Irony alert: Did a Harvard morality expert falsify his research?

The irony: Harvard researcher Marc Hauser, author of "Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong," may have crossed an ethical boundary of his own. After students accused Hauser of fabricating data, a university investigation into his work on the cognitive abilities of monkeys has found evidence of eight instances of "scientific misconduct." The psychology professor, whose next book (according to his website) is titled "Evilicious: Why We Evolved a Taste for Being Bad," has admitted making "significant mistakes" in his work.

The reaction: "Rarely does it get more ironic," says The Economist. A scientist known for looking into the origins of morality is suspected of "the closest thing academia has to a deadly sin: cheating." Maybe, for his next book, says ckelty at Savage Minds, Hauser should examine the "possibility of fraud arising as a result of the intense desire to prove that fraud has an evolutionary origin."

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