Fabrication, Fabrication, the Way to Elation?

FabricationFabrication, fabrication, will it lead to elation?
If other pathways will lead to naught,
Fabrication will still be hot.
Yada, yada, yada, zing, zing, zing.

“Diederik Stapel, Dutch social psychologist, perpetrated an audacious academic fraud by making up studies that told the world what it wanted to hear about human nature.”  Ahhh so, we all recognize the old sensation center, the subtle and sexy temptress. Did it work for him. Yeah, kinda like it “worked” for Anthony Weiner.  (See Theatre of the Absurd)

Regarding my audacious endeavor,
I’m a star, bright, shiny and clever
At reading human attitudes and behavior.
Trust me and I’ll be your savior.

“That afternoon and in later conversations, he referred to himself several times as tall, charming or handsome, less out of arrogance, it seemed, than what I took to be an anxious desire to focus on positive aspects of himself that were demonstrably not false.”

Love me, love me, love me do,
I need affection and esteem.
Perhaps this new addiction,
Will turn out to be a fiction.
Until then though, I can dream.

We know the cause of Stapel’s behavior lies in his worldview. If his identity is found to be expressing the competitive values of having, doing and knowing we know he will be doomed to a life of existential anxiety. Let’s listen in and take note of what we hear.

“You are what you achieve.”  “The experiment—and others like it—didn’t give Stapel the desired results, he said. He had the choice of abandoning the work or redoing the experiment. But he had already spent a lot of time on the research and was convinced his hypothesis was valid. ‘I said—you know what, I am going to create the data set.’”

I will create a story
That will give you what you crave,
In a way that is sunny and funny,
And from anxiety you will be saved.

“If Stapel’s status served as a shield, his confidence fortified him further. His presentations at conferences were slick and peppered with humor. He viewed himself as giving his audience what they craved: ‘structure, simplicity, a beautiful story.’”

“I have fallen from my throne—[I’m meek]
I am on the floor,
I am in therapy every week.
I hate myself” [now all the more].

“Overnight, Stapel went from being a respected professor to perhaps the biggest con man in academic science.”  “Right away Stapel expressed what sounded like heartfelt remorse for what he did to his students.”

“The scrutiny was meant not only to clean up the scientific record but also to establish whether any of Stapel’s co-authors, including more than 20 Ph.D. students he supervised, shared any of the blame. It was already evident that many of the doctoral dissertations he oversaw were based on his fabricated data.”

My strategy is lying and denying,
And my secrets will create a dense fog,
That will frustrate all of their spying.
Very soon they will tire of trying,
‘Cause catching me will be such a slog.

Or maybe not!

“At the end of November, the university unveiled their final report at a joint news conference: Stapel had committed fraud in at least 55 of his papers, as well as in 10 Ph.D. dissertations written by his students.”

The intellect combined with the false self is tailor-made to tempt those bright seekers of affection and esteem, power and pleasure to tempt fate. “The once-celebrated South Korean stem-cell researcher Hwang Woo Suk stunned scientists in his field a few years ago after it was discovered that almost all of the work for which he was known was fraudulent. The prominent Harvard evolutionary biologist Marc Hauser resigned in 2011 during an investigation by the Office of Research Integrity at the Department of Health and Human Services that would end up determining that some of his papers contained fabricated data.”

How I hate to take the rap
For the Satan residing within.
I’d rather explain how he set the trap
Seducing me much to my chagrin.

“Several times in our conversation, Stapel alluded to having a fuzzy, postmodernist relationship with the truth, which he agreed served as a convenient fog for his wrongdoings.”  “His lifelong obsession with elegance and order, Stapel says, led him to concoct sexy results that journals found attractive: ‘It was a quest for aesthetics, for beauty—instead of the truth.’”  Stapel couldn’t be blamed if he had “… a lifelong obsession with order and symmetry.”

If it turns out that I’ve been ever so bad,
And they call what I’ve done fabrication,
It’s because I was a misunderstood Sir Galahad
And this is not a rationalization!

“He insisted that he loved social psychology but had been frustrated by the messiness of experimental data, which rarely led to clear conclusions. He described his behavior as an addiction that drove him to carry out acts of increasingly daring fraud, like a junkie seeking a bigger and better high.”

Existential fear is the modern plague
With science as the new religion;
And the messiah is the one who is smart.
The researcher is the new monastic monk;
Not the cleric, the one with a heart;
Even if his message seems a little vague
And even if he smells like a skunk.

“People think of scientists as monks in a monastery looking out for the truth. People have lost faith in the church, but they haven’t lost faith in science.”    (p. 48)    Stapel was desperate to save his self-respect but that “self” was beyond saving; his rationalizations became more and more elaborate and less and less believable. He said, “It’s hard to know the truth” and that he had an “Obsession with order and symmetry.”

We are to pursue the truth you say,
But it’s so dull and unsatisfying.
I have found another way.
All it takes is a little lying.

I’d rather make up something aesthetic,
‘Cause it makes for an interesting life.
All it takes is a little redaction,
Though it may cause a bit of strife.

Oh well! I can handle a bit of reaction

People can be oh so pathetic.

“A blog called Retraction Watch publishes a steady stream of posts about papers being retracted by journals because of allegations or evidence of misconduct.”  In the scientific community, common practices by the false self seeking to be admired can include misuse of statistics, ignoring data that do not conform to a desired hypothesis and the pursuit of a compelling story no matter how scientifically unsupportable it may be. “Each was a choice made by the scientist every time he or she came to a fork in the road of experimental research—one way pointing to the truth, however dull and unsatisfying, and the other beckoning the researcher toward a rosier and more notable result that could be patently false or only partly true. What may be most troubling about the research culture the committees describe in their reports are the plentiful opportunities and incentives for fraud.”

If Mr. Stapel had been educated within a different context of beliefs, attitudes and values determining for him a healthier identity his behavior would not have been fraught with such self-destructive decisions and rationalizations. He would not have been tempted by fabrication. Such a notion would have seemed to him pointless risk-taking for a delusional reward. In short, only a stupid person would consider such a course of action in the narrative of Simple Reality.

Everything to lose,
And nothing to gain.
Fabrication????
One would have to be insane!

Speaking of insanity, check out Perfervid Cupidity: A Dialogue

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References and notes are available for this essay.
Find a much more in-depth discussion in books by Roy Charles Henry:
Who Am I? The Second Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Where Am I?  The First Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival

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