Pesquisador que trabalha com moralidade investigado por má conduta

É preocupante a notícia divulgada pelo The Great Beyond (blog da Nature) sobre Marc Hauser. Um professor da Harvard, com publicações em excelentes revistas e que trabalha em temas como as raízes evolucionárias da linguagem, da habilidade matemática e da moralidade. Em 2006, ele publicou um livro Moral Minds no qual afirma que o cérebro humano é programado para abraçar certos princípios morais.

“According to the Globe article, the trouble centers on a 2002 paper published in the journal Cognition (subscription required). Hauser was the first author on the paper, which found that cotton-top tamarins are able to learn patterns – previously thought to be an important step in language acquisition. The paper has been retracted, for reasons which are reportedly unclear even to the journal's editor, Gerry Altmann.

Two other papers, a 2007 article in Proceedings of the Royal Society B and a 2007 Science paper, were also flagged for investigation. A correction has been published on the first, and Science is now looking into concerns about the second. And the Globe article highlights other controversies, including a 2001 paper in the American Journal of Primatology, which has not been retracted although Hauser himself later said he was unable to replicate the results. Findings in a 1995 PNAS paper were also questioned by an outside researcher, Gordon Gallup of the State University of New York at Albany, who reviewed the original data and said he found “not a thread of compelling evidence” to support the paper’s conclusions.

Hauser has taken a year-long leave from the university.”