A row has erupted online after an eminent social psychologist in the USA reacted angrily to a failed replication of one of his classic stereotype priming studies. John Bargh, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University, used his blog on Psychology Today to launch a stinging criticism of the researchers who failed to replicate his 1996 study, the journal they published in, and the British science blogger who reported on their new research.
In a post that extends to several pages, Bargh implied that Stéphane Doyen (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and her colleagues are 'incompetent and ill-informed'; he claimed that the open-access journal PLoS One allows researchers to 'self-publish' their studies without appropriate peer review so long as they are willing to pay the $1350 fee; and he described Ed Yong's Discover magazine blog coverage of the failed replication as 'superficial online journalism'.
The new paper by Doyen et al. 'Behavioural priming: It's all in the mind, but whose mind?' (PLoS One) attempted to replicate Bargh's highly cited 1996 article, co-authored with Mark Chen and Lara Burrows, which showed that participants primed non-consciously by the elderly stereotype walked away from a psychology lab more slowly (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Doyen's team made some changes to Bargh's methodology, including doubling the number of participants and using infra-red beams to time participants' walking speed (as opposed to a research assistant with a stop-watch). Their attempt at replication failed - participants exposed to ageing-related words in a scrambled sentence task didn't walk away any more slowly than control participants.
However, when the study was repeated with the experimenters knowing the expected results of the study and which condition participants had been allocated to, the slowing effect was observed. In another twist, experimenters told to expect participants to walk away faster actually obtained data supporting this reverse-effect, but only if they used a stop-watch. A final important detail is that there was evidence that some participants in the prime condition had noticed the ageing-related words they'd been exposed to, thus casting doubt on the scrambled sentence task as a way to deliver primes non-consciously.
Based on their results, Doyen's team concluded that 'experimenters' expectations seem to provide a favourable context to the behavioural expression of a prime.' They argued further that it was important to consider the limitations of automatic behavioural priming: '...it seems that these methods need to be taken as an object of research per se before using it can be considered as an established phenomenon.'
In his blog post, Bargh argued there was no way that experimenter expectancies could have interfered with the results he and his colleagues obtained. He blamed the replication failure on 'gross' methodological changes made by Doyen's team. For example, he quoted them as having instructed participants to 'go straight down the hall when leaving', in contrast to his study, which he said let participants 'leave in the most natural way'. In fact, as Yong has pointed out in a response on his blog, Doyen's team wrote that 'participants were clearly directed to the end of the corridor'; similarly, Bargh and his colleagues wrote in their study that the experimenter told the participant that 'the elevator was down the hall'.
Bargh concluded his blog post by arguing for the robustness of the concept of stereotype priming, which he said has been replicated 'dozens if not hundreds' of times and is solidly embedded in several theories across multiple scientific fields. 'I am not so much worried about the impact on science of essentially self-published failures to replicate,' he wrote, 'as much as I'm worried about your ability to trust supposedly reputable online media sources for accurate information on psychological science.'
As we went to press the controversy was playing out online with several psychologists contributing their views: Matt Craddock commented on Bargh's Psychology Today post; Matthew Lieberman has written a piece on his blog Social Brain, Social Mind; and Daniel Simons posted his views on Google+ as 'A primer for how not to respond when someone fails to replicate your work'.
In a related incident, the failed replication attempt of Daryl Bem's 'precognition' study, by Chris French (Goldsmiths, University of London), Stuart Ritchie (University of Edinburgh) and Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire), has finally been published, also in PLoS One, with Bem responding in the comments. Their report was rejected by several journals including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see 'News', June 2011), which originally published Bem's findings along with his appeal for attempted replications. Writing in The Guardian, Chris French said: 'Although we are always being told that "replication is the cornerstone of science", the truth is that the "top" journals are simply not interested in straight replications - especially failed replications. They only want to report findings that are new and positive.' cj

There was a time not so long ago when psychiatry and psychotherapy were dominated by the psychoanalytic approach. Today, observed Professor Robin Murray, chair of the latest Maudsley Debate, psychoanalysts are an 'endangered species'. For this, the 44th Maudsley Debate hosted by the Institute of Psychiatry, the house proposed to a packed auditorium that 'psychoanalysis has a valuable place in modern mental health services'. The audience's initial vote was 251 for the motion, 32 against with 42 abstainers.
First to propose the motion was Peter Fonagy, a Chartered Clinical Psychologist, Associate Fellow of the BPS and the Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis at UCL. Fonagy said this was a 'deadly serious' issue and that psychoanalytic psychotherapy was 'fighting for its life'. In the race to demonstrate the relative merits of different therapeutic approaches, Fonagy said psychodynamic psychotherapy was at a distinct disadvantage. Most randomly controlled trials are focused on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and success is measured by symptom reduction. Despite psychodynamic psychotherapy not being focused on symptoms, Fonagy said the few trials that had been conducted with this approach were showing it to be an effective treatment. He added that brain science and its revelations about developmental effects were also converging with the psychoanalytic model and its emphasis on early relationships.
BPS Fellow Paul Salkovskis, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Applied Science at the University of Bath, was the first to oppose the motion. He said it was a 'confidence trick' to confuse psychoanalysis with psychodynamic psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis, he argued, was wedded to several harmful beliefs and doctrines: including the rejection of a symptom focus, the rejection of evaluation, the idea of training by undergoing one's own analysis, and 'really bad' theories from the comic (e.g the Oedipus complex) to the dangerous (e.g. in relation to obsessive compulsive disorder). 'Go and look at the psychoanalytic explanation for OCD and tremble' Salkovskis,' said.
He concluded that the philosophical and theoretical tenets of psychoanalysis put it at odds with a modern mental health service - remove those tenets and it's not psychoanalysis any more.
The motion was seconded by Alessandra Lemma, a Chartered Clinical Psychologist, Associate Fellow of the BPS and Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit at UCL. She argued that CBT only works for 50 to 60 per cent of clients and that there's a need for an alternative approach for the remainder. Psychodynamic psychotherapy focuses on the person, not the disorder, she said. For chronic, complex difficulties you need a theory of interactional processes, she said, and 'psychoanalysis is unrivalled in providing a highly sophisticated theory of interactional processes'.
Last up, Professor Lewis Wolpert, a developmental biologist and the author of Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression (which charts his own experience of the illness), said he'd undertaken psychoanalysis and it was a 'total disaster'. He stressed how it is conscious thoughts that play a central role in conditions like depression, not the unconscious. It's things that happened yesterday - losing a job, being ill - that most often trigger depression, not events in childhood. He said there was no evidence for the basic psychoanalytic ideas of ego, super ego and so on - 'mystical nonsense', he called them. Psychoanalysts were not interested in cure, he claimed: 'It's all nonsense and we should abandon it completely.'
At the closing vote, there were 260 for the motion, 43 against and 35 abstainers. cj
I See www.kcl.ac.uk/iop/news/Podcasts.aspx

