Boston Globe Scoop On Marc Hauser

Here's a link to the Boston Globe article on the Harvard University internal inquiry into goings on in Marc Hauser's laboratory at Harvard. It notes a number of amendments to and retractions of, papers coming out of Hauser's lab since 1995. Mike Tomasello, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, is quoted as being increasingly concerned because other papers, he says, are also currently under investigation. It is not clear whether he implicates other authors - or more woe for Hauser.

This is all very worrying stuff for comparative psychologists because Hauser's work has always gone to the heart of human cognitive evolution and, as John Hawks says in his blog (see side-bar), may have very worrying implications for the whole house of cards of comparative cognitive psychology and its experimental protocols, which, while often being fiendishly inventive, still require an amount of subjective interpretation of data.