A paper in the high-profile journal Science has been alleged to be based on fraudulent data, with the PI calling for it to be retracted. The original paper purported to use survey data to show that people being asked about gay marriage changed their attitudes if they were asked the survey questions by someone who was gay themselves. That may still be true, but the work of a team that set out to replicate the original study seems to show that the data reported in that paper was never collected in the way reported, and at least partly fabricated.
The document containing these accusations is interesting for a number of reasons. It contains a detailed timeline showing how the authors were originally impressed with study and set out to replicate it, gradually uncovering more and more elements that concerned them and let them to investigate how the original data was generated. The document also reports the exemplary way in which they shared their concerns with the authors of the original paper, and the way the senior author responded. The speed of all this is notable – the investigators only started work on this paper in January, and did most of the analysis substantiating their concerns this month.
As we examined the study’s data in planning our own studies, two features surprised us: voters’ survey responses exhibit much higher test-retest reliabilities than we have observed in any other panel survey data, and the response and reinterview rates of the panel survey were significantly higher than we expected. We set aside our doubts about the study and awaited the launch of our pilot extension to see if we could manage the same parameters. LaCour and Green were both responsive to requests for advice about design details when queried.
So on the one hand this is a triumph for open science, and self-correction in scholarship. The irony being that any dishonesty that led to publication in a high-impact journal, also attracted people with the desire and smarts to check if what was reported holds up. But the tragedy is the circumstances that led the junior author of the original study, himself a graduate student at the time, to do what he did. No statement from him is available at this point, as far as I’m aware.
The original: When contact changes minds: An experiment on transmission of support for gay equality
The accusations and retraction request: Irregularities in LaCour (2014)
Mind Hacks 