The UK government's Behavioural Insight Team, led by psychology graduate David Halpern, has claimed that hundreds of millions of pounds could be saved using simple, psychologically inspired interventions to reduce fraud, debt and error.
The claims are made in a new report, published in February, that details seven ways public organisations could save money: make it easier for people to fill out forms, including tax returns; highlight key messages early in communications; use personal language; prompt honesty at key moments when people are filling in forms or answering questions; use the influence of social norms by emphasising that most other people behave prosocially; reward desired behaviour; and highlight the risks and impact of dishonesty.
These ideas are being put to the test in eight ongoing trials by the Behavioural Insight Team in partnership with public bodies. For instance, HM Revenue and Customs has experimented with tax reminder letters and found that they seem to be more effective if they include a message saying that the majority of people in the recipient's local area pay their tax on time. A trial with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is testing the influence of including a picture of a person's untaxed car in reminder letters. Another with HM Courts and Tribunals Service is testing whether people are more likely to respond to text message reminders to pay fines if the text mentions them by name and states how much they owe.
'This is the first time that the Government has explicitly sought to draw upon behavioural insights to tackle fraud, error and debt in a systematic way,' the report says. 'The insights outlined in this document, applied in a range of different contexts and settings, show that not only is it possible to apply behavioural insights to reduce fraud, error and debt, but also that it can be done in a highly cost-effective way.' cj

The Royal Society has published the report from the third of its Brain Waves modules, which is focused on the military and civil law enforcement implications of new neuroscience findings, writes Christian Jarrett. The report calls for increased awareness among scientists as to how their findings could be turned to potential military and enforcement uses. It also calls for the UK government to be more open about the research that it is funding is this area.
The module 'Neuroscience, conflict and security' was chaired by Rod Flower, Professor of Biochemical Pharmacology at the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London. There was psychological input from Susan Iversen, Emeritus Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, and BPS Fellow Trevor Robbins, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, both of whom were members of the module's working group. Professor of Experimental Psychology Barry Everitt at the University of Cambridge was a member of the review panel for the module.
The report describes how neuroscience advances can be used to enhance the performance of the military and to harm the performance of its enemies. On the side of performance-enhancement, it highlights the potential for neuroimaging to improve recruitment; for brain - machine interfaces to enhance sensory performance and to help with rehabilitation from injury; and for drugs to overcome fatigue and help with recovery from PTSD. In relation to degrading enemy performance, the report describes work on the use of chemical agents designed to affect the central nervous system, and the development of non-lethal high-energy laser weapons designed to interfere with neurotransmitter release and other physiological functions.
A substantial section of the report deals with the treaties related to the ban of the use of biological and chemical weapons, to which the UK is a signatory - The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972 and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. The latter includes an ambiguous exception allowing for 'law enforcement including domestic riot control purposes'. The report says there is an urgent need for the UK government to clarify its position in relation to this exception, in particular whether it applies to incapacitating chemical agents and not only to riot control agents, which have a less drastic, irritant effect. cj

The ubiquitous rise of smartphone and tablet applications ('apps') is beginning to filter through to the world of psychology. An app called Buddy that allows users to keep track of their activities and feelings has just been rolled out to mental health service providers nationally after a successful trial.
The Buddy app (www.buddyapp.org) was designed by London-based Sidekick Studios in association with South London and Maudsley Foundation Trust and with financial support from the NHS Regional Innovation Fund and NESTA. The app works via the sending and receiving of text messages to users' phones (this makes it compatible with any phone).
The app sends reminders, helps with diary keeping and goal-setting, allows analysis of patterns between a person's feelings and behaviours, and aids session planning.
In trials, clients using the app were less likely to miss therapy sessions.
The app has now been adopted by four boroughs in south east London, by North East Essex, and by the Five Boroughs Partnership in the north west. Organisations purchase licences for the app allowing them to provide it to a given number of people.
Meanwhile, Wiley-Blackwell, which publishes the Society's journals, has also launched a free psychology app called Spotlight for use with iPhones and iPads. The app allows users to keep track of psychology conferences, abstracts, books, blogs (including the Society's Research Digest) and journal special issues.
Elsewhere, Richard McNally's lab at Harvard University has reportedly just completed a trial of an iPhone intervention for anxiety. There's a Mobilyze app in development at Northwestern University, which is designed to detect signs of depression;
a Tell Me About It! app - a language development tool for autistic children based on the principles of applied behavioural analysis; there's an app in development at Samsung that determines user emotions based on factors such as typing speed and shaking of the phone; and the memory training guru Tony Buzan is planning a series of iMindMap apps around his Mind Mapping techniques. cj
I Have you come across any good-quality psychology apps? Let us know via Twitter on @psychmag

A preliminary map of the nation's happiness is taking shape following analysis of initial well-being results collected by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). It seems we are a relatively content people. The average life satisfaction score was 7.4 out of 10; the average 'life is worthwhile' score was 7.6 out of 10; 'happiness yesterday' averaged at 7.3 out of 10; whilst the average 'anxiety yesterday' score was 3.2 out of 10.
The ONS began including four subjective well-being questions from last April in its Annual Population Survey of 80,000 UK citizens aged over 16 (for background see 'News', January 2011: 'National well-being and the wandering mind'). Respondents were asked how satisfied they were with their lives; to what extent their life is worthwhile; how happy they felt yesterday; and how anxious they felt yesterday (all scored 1 - 10). The questions are designed to tap three aspects of subjective well-being: evaluative, eudenomic (people's sense of meaning and purpose), and experiential. The initial data was collected from April to September last year.
There were age and gender differences in the results. Women scored marginally higher then men on all four questions, especially life feeling worthwhile. Life satisfaction and life worthwhile scores were higher for younger and older participants relative to middle-aged respondents. Conversely, anxiety was higher among the middle-aged.
In terms of geographic differences across the UK, subjective well-being scores were highest in Northern Ireland (7.6 out of 10 compared with 7.5 for Scotland and 7.4 for both England and Wales). Within England, well-being was lowest in London and the West Midlands and highest in the South East and South West. Anxiety yesterday was highest in London compared with all other UK regions.
Other observations to emerge from the initial data: people living in a household with children rated life as more worthwhile, but showed no advantages in life satisfaction or happiness yesterday, and they reported no more anxiety; having a partner was associated with higher scores in satisfaction, life worthwhile and happiness yesterday; conversely, being unemployed was associated with lower scores on those three questions.
'It's good to see the project under way, but this initial account is not likely to inspire politicians or the public,' said Peter Warr, Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield. 'The approach is almost entirely through average subgroup scores with no apparent overarching framework or psychological basis. Findings to date repeat what is already known, but maybe more sophisticated analyses in the future or observed changes over time will be more interesting.' cj

