hauser getting off scot free. To the rest of the world it must appear that there was “nothing (or not enough) there”, a simple misunderstanding of some kind.

For another, more notorious example of this process see the case of Andrei Schleifer (google “tawdry schleifer affair”), or for that matter the unethical human psych experiments of Henry A. Murray, on, among others, a young Ted Kaczynski.

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/publications/learnconcepts/mirror.pdf

The general discussion, beginning on p. 136, is pretty interesting and quite defensive, in my opinion.