Marc Hauser

Marc Hauser sitting between Jon Meacham (far left) and Daniel Dennett (center), World Science Festival

Marc D. Hauser (25 October 1959) is an evolutionary biologist who teaches at the Psychology Department at Harvard University. He is currently under investigation for allegations of scientific misconduct.

Biography

He received a BS from Bucknell University and a PhD from UCLA. Currently, Hauser is a Harvard College Professor, and Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Organismic & Evolutionary Biology, and Biological Anthropology. He is the co-director of the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Program at Harvard, Director of the Cognitive Evolution Lab, and adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Education and the Program in Neurosciences.

Hauser's research sits at the interface between evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience and is aimed at understanding the processes and consequences of cognitive evolution. Observations and experiments focus on nonhuman animals and humans of different ages and mental competence, incorporating methodological procedures and theoretical insights from ethology, infant cognitive development, evolutionary theory, cognitive neuroscience and neurobiology. Current foci include: studies of language evolution, the nature of moral judgments, the development and evolution of mathematical representations, comparative studies of economic-like choice, the precursors to musical competence, and the nature of event perception. One of his research projects is internet based 'The Moral Sense Test' in which the participant is presented with a series of hypothetical moral dilemmas and is asked to offer a judgment regarding each one.

Allegations of scientific misconduct

In August 2010 it was announced that Hauser had decided to take a leave of absence from Harvard, after a three year long internal investigation found evidence of scientific misconduct. The results of this investigation have not been publicly released and the lack of transparency in this investigation has evoked substantial speculation about what the investigation actually uncovered.

Verified, publicly available information

The allegations, thus far, center on a paper that was published in the journal Cognition in 2002 . In this paper, Hauser and his collaborators concluded that cotton-top tamarin monkeys can learn simple rule-like patterns. The journal Cognition announced it was retracting a paper by Hauser, saying:

An internal examination at Harvard University of the research reported in “Rule learning by cotton-top tamarins,” Cognition 86 (2002), pp. B15-B22, found that the data do not support the reported findings. We therefore are retracting this article. MH [Marc Hauser] accepts responsibility for the error.

In two additional papers, some field notes or video recordings were "incomplete", although Hauser and his co-author have replicated the experiments. Proceedings of the Royal Society published the replication of the missing data in an addendum.. However, while the authors have submitted results that claimed to replicate data missing from a 2007 Science paper, the status of that paper is unclear. The new data are under review, but a spokesperson for Science stated that the editorial team is uncomfortable about making a decision without knowing the results of the Harvard investigation.

On Aug 12, a Harvard University spokesperson said that Harvard's findings will be reported to the appropriate federal funding agencies. They will conduct their own review and make their conclusions available to the public.

Unconfirmed rumors and allegations

In addition the confirmed and publicly available information above, various publications relayed more specific accusations whose veracity is impossible to verify. For example, the NY Times extensively quotes Michael Tomasello (see below), another well-known animal cognition researcher and competitor of Hauser's, who claimed to have obtained information directly from Hauser's students. However, it could not be confirmed that any of Hauser's students has been in contact with Tomasello, and it is unknown whether he has any relation to Hauser's laboratory at all, given that the two laboratories are in competition. Likewise, the authenticity of the document allegedly provided to the Chronicle of Higher Education has not been verified (see below). However, the Chronicle of Higher Education notes that the research assistants and students reported their allegations in 2007, while the disputed data have been acquired in 2002 or earlier (see below). As a result, the research assistants must have been in Hauser's laboratory for at least five years, must have chosen to reanalyze five year old data for other reasons, or must have waited at least five years before making the allegations. Neither possibility appears to be typical for research assistants, and neither has been confirmed independently. The statements and allegations made below are, therefore, unconfirmed and made by unknown sources with unknown relationships to Hauser's laboratory.

According to a report in The New Scientist, unnamed scientists in the field have claimed that Harvard decided to investigate Hauser's lab after students who had worked there made allegations of data falsification. The NY Times quotes Michael Tomasello, another well-known animal cognition researcher and competitor of Hauser's, as claiming that some of Hauser's previous students personally told him that there "was a pattern and they had specific evidence ”. Tomasello also claimed that he has information from "a Harvard faculty member and from former students of Dr. Hauser" that the investigation found evidence for eight counts of scientific misconduct. As mentioned above, these claims and allegations have not been verified independently.

On August 19, 2010, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported the contents what it claimed to be an internal Harvard document. It was allegedly a statement from a former research assistant who said that Hauser falsely coded videotapes of monkey behavior, resisted his research assistants and students requests to have them recoded by another observer and then pressured his students to accept his data analysis. When they went ahead and recoded the data without Hauser's permission, they allegedly found that Hauser's coding bore little relation to what was on the tapes. According to the document, several other lab members allegedly had similar run-ins with Hauser. As mentioned above, these claims and allegations have not been verified independently.

The NY Times reports that Gordon G. Gallup and Herb Terrace have long been skeptical of Hauser's methods. Gordon G. Gallup of SUNY Albany has raised concerns about a 1995 paper in which Hauser claimed to have found evidence that cotton-top tamarin monkeys can recognize themselves in a mirror. After reviewing the videotapes for these experiments, he found that “there wasn’t even any suggestive evidence” for Hauser's published results. In the field of animal behavior, disputes about methodology and disagreements about the interpretation of results are common. However, in this case, Gallup, who does not study cotton-top tamarins and has studied the same issue only in much larger old world monkeys and apes, could find no evidence for Hauser's reported effects in the video recordings. Indeed, in 2001, Hauser reported in the American Journal of Primatology that he had failed to replicate this earlier result.

Awards

Hauser is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, a science medal from the Collège de France, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has published approximately 200 articles in major research journals as well as six books.

His work has frequently been covered by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post, and he makes frequent appearances on various NPR shows, as well as television and international radio.

Bibliography

• Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think (illustrated by Ted Dewan) (Henry Holt, NY 2000)
• Moral Minds: How Nature Designed a Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (Harper Collins/Ecco, NY 2006).
• Evilicious: explaining our evolved taste for killing, torture, revenge, greed, mockery and masochism (in prep) (Viking/Penguin-USA; Random House UK.

See also

• Bio Marc Hauser
• Moral Sense Test
• Canine Cognition Lab
• Morality without religion
• The newspaper article announcing Hauser's impending leave