The Discovery of a Scientific Fraud: Uncovering the Truth Behind

School: Brigham Young University, Idaho - Course: PSYCH 445 - Subject: Accounting

The discovery of a scientific fraud. 1.One of the biggest scientific frauds started with a student trying to solve a money issue. a.This started in September 2013 by David Broockman who was a doctoral political-science student at Berkeley i.David was really impressed by some results that were shown to him by LaCour on an iPad ii.David knew like everyone else that these results were going to be a hit 2.LaCour had these impressive results that greatly affected the world of politics including the way the campaigns were ran. a.The magnitude this study showed canvassing having was never seen before in any study b.So when this study was published it became one of the leading publication in the world 3.David Broockman was someone that was really impressed by this study and wanted to run his own version of the study a.He ran into a few issues and one of them was the budget i.After a few calculations he saw that LaCour would have needed 1 million dollars for the study b.He looked into it more and came to the conclusion that it wouldn't have been possible for LaCour to do that study unless he was self-founded 4.Soon after that Broockman and some other students released a report about irregularities in the LaCour study. a.In this report was said that there was no evidence that LaCour had worked with the survey firm he had claimed to work . b.The most likely thing was that he hadn't sent out any surveys c.They said that LaCour instead took a preexisting data sent and made it it's own. 5.Even before this report other people noticed thatthe results were so impressive that they didn't really make sense a.Jon Krosnick was really surprised by the results as well considering that most literature didn't support this results but then was assured when he found out that Green's name was on this report i.Later on Green admitted feeling really embarrassed for not noticing what was wrong with the study 6.This is something that happens a lot where a lot of scientist are not questioned about anything because of their status in the field. a.Another reason is that people just wanted to believe this study 7.Another reason was LaCour's persuasive personality a.He was described as very put together b.And he was really good at wining people over with his research presentations 8.Broockman said that his discovery points out the lack of support for young graduates that have doubts about other scientists data. a.He was told by a lot of people to keep it quiet before he published his report

9.Broockman started with calling the company about doing the same surveys they had done for LaCour a.He found out that the company wasn't really aware of that 10. Then he met the guy he worked with whose name was call and they worked very closely together. a.They were similar and that's why they were a good match 11. Brockman got hold of the data of LaCour's a.He noticed that it was too orderly and that made him investigate further. b.He brings this concerns to some other people and they shut him down 12. He was told to not do this by a professor in Stanford and that he should have someone with an more established profile do it instead a.The reason why that is its' because its not good to have your name associated with someone else's work 13. After that Broockman asked feedback in an anonymous way a.He used an internet website called PSR and pointed out what he thought was wrong with the study 14. Somehow of the concerned mentioned had to do with the data collected and how it didn't seem random enough a.His concerns weren't well received even in this site b.He ran some analysis on the data which showed that the data was messed with