The blame goes far beyond Diederik Stapel and the three Dutch universities where he worked as a social psychologist. In their exhaustive final report about the fraud affair that rocked social
psychology last year, three investigative panels today collectively find fault with the field itself. They paint an image of a "sloppy" research culture in
which some scientists don't understand the essentials of statistics, journal-selected article reviewers encourage researchers to leave unwelcome data out
of their papers, and even the most prestigious journals print results that are obviously too good to be true.

The commissions—one for each of the universities where Stapel has worked—concluded that "from the bottom to the top there was a general neglect of
fundamental scientific standards and methodological requirements." That climate made it possible for Stapel's fraud to go undetected for many years, the
report says.

Entitled Flawed science: The fraudulent research practices of social psychologist Diederik Stapel, the report again casts an
unflattering light on social psychology, which has seen several other investigators come under scrutiny since Stapel was fired from his post at Tilburg
University in September 2011. Two months ago, psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman urged researchers doing so-called priming studies—an
important area in social psychology where Stapel was also active—to clean up their act, declaring in an open letter that "your field is now the poster
child for doubts about the integrity of psychological research."