Former Professor Retracts Article Data

A former Harvard psychology professor recently informed two scientific journals that data contained in research she conducted while a Harvard professor was invalid. As a result she has requested that the journals publish retractions for two of her articles.

The researcher, Karen M. Ruggiero, was an assistant professor in Harvard’s psychology department from 1996 to 2000.

Ruggiero contacted both the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which published articles by her in 1999 and 2000.

She asked both to run statements declaring that data in her articles “should not be considered part of the scientific literature.”

Both journals are planning to run such statements in their next issues.

“I have never encountered something like this in 38 years in the profession,” said Chester A. Insko, an editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

While Jerry M. Suls, editor of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, said that retractions are occasionally required for articles appearing in scientific journals, almost always they are the result of later-discovered unintentional errors, such as faulty equipment.

He said when such unintentional mistakes are the cause of the error, the retraction will virtually always contain a description of the mistakes. Ruggiero’s requested retraction contains no information on the cause of the errors.

Neither Insko nor Suls knew specifically what errors were present in Ruggiero’s research.

Insko said that Ruggiero’s retraction of data is highly troubling.

“Trust is a fundamental value in the research process,” Insko said. “This [retraction] threatens the integrity of the whole publishing process.”

Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) does have written procedures in place to investigate allegations of misconduct in research. These procedures call for the Faculty’s Standing Committee on Professional Conduct to investigate all creditable charges of misconduct.

These same policies apply to all research done at Harvard, even if the researcher is no longer affiliated with the University, according to FAS spokesperson Sally Baker.

However, Baker refused to either confirm or deny that a University investigation is currently ongoing concerning Ruggiero or her researchg. She said that all proceedings of the Committee on Professional Conduct are confidential, just like those of the Administrative Board which disciplines students.

Several former graduate students for whom Ruggiero served as an advisor while she was a professor at Harvard refused to comment on the situation this week.

David M. Marx, who received his doctorate in psychology from Harvard this past year and who appeared as a co-author with Ruggiero on both retracted articles, said that Harvard’s psychology department had asked Ruggiero’s former students not to comment on the matter.

Ruggiero’s requested retractions explicitly state that only she, and none of her co-authors, was responsible for the errors in the article.

Ruggiero left Harvard at the end of the 1999-2000 academic year to take a position as an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

She resigned from that position in Texas on June 22.

Michael Domjan, chair of the psychology department at the University of Texas at Austin, said that her letter of resignation did not state a reason for her decision to leave.

Ruggiero did not return phone messages left by The Crimson. She has also not responded to messages left by several other media outlets over the past week.

—Staff writer Daniel P. Mosteller can be reached at dmostell@fas.harvard.edu.