Have you ever submitted to a journal and received a request from the editor to add in some extra citations to unspecified papers published in that same journal? According
to a survey by Allen Wilhite and Eric Fong (University of Alabama in Huntsville), published in Science, this practice is called 'coercive self-citation' and it's worryingly widespread. Receiving editorial advice on relevant papers to cite is acceptable, they say, but being asked to add superfluous papers, presumably to boost a journal's impact factor, is unethical.
Of 6672 social science researchers (including psychologists; most were American) who answered a survey, around 20 per cent said they had been subjected to these kinds
of requests. A further 20 per cent were aware of the practice but hadn't experienced it firsthand. Junior researchers were more likely to say they'd been coerced, as were the authors of papers with fewer co-authors. The practice also varied with discipline, being more common in business and economics, and less common in psychology and sociology (although Wilhite and Fong stressed that 'every discipline reported multiple instances of coercion'). More highly ranked journals were more likely to coerce, although it's not possible to say whether their ranking was a cause or consequence of the practice.
Overall, although 86 per cent of survey respondents said the practice of citation coercion was unethical, 57 per cent said that, prior to submission, they would add superfluous citations to journals known to coerce. Junior researchers were more likely to acquiesce. Familiarity may breed acceptance: researchers who admitted to adding superfluous citations viewed the practice less harshly.
'We find that coercion is uncomfortably common and appears to be practiced opportunistically,' Wilhite and Fong wrote. The pair concluded by calling on academic associations to condemn the practice and for journal self-citations to not count towards
a journal's impact factor. cj

Edge, the intellectual online salon founded and edited by literary agent John Brockman, has posed its latest annual question: 'What is your favourite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?' Alongside other scientists and thinkers, numerous psychologists have once again contributed their own thought-provoking answers.

Evolution by natural selection was a recurring theme. Susan Blackmore (University of Plymouth) said her choice 'had to be Darwin'. The reason no one thought of such an elegant idea before Darwin, she reasoned, is that evolution appears at first to be tautology: 'It seems as though you are saying nothing when you say that "things that survive survive" or "successful ideas are successful". To turn these tautologies into power,' she said, 'you need to add the context of a limited world in which not everything survives and competition is rife, and also realise that this is an ever-changing world in which the rules of the competition keep shifting.'

For John Tooby (University of California at Santa Barbara), the founder of evolutionary psychology, the theoretical lens of natural selection 'was a permanent revelation, populating the mind with chains of deductions that raced like crystal lattices through supersaturated solutions'. A conundrum for Tooby, who nearly became a quantum physicist, is how natural selection drives the emergence of complex organisms in a universe governed by the second law of thermodynamics, in which physical systems always move towards greater entropy (or disorder). The answer, Tooby said, comes from different frames of reference - the fact that entropy exists in different domains, from cells to membranes. Natural selection, he explained, uses entropy in one domain to drive increased order in another. 'Entropy makes things fall, but life ingeniously rigs the game so that when they do they often fall into place.'

Other contributors chose social psychology theories. The leading US psychology textbook author David G. Myers (Hope College) highlighted group polarisation - the tendency for initial opinions to become more extreme in like-minded groups. Our attraction to similar others combined with the facilitative effect of the internet means this process is leading to ever more polarised views. Myers pointed to the dramatic rise in the percentage of landslide counties in the US: those voting 60 percent or more for one presidential candidate nearly doubled between 1976 and 2008. '... one elegant and socially significant explanation of diverse observations is simply this,' Myers said, 'opinion segregation + conversation = polarization'.

Adam Alter (Stern Business School) chose John Darley and Bibb Latane's bystander effect. Their classic experiments showed how in some situations, a person in the company of others, as opposed to alone, was less likely to act to help a victim or raise the alarm in an emergency. 'Their elegant insight', Alter said, 'was that human responses aren't additive in the same way that objects are additive. Whereas four light bulbs illuminate a room more effectively than three light bulbs...two people aren't always more effective than a single person. People second-guess situations, they stop to make sense of a chain of events before acting, and sometimes pride and the fear of looking foolish prevent them from acting at all.'

Stanislas Dehaene (Collège de France) focused on decision making. He described the way the mind functions according to Bayesian principles, in which available evidence is combined with prior knowledge and a decision is made once a threshold is exceeded. '...as a first approximation,' he said, 'this law stands as one of the most elegant and productive discoveries of twentieth-century psychology: humans act as near-optimal statisticians, and any of our decisions corresponds to an accumulation of the available evidence up to some threshold.'

There were also contributions from developmental psychologists. Paul Bloom (Yale University) quoted D'Arcy Thompson 'Everything is the way it is because it got that way', which he said was a perfect motto for developmental psychology (the biologist PZ Myers also titled his contribution with the same quote). Bloom outlined a series of potential explanations for why adults end up the way they are - such as circumcision in infancy affecting men's pain sensitivity; first borns tending to develop into more intelligent adults than their younger siblings because their early environment is more intellectually sophisticated; and romantic attachments in adulthood being influenced by early bonds with one's parents. 'I don't know if any of these explanations are true,' Bloom said. 'But they are elegant and non-obvious, and some of them verge on beautiful.'

Simon Baron-Cohen said he enjoys deep, elegant and beautiful explanations in the factors that give rise to sex differences in the brain, including the, on average, 16 per cent greater number of neurons in the male brain and the typically larger planum temporale (a language area) in the female brain.

His favourite is the masculinising effect of fetal testosterone. Castrating a male rat shrinks his amygdala to the average size found in a female. A paper Baron-Cohen has in press links testosterone levels in the amniotic fluid of human mothers to the size of the planum temporale in their child. In turn this fits with prior research linking amniotic testosterone with a child's vocabulary size at age two and is consistent with relative language precocity in girls compared with boys.

But it's tricky to measure testosterone levels in the womb. A non-invasive proxy is the relative length of the second and fourth digits of the hand (greater testosterone is associated with a lower second to fourth digit ratio). Baron-Cohen was sceptical about this, but last year a study showed 'how even in mice paws, the density of receptors for testosterone and oestrogen varies in the 2nd and 4th digits, making another beautiful explanation for why your finger ratio length is directly affected by these hormones. That same hormone that masculinizes your brain is at work at your fingertips.'

Some of the most famous names in psychology also contributed answers. Philip Zimbardo (Stanford University) focused on a topic that's occupied his research in recent years - time perspective theory. This states that each of us has a bias towards thinking in terms of either the past, the present or the future. In turn, each of these orientations comes in two forms - there's past positive and past negative; present-hedonistic and present-fatalistic; and goal setters versus those focused on the transcendental future. Recently the theory has been applied in a therapeutic context, helping veterans with PTSD acquire more positive time perspectives. 'It is so rewarding to see many of our honored veterans... discover a new life rich with opportunities, friends, family, fun and work by being exposed to this simple, elegant reframing of their mental orientation toward the life of their time,' Zimbardo said.

