Retraction eight appears for social psychologist Lawrence Sanna

Earlier this week, we reported on retractions six and seven , in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, for Lawrence Sanna, the former University of Michigan psychologist who resigned last May after questions were raised about his work. Retraction eight has now appeared, also in the JESP.

Here’s the notice for “When thoughts don’t feel like they used to: Changing feelings of subjective ease in judgments of the past:”

“Fraud committed by any social psychologist diminishes all social psychologists”: New Sanna, Smeesters retractions

Three new retractions — two of papers by Lawrence Sanna and one of work by Dirk Smeesters –  have appeared in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The retractions come along with a hard-hitting piece by the journal’s editor.

In a tough soul-searching editorial called “On Fraud, Deceit, and Ethics” (unfortunately only available behind a paywall), journal editor in chief Joel Cooper writes that “Fraud committed by any social psychologist diminishes all social psychologists.” He continues:

“Invalid data” prompt retraction of another paper from psychologist Sanna

The journal Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice is retracting a 2003 paper by psychologist Lawrence Sanna, who appears to have been fabricating his data. Sanna’s work, Retraction Watch readers may recall, came under the scrutiny of Uri Simonsohn, who also investigated Dirk Smeesters’ research.

Here’s the notice, which offers an impressive amount of back story as these things go:

Psychological Science retracts a Sanna paper, citing lawyers, COPE…and Retraction Watch

In April 2011, we praised Psychological Science for its handling of a retraction. At the time, we went as far as to call the retraction notice a “model” of transparency for other journals to follow.

Well, they evidently took that compliment seriously, according to a new retraction notice for a paper by Lawrence Sanna. Sanna left Michigan under a cloud a few months ago after another scientist found his data statistically implausible, as Ed Yong reported in Nature.

The newly retracted paper, “Construing collective concerns: Increasing cooperation by broadening construals in social dilemmas,” was published in 2009 while Sanna was still at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Here’s a sample from the abstract:

Psychological Science in the news again: CNN retracts story on hormone-voting link

It’s not often that wade into retractions in the mainstream media on this blog, but in this case, we’ll make an exception.

As Politico and Poynter — and probably others — have reported, CNN has retracted a story about a yet-to-be-published study in Psychological Science claiming to find a link between estrogen and elections (disclosure: Ivan’s wife works at CNN). Specifically, the researchers reported that the well-documented preference among single women for President Obama might be rooted in their sex hormones, while that of married women for Mitt Romney seems to reflect their own ovulatory cycle. Or something like that.

Here’s the money part of the piece, which can still be found floating around on the web:

Retraction appears for paper by social psychologist Dirk Smeesters

A paper by Dirk Smeesters — the former Erasmus University social psychology professor investigated for serious irregularities in his work — has been retracted.

The study, “Visual perspective influences the use of metacognitive information in temporal comparisons,” appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology earlier this year. Here’s the notice, which doesn’t quite say “fraud”:

Happy second anniversary, Retraction Watch: Plus, our plans for year three

We didn’t plan it this way, but our second anniversary gift came a few days early this week, when we learned that a retraction notice had cited us. Given that the traditional second anniversary gift is cotton, and we’re really not sure what to do with that information, we’re much happier — and humbled — by the mention.

Two years ago today, we launched Retraction Watch. When we looked back at year one, we had written more than 250 posts; that number is up to more than 600. We had a new record-holder in our first year, Joachim Boldt, with 88 retractions; we now have a new one, Yoshitaka Fujii, with 172 likely. This July, we crossed the three million-pageview threshold, and also saw our first 300,000-pageview month.

But numbers don’t always tell the whole story,

University of Michigan psychologist resigns following concerns by statistical sleuth Simonsohn: Nature

A second psychology researcher has resigned after statistical scrutiny of his papers by another psychologist revealed data that was too good to be true.

Ed Yong, writing in Nature, reports that Lawrence Sanna, most recently of the University of Michigan, left his post at the end of May. That was several months after Uri Simonsohn, a University of Pennsylvania psychology researcher, presented Sanna, his co-authors, and Sanna’s former institution, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with evidence of “odd statistical patterns.”

Simonsohn is the researcher who also forced an investigation into the work of Dirk Smeesters, who resigned last month. Last week, Yong reported that Simonsohn had uncovered another case that hadn’t been made official yet.

According to today’s story, Sanna has asked the editor of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology — which is also retracting one of Smeesters’ papers — to retract three papers published from 2009 to 2011. These are the three he seems to have published there during that time: