Isn't it time to "follow the money" on science scams in academia? In the end, taxpayers are the suckers and that is a fit subject for public inquiry.
For example, evolutionary psychology includes the assertion that Darwinian evolution accounts for human morality. But that claim was dealt a hard blow last week when one of its leading exponents, Prof. Marc Hauser of Harvard, was exposed as a fraud. The monkey research he conducted didn't show at all what what he said it did. This isn't Climate Gate, but it's a scandal.
Dr. Hauser probably can escape permanent damage to his employment prospects if he explains that his genes made him cheat. In the history of hominids, after all, shaking down taxpayers is a well-established behavior to enhance reproductive advantage.
What no one in the media apparently bothered to check was the cost of Prof. Hauser's bogus research. Looking at National Science Foundation grants online, it seems to have been $504,000. Shouldn't the Inspector General at the NSF be asking Harvard for the government's money back?
The follow-up question is, how much of this goes on in academia? And why does Big Science, alone among American institutions, get to police itself? We have headline investigations if some Congressman misuses his per diem allowance on a junket to Ouagadougou. Total waste, maybe $300. In comparison, is 500K for rigged university research merely chimp change?
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