On a related theme, your reporter's favourite contribution was from Elizabeth Dunn (University of British Columbia) on why in modern life we seem to feel more pressed for time than ever. Despite anecdotal reports, Dunn said there's no evidence from actual data to suggest we're working any longer or relaxing any less than we used to. She said that 'a beautiful explanation' for why we feel time pressured was offered recently by Sanford DeVoe, at the University of Toronto and Jeffrey Pfeffer, at Stanford, who've suggested that time comes to feel scarcer when it feels more valuable. And it feels more valuable when we're richer and capable of earning more. In studies, DeVoe and Pfeffer have taken this further and by inducing students to feel more affluent (through careful design of response categories on a questionnaire), they've led them to also feel more time pressured. A curious flipside of this explanation is that giving our time away (thereby devaluing it), should lead us to feel less time pressured. Some organisations are realising this. 'Companies like Home Depot provide their employees with opportunities to volunteer their time to help others,' Dunn said, 'potentially reducing feelings of time stress and burnout.'

Visit www.edge.org to read all the responses, including answers from more psychologists, such as Steven Pinker, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Bruce Hood and Alison Gopnik, and non-psychologists, including Eric Kandel and Richard Dawkins.

- We'd love to hear your own views on the most elegant and beautiful explanations: e-mail psychologist@bps.org.uk

-- Christian Jarrett

The story of Little Albert - the baby whose conditioning by behaviourist John Watson is documented in every psychology textbook - has taken another sad twist, according to a new journal article.

Hall Beck at the Appalachian State University and his colleagues claimed in 2009 that they'd uncovered Albert's true identity and that he'd died in 1925 at just six years of age (the story was later documented in The Psychologist; see 'Finding Little Albert', May 2011). Now, based on fresh analysis of video footage of Albert, together with newly obtained medical records, it's been proposed by Beck and others that Albert was neurologically impaired at the time he was tested by Watson and Watson's assistant and mistress Rosalie Rayner in 1920 (History of Psychology: tinyurl.com/6t9gs2z).

The new claims build on the 2009 evidence, which pointed to Little Albert being Douglas Merritte, the son of Arvilla Merritte, a wet nurse at Johns Hopkins University. Douglas's nephew Gary Irons, a co-author on the new paper, has obtained medical records showing that Douglas fell seriously ill at just six weeks of age, and that he underwent a total of nine ventricular and lumbar punctures in the course of being diagnosed and treated for hydroencephalus (brain swelling associated with an excess of cerebral spinal fluid). Douglas also caught a cerebral infection (ventriculitis) from one of these investigations, and he contracted meningitis and measles.

The medical revelations are complemented in the new paper by a retrospective clinical assessment of Albert's behaviour as shown in the video of his testing by Watson and Rayner. The four minutes of footage are from Watson's film The Experimental Investigation of Babies (available on YouTube and similar sites).

Psychologist (and lead author) Alan Fridlund and paediatric neurologist William Goldie viewed the footage and both observed striking evidence of abnormalities. Albert appears alarmingly unresponsive, they said, showing impaired tracking, a lack of smiling, immature verbal skills and gaze behaviour, and signs of visual impairment. These behavioural abnormalities make sense if Albert is really Douglas, given that Douglas almost certainly would have suffered brain damage from his health problems. Indeed, anecdotal evidence from the Irons family suggests Douglas was never able to walk. Moreover, a comparison of Watson's availability, Douglas's periods of relative good health and availability, and Albert's age at testing, all match up, providing further evidence that it's the same person.

The new revelations contradict Watson and Rayner's claims that Albert was in perfect health, although the signs of unresponsiveness to some extent concur with the original description of Albert as 'stolid and unemotional'. Fridlund and his co-authors argue that it's 'almost inconceivable' that Watson wouldn't have known about Albert's medical history and neurological impairment. They say this raises serious ethical questions about Watson's conduct and disclosure practices. 'As a violation of the norm of faithful and complete reportage in science,' not mentioning Albert's medical state 'would compromise "certification" of the knowledge...and render replication impossible. It would be impermissible in the science of his, or any, time.'

The new claims, if true, also further undermine the already questionable scientific merit of the research conducted by Watson and Rayner (see 'Foundations of sand', The Psychologist, September 2008). However, with regard to the ethics of testing an impaired child, Fridlund and co added that this practice was in keeping with the conventions of the time, in which learning disabled children were seen as a convenient subject pool. Watson, like his contemporaries, argued that the ends justified the means.

An obvious question is - how could Albert's alleged impairments have gone unnoticed for so long? 'Watson and Rayner's (1920) most effective conditioning may not have been of Albert but of their readership,' said Fridlund and his co-authors. 'Watching Little Albert with the stipulation that he was "healthy" and "normal" made it easy to overlook the infant's deficits.'

Not everyone is convinced by the new claims. Benjamin Harris is a historian of psychology at the University of New Hampshire who wrote a landmark paper in 1979 'Whatever happened to Little Albert?' about the way Albert's story has been told in psychology, rather than the literal location of Albert. Harris doubts that Douglas Merritte is Little Albert, although he says the boy's identity is of little interest to historians, a case he made in a paper published last year (tinyurl.com/6usb95j).

Acting as a journal reviewer, Harris advised against the publication of the new study by Fridlund et al. He's now highly critical of this research group, which he says has become closed and secretive. For example, he says they won't release the medical records. 'By insisting on Douglas Merritte, the authors travel down a path that now requires them to accuse Watson of fraud, misconduct, terrible record keeping - to maintain their idée fixe about Douglas Merritte. It's their responsibility to open the records and let unbiased scholars judge,' he told us.

Other criticisms and concerns Harris has include: the lack of independence and appropriate historical expertise of the people who assessed the film footage of Little Albert ('...the current article features only the analysis of a fan of Beck and a friend of that fan,' he said); an ignorance of the details of Watson's study (e.g. the paediatrician Goldie observes the absence of an approach avoidance reaction in Albert, even though this behaviour is noted by Watson); poor historical scholarship (there are no quotes from the medical records); and a dependence on post-hoc logic ('Because Douglas Merritte had symptom "a" and "b" and "c", the authors worked hard and found those symptoms in Albert as filmed by Watson, although no one had seen them in the past 90 years,' Harris said).

Ultimately, Harris questions the fundamental claim in Fridlund et al.'s new paper that Albert's fate is one of the 'greatest mysteries in our discipline'. 'This is nonsense,' Harris said. '...how does Albert's fate compare with the mystery of what causes schizophrenia or the nature of memory or the score of other great scientific questions that psychologists toil over? Not well in my opinion.'

-- Christian Jarrett


Alan J. Fridlund comments:
We appreciate your coverage of our findings. Prof. Harris's criticisms, however, are founded in error:
1. The paper contains pages and pages of extensive quotes from the medical records, reprinted by permission.

2. The paper contains my own behavioral analysis of Little Albert on film, plus those of William Goldie, a pediatric neurologist blind to the hypotheses. For concurrent validity, we obtained a third, blind assessment of Albert on film, by a clinical psychologist with expertise in child psychopathology. Her evaluation corroborated mine and Goldie's. All three analyses dovetailed with the details uncovered in the medical files for Douglas Merritte, which disclosed that he suffered from congenital hydrocephalus and iatrogenic meningitis/ventriculitis.

3. The records revealed an uncanny alignment between the dates that Douglas Merritte was medically stable and the dates that Little Albert was tested by Watson. The admission and discharge dates for Douglas Merritte in the medical records align perfectly with those reported by Watson and Rayner (1920) for Little Albert. Photogrammetric analysis showed a near-match between the skull circumferences of Little Albert on film and that measured for Douglas Merritte at the same age.

4. The manuscript was reviewed by three independent, renowned historians of science prior to publication, apart from the journal's three internal reviewers. There was no secretiveness on the part of our investigative team. As to whether we have an idee fixe regarding Douglas Merritte, no alternative candidate has been suggested by Prof. Harris or anyone else who fits even a small subset of the characteristics of "Little Albert."

5. Prof. Harris argues that Little Albert's identity is of little interest to historians. I would invite readers to look at our paper, though, not just for the substantiation of Albert's identity as Douglas Merritte, but for the issues that arise in the process: the widespread use of children in medical experimentation (Douglas may have been one), the medical misogyny in wet nursing (Douglas/Albert's mother was one), and the ethics of experimentation generally circa 1920 (there was little). That, of course, is the great lesson of historical research: facts (like Albert's identity) are never uncovered in isolation, but within an entire historical context. In our paper, we tried to illuminate that context.

6. We find ourselves in total agreement with Prof. Harris that the cause of schizophrenia or the nature of memory are far greater mysteries than the fate of Little Albert. Nonetheless, to me, the Little Albert study always calls out for us as psychologists to treat our subjects and our patients with dignity, respect and humanity. That message is timeless.




Edited: 23/02/2012 at 10:20 AM by jonsut

The prospect of using brain activity recordings in infants as a way to predict their risk of autism may have come a step closer. A new longitudinal study, led by Mayada Elsabbagh at Birkbeck College, University of London, involved 54 babies aged 6 - 10 months with a family history of autism, and 50 age-matched controls, looking at dynamic faces that either turned their gaze towards the babies or away from them. A crucial finding was that recordings of the babies' surface brain activity during this task (and others) revealed group differences (Current Biology: tinyurl.com/87zgpmc).

These early brain differences also had links with longer-term outcomes. The babies' families were contacted again at age 36 months, by which time 17 of the at-risk group had received a diagnosis of an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Looking back at the brain recordings taken at age 6 - 10 months, the researchers compared the subgroup who'd developed ASD against the at-risk babies who didn't develop ASD and the controls. Now brain activity differences were found specifically in the ASD group versus the at-risk group with no ASD and the controls. This time the differences were observed during the gaze-shift task only, not the other conditions, such as looking at a static face vs. no face.

An important detail is that differences between the ASD group and the other babies were not observed in their eye-scanning behaviour, including how much time they spent looking at the eye region of the face stimuli. This suggests the observed differences in brain activity were not simply a neural correlate of abnormal eye-movement patterns. However, the researchers do believe that the brain-activity differences they observed in the ASD infants are somehow related to social perception, leading to 'decreased attention to, or reduced interest in, the social world'. In turn, this is thought to have downstream effects on the emergence of typical developmental milestones. 'Taken together, our findings potentially allow for the early identification of those infant siblings who are at highest risk for developing later impairments, paving the way for the more selective targeting of early intervention efforts and procedures,' the researchers said.

-- Christian Jarrett

Edited: 22/02/2012 at 03:00 PM by jonsut

The whimsical flights and darker episodes of psychedelic experience have been studied before in detail, but the neural correlates of these experiences are largely unknown. For a new study, 30 participants took a mushroom-fuelled trip inside a brain scanner as part of the first ever fMRI study of the psychedelic state (PNAS: tinyurl.com/86whqj8).

The research team was led by Robin Carhart-Harris at Imperial College, London, and included David Nutt, the former head of the UK's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The researchers used fMRI to observe brain changes in participants as they were injected intravenously with psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms.

Two fMRI techniques were used. One relied on the BOLD response. This is the conventional fMRI methodology, which uses changes in the oxygenation of cerebral blood as a marker for local brain-activity fluctuations. The other technique involved arterial spin labelling, which reveals changes in cerebral blood flow. In both cases, participants rested in the scanner as they were infused either with a moderate dose of psilocybin or a placebo. During the scans participants used a button to indicate the subjective intensity of their experience and afterwards they provided more detailed feedback. All psychedelic experiences (including 'I saw my surroundings change in unusual ways' and 'my imagination was extremely vivid') were rated higher in the psilocybin condition, with the exception of 'I felt afraid' and 'I felt paranoid'.

Both imaging techniques produce complementary results. Taking psilocybin was associated with widespread reductions in brain activity and reduced blood flow in a raft of cortical and subcortical regions. There was also marked decoupling between the posterior cingulate cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex - key hubs in the default mode network, which is thought to be involved in consciousness and self-referential processing. Moreover, participants' subjective reports of trip intensity correlated with the observed regional decreases in neural activity.

Carhart-Harris and his colleagues noted that their findings contradicted the popular assumption that psychedelic drugs increase neural activity. However, they said the widespread dampening of brain activity was consistent with reports of the potential therapeutic benefits of taking psychedelic compounds. For example, depression is associated with heightened medial prefrontal cortex activity - a state that returns to normal after successful treatment.

'These studies offer the most detailed account to date of how the psychedelic state is produced in the brain,' the researchers concluded. 'The results suggest decreased activity and connectivity in the brain's connector hubs, permitting an unconstrained style of cognition.'

-- Christian Jarrett

A free online mental health education pack has been launched by the Woking Mind branch of the national mental health charity Mind. Containing over 100 personal accounts about mental distress, the work was led by two volunteers, Tristana Smith, a Student Member of the BPS at Oxford, and Lexy Rose, a student from the Institute of Psychiatry.

The pack had input from Surrey Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, researchers at the University of Oxford and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, teachers and mental health professionals.

The pack allows young people to understand and empathise with the experience of mental health problems. The pack fits within the PSHE curriculum, and includes teacher activity plans.

- The pack can be downloaded from www.mentalhealtheducation.org.uk

-- Jon Sutton

Funding may have been secured for educational psychology training in England, at least for the short term (see January News), but now concerns about funding for the profession have spread north of the border. The Educational Institute of Scotland (the country's largest teaching union) described government plans to axe future funding of educational psychology training as 'short sighted'. Education Secretary Mike Russell told the BBC that existing students would be unaffected by the decision.

How do cultures differ in the way they name and think about odours? BPS member Dr Asifa Majid of the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics is to find out thanks to a Vici grant of €1.5 million from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. 'This project will break new ground in the study of olfactory language and cognition by studying people from a variety of communities in different environmental niches,' Majid said.

A new website funded by JISC provides dozens of free videos of university lecturers talking about topics on the psychology A-level syllabus. The Psychology Faculty (www.thepsychologyfaculty.org), says: 'In bringing the expertise of research scholars into the classroom, we stretch and challenge students, help them excel in their assessments, inspire deeper learning and smooth the transition from school to university.'

Jean Gross, until recently the Government's Communication Champion, received a CBE in the New Year's Honours List for her services to education. Mrs Gross began her career as a teacher and educational psychologist. She has been head of children's services in a large urban local authority, working closely with health services on joint commissioning for autism, speech and language and child mental health needs. Until 2005 she was Senior Director within the government's Primary National Strategy, responsible for its influential SEAL approach to developing children's social and emotional competences.

Psychology is becoming an increasingly female-dominated discipline at sixth form and undergraduate level, but the balance shifts at each step of the career hierarchy. Conceived over margaritas in Florida, this one-day workshop held at the University of Nottingham offered a rare and welcome opportunity to hear the personal stories of some top women in psychology, reports Jon Sutton in The Psychologist. What obstacles had they encountered in their career progression, and how had they overcome them?
Dr Nicola Pitchford (University of Nottingham), who organised the day with Dr Kate Cain (University of Lancaster), opened proceedings by admitting she had felt personally vulnerable in putting the event on. Would she be judged, or pigeonholed? However, it was clear throughout that this was no militant rally of wronged women: a lot of the 'top tips for success' would be just as valuable for men, and Pitchford asserted at the outset that she didn't feel that she had been discriminated against in any way. Instead, it may be their own personality traits which prevent some women going forward.
Supporting this, Pitchford pointed to a recent Harvard Business Review article by Jill Flynn and colleagues on 'four ways women stunt their careers unintentionally': 'being overly modest', 'not asking', 'blending in' and 'remaining silent'. The report suggested that career progression is not about adding job skills but about changing everyday thinking and behaviours. The majority of high-performing women don't need to make major changes: it's about the tweaks.
The first speaker supported this view, highlighting the role of serendipity and personal chemistry in her own career. The ever-wise and generous Professor Vicki Bruce (Newcastle University) spoke as a 'planaholic' who nevertheless confesses to 'an absence of career planning and where that can get you'. 'I've largely followed my heart not my head', Bruce admitted, 'and amazing things can follow.'
Bruce's story began with a gap year job at Proctor and Gamble in Newcastle, which she got because her dad worked there. Programming computers to help in the invention of new soap powders may seem a long way from psychology, but when Bruce found herself doing 'so badly' in the first year of chemistry at Cambridge she was drawn to the human information processing and computer metaphors that were beginning to dominate psychology. 'HIP was hip and IT was it', Bruce said. Psychology was a young discipline, and there was plenty of chance to make a genuine, if incremental contribution.
On travelling to Lancaster to give a seminar in the early 80s, Bruce was picked up by Andy Young who, it transpired, had grown up in the next street and had travelled on the same train as Bruce as a child. So began a fruitful collaboration, in the increasingly influential field of face recognition. Bruce showed a photo from the first ESRC workshop on face recognition in 1984: a phenomenal line-up, including four women who are now professors.
Bruce's talk was full of sage advice. If you can, move at least every 10 years; if there's something that isn't working, change it; grow your own network; say 'no' to 'more of the same'; disseminate broadly; be a good 'academic citizen' (do book and journal reviews, serve on committees, etc.) - you will be asked to do more, but ultimately you will be valued. In what was to become a recurring theme, Bruce spoke fondly of several key role models and mentors in her life.
Next up, Professor Christine Horrocks (Manchester Metropolitan University, and Chair of the British Psychological Society's Psychology of Women Section) described her journey from a demanding job with a marketing agency to director of a research centre. Horrocks said that along the way she had experienced difficult relationships that had been gendered, but not out and out discrimination. Dare to stand up, she advised, to negotiate and avoid being forced down routes that are not right for you. Horrocks focused on the job application and promotion process, warning the audience against 'being lacklustre'. Use adjectives and action verbs in your application, and take the opportunity offered by a performance review to really give a good account of yourself and make sure everyone knows your good ideas.
Horrocks is in the midst of a move from the University of Bradford, and she spoke candidly on how she has always thought herself more likely to regret missed opportunities than something she has done. That has applied to her choices as a working mother in general: 'Yes, I've suffered the "tyranny of the school gates", I've wondered if I'm exchanging my daughter's GCSEs for my own position... but they're thriving, independent kids now. It's so easy to concentrate on what we might lose and not what we might gain.'
As someone who admitted to being 'quite forceful' to get where she is, it was noteworthy that Horrocks still refused to underestimate the importance of good working relations. 'Those who demonstrate emotional competencies - self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship management - advance more in their careers', she said.
'I used to think winning was everything when I was younger. Now I know when to retreat and regroup.' This had a gendered element: 'Our identities as senior female academics are very vulnerable', Horrocks said. 'I am not willing to be cast as bossy, as problematic.'
After lunch, Professor Veena Kumari (Institute of Psychiatry) continued the sage advice with an account of her own efforts to secure an academic foothold after starting out in India. 'Hearing of the wisdom and humanity shown by former giants of the field like Jeffrey Gray and Hans Eysenck made me hanker for a golden age of mentoring in psychology, before I quickly realised that our field remains replete with fantastic role models and mentors, both male and female.' Kumari receiving such support was not luck: as she said, 'Don't just take the first postdoc that comes your way. Investigate potential supervisors and their supervision history.'
It was also fascinating to hear the role in Kumari's career played by a position she never took. External job offers can offer an opportunity to open a discussion with your employers about your progression if you stay. This echoed a point made earlier by Professor Horrocks, who pointed to figures that suggest male academics advance more in their careers via these 'retention payments'. 'Playing by the rules is not always the best way,' Horrocks said; although Professor Bruce advised caution in the use of this tactic and said that the important point is using the opportunity to create a conversation.
Professor Kumari spoke of the importance of finding out the 'new and emerging - what's likely to become important in the next five to 10 years, and what skills do you need to get a head start?' The day's final speaker, Professor Claire O'Malley (University of Nottingham), advised a similarly long-term view on the funding you need. Nurture your team, she advised: plan, and build a track record. For O'Malley, this has led to her involvement in the £13 million Horizon Digital Economy Research Centre, and a passion for interdisciplinary work. 'Look outside your own tribes and territories', she advised. 'Spend time in other good institutions, if possible outside the UK. Most advances are made when we push at boundaries.'
O'Malley said that what you do matters - esteem indicators such as conference keynotes, service for funding councils and professional societies can count when it comes to promotion. But how you appear to others matters as well, and O'Malley advised the audience to consider their image, brand, website and overall social network presence.
It was interesting to see the day ending with plenty of advice that was just as applicable to men as it was to women. As Vicki Bruce had commented, 'What's good for women is good for men too!' Other speakers had acknowledged that change - for women in psychology, in science and in society - has happened fast. Many places are trying hard to recruit more women, 'balanced values' are the order of the day and supporting women into senior positions is becoming a more prominent agenda in government. Yet we are all so busy doing the day job that it's rare to have the opportunity to share stories, and to benefit from the considerable nous of those who have made it to the top. Let's hope that the organisers of this inspirational day are successful in their own ambition, of making this a regular event which tours the country and reaches out beyond academia to other sectors.

Psychology is becoming an increasingly female-dominated discipline at sixth form and undergraduate level, but the balance shifts at each step of the career hierarchy. Conceived over margaritas in Florida, this one-day workshop held at the University of Nottingham offered a rare and welcome opportunity to hear the personal stories of some top women in psychology. What obstacles had they encountered in their career progression, and how had they overcome them?
Dr Nicola Pitchford (University of Nottingham), who organised the day with Dr Kate Cain (University of Lancaster), opened proceedings by admitting she had felt personally vulnerable in putting the event on. Would she be judged, or pigeonholed? However, it was clear throughout that this was no militant rally of wronged women: a lot of the 'top tips for success' would be just as valuable for men, and Pitchford asserted at the outset that she didn't feel that she had been discriminated against in any way. Instead, it may be their own personality traits which prevent some women going forward.
Supporting this, Pitchford pointed to a recent Harvard Business Review article by Jill Flynn and colleagues on 'four ways women stunt their careers unintentionally': 'being overly modest', 'not asking', 'blending in' and 'remaining silent'. The report suggested that career progression is not about adding job skills but about changing everyday thinking and behaviours. The majority of high-performing women don't need to make major changes: it's about the tweaks.
The first speaker supported this view, highlighting the role of serendipity and personal chemistry in her own career. The ever-wise and generous Professor Vicki Bruce (Newcastle University) spoke as a 'planaholic' who nevertheless confesses to 'an absence of career planning and where that can get you'. 'I've largely followed my heart not my head', Bruce admitted, 'and amazing things can follow.'
Bruce's story began with a gap year job at Proctor and Gamble in Newcastle, which she got because her dad worked there. Programming computers to help in the invention of new soap powders may seem a long way from psychology, but when Bruce found herself doing 'so badly' in the first year of chemistry at Cambridge she was drawn to the human information processing and computer metaphors that were beginning to dominate psychology. 'HIP was hip and IT was it', Bruce said. Psychology was a young discipline, and there was plenty of chance to make a genuine, if incremental contribution.
On travelling to Lancaster to give a seminar in the early 80s, Bruce was picked up by Andy Young who, it transpired, had grown up in the next street and had travelled on the same train as Bruce as a child. So began a fruitful collaboration, in the increasingly influential field of face recognition. Bruce showed a photo from the first ESRC workshop on face recognition in 1984:
a phenomenal line-up, including four women who are now professors.
Bruce's talk was full of sage advice. If you can, move at least every 10 years; if there's something that isn't working, change it; grow your own network; say 'no' to 'more of the same'; disseminate broadly; be a good 'academic citizen' (do book and journal reviews, serve on committees, etc.) - you will be asked to do more, but ultimately you will be valued. In what was to become a recurring theme, Bruce spoke fondly of several key role models and mentors in her life.
Next up, Professor Christine Horrocks (Manchester Metropolitan University, and Chair of the British Psychological Society's Psychology of Women Section) described her journey from a demanding job with a marketing agency to director of a research centre. Horrocks said that along the way she had experienced difficult relationships that had been gendered, but not out and out discrimination. Dare to stand up, she advised, to negotiate and avoid being forced down routes that are not right for you. Horrocks focused on the job application and promotion process, warning the audience against 'being lacklustre'. Use adjectives and action verbs in your application, and take the opportunity offered by a performance review to really give a good account of yourself and make sure everyone knows your good ideas.
Horrocks is in the midst of a move from the University of Bradford, and she spoke candidly on how she has always thought herself more likely to regret missed opportunities than something she has done. That has applied to her choices as a working mother in general: 'Yes, I've suffered the "tyranny of the school gates", I've wondered if I'm exchanging my daughter's GCSEs for my own position... but they're thriving, independent kids now. It's so easy to concentrate on what we might lose and not what we might gain.'
As someone who admitted to being 'quite forceful' to get where she is, it was noteworthy that Horrocks still refused to underestimate the importance of good working relations. 'Those who demonstrate emotional competencies - self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship management - advance more in their careers', she said.
'I used to think winning was everything when I was younger. Now I know when to retreat and regroup.' This had a gendered element: 'Our identities as senior female academics are very vulnerable', Horrocks said. 'I am not willing to be cast as bossy, as problematic.'
After lunch, Professor Veena Kumari (Institute of Psychiatry) continued the sage advice with an account of her own efforts to secure an academic foothold after starting out in India. 'Hearing of the wisdom and humanity shown by former giants of the field like Jeffrey Gray and Hans Eysenck made me hanker for a golden age of mentoring in psychology, before I quickly realised that our field remains replete with fantastic role models and mentors, both male and female.' Kumari receiving such support was not luck: as she said, 'Don't just take the first postdoc that comes your way. Investigate potential supervisors and their supervision history.'
It was also fascinating to hear the role in Kumari's career played by a position she never took. External job offers can offer an opportunity to open a discussion with your employers about your progression if you stay. This echoed a point made earlier by Professor Horrocks, who pointed to figures that suggest male academics advance more in their careers via these 'retention payments'. 'Playing by the rules is not always the best way,' Horrocks said; although Professor Bruce advised caution in the use of this tactic and said that the important point is using the opportunity to create a conversation.
Professor Kumari spoke of the importance of finding out the 'new and emerging - what's likely to become important in the next five to 10 years, and what skills do you need to get a head start?' The day's final speaker, Professor Claire O'Malley (University of Nottingham), advised a similarly long-term view on the funding you need. Nurture your team, she advised: plan, and build a track record. For O'Malley, this has led to her involvement in the £13 million Horizon Digital Economy Research Centre, and a passion for interdisciplinary work. 'Look outside your own tribes and territories', she advised. 'Spend time in other good institutions, if possible outside the UK. Most advances are made when we push at boundaries.'
O'Malley said that what you do matters - esteem indicators such as conference keynotes, service for funding councils and professional societies can count when it comes to promotion. But how you appear to others matters as well, and O'Malley advised the audience to consider their image, brand, website and overall social network presence.
It was interesting to see the day ending with plenty of advice that was just as applicable to men as it was to women. As Vicki Bruce had commented, 'What's good for women is good for men too!' Other speakers had acknowledged that change - for women in psychology, in science and in society - has happened fast. Many places are trying hard to recruit more women, 'balanced values' are the order of the day and supporting women into senior positions is becoming a more prominent agenda in government. Yet we are all so busy doing the day job that it's rare to have the opportunity to share stories, and to benefit from the considerable nous of those who have made it to the top. Let's hope that the organisers of this inspirational day are successful in their own ambition, of making this a regular event which tours the country and reaches out beyond academia to other sectors.
Jon Sutton

An interim report by Tilburg University into the fraudulent research activities of social psychologist Diederik Stapel has found the extent of his malpractice to be on a 'shocking scale', with 'several dozen' studies implicated over a period of more than a decade, writes Christian Jarrett in The Psychologist. The investigating committee, chaired by Professor Willem Levelt, a psycholinguist, published their initial findings early in November.
A full list of affected studies will be published later with the final report. No other individuals were found to be culpable, but the interim report says the affair has profound ramifications for the reputation and practice of psychology. It has already generated a great deal of mainstream media interest, with 'Fraud Case Seen as a Red Flag for Psychology Research' being the chosen headline of the New York Times.
According to the Levelt Committee, Stapel's 'cunning, simple system' at Tilburg and earlier at Groningen University was to form intense one-on-one relationships with students and other researchers, to discuss hypotheses and methodologies with them at length, to prepare together the necessary materials, but to do all the apparent research collection himself at local schools. In many instances, the research never took place and the data was entirely fabricated. Other times it was massaged. Only then was it passed to students or colleagues for inspection, analysis and write-up. 'This conduct is deplorable,' the report says.
The doctoral work of five students at Tilburg and seven at Groningen, some of whom did no data collection of their own, is tainted as a consequence. Another strategy was for Stapel to produce old, unpublished data-sets - also fabricated or doctored - that he claimed were just perfect for answering colleagues' and students' new research questions.
Concerns had been raised about Stapel's practices in previous years by three young researchers and by two senior colleagues. But it was only this August when three more young researchers reported their misgivings that a full investigation was launched. 'The Committee concludes that the six young whistle blowers showed more courage, vigilance and inquisitiveness than incumbent full professors,' the report says.
How did Stapel avoid detection for so long? The Committee finds that much of this has to do with personality and status - charismatic Stapel enjoyed a 'virtually unassailable position' in his department, used his 'prestige, reputation and influence', formed close friendships with many of his colleagues and students, and was widely judged to have 'phenomenal research skills'. However, that anomalies in his data and unrealistically perfect results were allowed to persist has exposed 'the flawed performance of academic criticism, which is the cornerstone of science,' the report says.
Stapel's research, on topics such as how power dehumanises us, and the effect of mirrors on prejudice, was published in some of science's most prestigious journals. Yet clues as to Stapel's activities went unnoticed: the lack of detail provided in his papers about research participants and about the feasibility of sometimes complex experiments being conducted in schools. 'Apparently neither the reviewers nor the editorial teams of journals delved into aspects of this kind,' the report says.
Central to the longevity of Stapel's fraud was that he was able to keep his fabricated raw data from so many people for many years without raising undue alarm. The report suggests this was possible because of 'a lamentable... culture in social psychology and psychology research for everyone to keep their own data and not make them available to a public archive'. This is an issue that has been raised before: a 2006 paper by Jelte Wicherts and colleagues in American Psychologist found that just 27 per cent of psychology study authors they contacted were willing to share their data for re-analysis (see News, January 2007). In another paper published this November, Wicherts and his team found that psychologists were less likely to share their data if the likelihood of errors being found was high or the strength of evidence was weak (PLoS One). More worrying still, a study led by Leslie John in press at Psychological Science finds that 'questionable practices may constitute the prevailing research norm' based on an anonymous survey of 2000 psychologists.
The Levelt Committee's interim report concludes with recommendations to prevent fraud on such a scale from occurring again at Tilburg University and more widely, including: having PhD students complete a short integrity course; establishing a Confidential Counsellor For Academic Integrity; creating rules to protect whistle-blowers; and requiring journals to provide details on where and how data are collected. 'Far more than is customary in psychology research practice, research replication must be made part of the basic instruments of the discipline. Research data that underlie psychology publications must be held on file for at least five years after publication, and be made available on request to other scientific practitioners.'
In a formal response to the Committee findings, Stapel said he'd read the report with 'a sense of dismay and shame'. He claimed he'd not been motivated by self-interest and regretted the suffering he'd caused. 'Unfortunately my present state does not permit me to assess this report completely for any factual accuracies,' he said. In a separate statement to the press, he said (translated from Dutch) that he'd 'just wanted to make something more beautiful than it is'.
Christian Jarrett

Edited: 12/05/2011 at 09:29 AM by jonsut

The first population-based study to assess the course of self-harm from adolescence to young adulthood has found that around 1 in 12 young people self-harm, with the balance skewed towards girls.

Published in The Lancet, the cohort study was conducted between August 1992 and January 2008 in Victoria, Australia, with participants aged 14-15 at the outset. The researchers, led by Paula Moran (Institute of Psychiatry), chose this period as one 'characterised by major changes in health and a steep rise in deaths resulting from self-inflicted injuries'. Risks for self-harm increased substantially across puberty, 'a process that seems to be independent of age' according to the authors. Self-harm during adolescence was independently associated with the presence of depression and anxiety, antisocial behaviour, high-risk alcohol use, cannabis use, and cigarette smoking. Injury to the skin through cutting and burning was the commonest method of self-harm during adolescence, although by young adulthood no one form of self-harm predominated.

There is some good news though: 90 per cent of people who self-harm as adolescents will naturally stop in adulthood. 'Our findings suggest that most adolescent self-harming behaviour resolves spontaneously,' the authors said. 'However, young people who self-harm often have mental health problems that might not resolve without treatment, as evident in the strong relation detected between adolescent anxiety and depression and an increased risk of self-harm in young adulthood.'

Commenting on the age-related decline in self-harm in The Lancet, Keith Hawton (University of Oxford) and Rory O'Connor (University of Stirling) considered that as young people move from adolescence to young adulthood, the extent of exposure to peer self-harm might decrease. They also referred to a possibility not addressed by Moran and colleagues: the extent to which clinical interventions might have contributed to the reduction in self-harm. 'The results of Moran and colleagues' study will offer some reassurance to parents of adolescents who self-harm and to health and educational agencies,' Hawton and O'Connor said. 'Clinicians can offer encouragement to both young people who are self-harming and their families.'
Jon Sutton