The first chapter of the book takes us straight to the defining moment in the story. Although it is essentially a reworking of the first draft (interim report), Stapel is particularly bothered that the committee. Indeed, all scientific facts are made up, in the literal, not pejorative, sense of the term.
The etymology reveals that there is something fundamentally artificial about scientific “facts,” so that the inclusion of “fabrication” as one of the three major forms of scientific misconduct is at least accurate.
University Discourse and the Experimental Mousetrap
The type of research to which he committed himself, namely experimental social psychology, actually represents a kind of middle position (or compromise) between these two professions, since according to Stapel, social psychology is both science and "art", and the psychological laboratory is essentially "theatre". , where human behavior can be prepared and shaped in different directions. According to Hamlet, the mousetrap is the title of a play performed by the actors of Shakespeare's play. The experimental setting of Stapel's fictional science experiment at the train station in Utrecht is a twisted example of the mousetrap theme.
So they are unaware that the row of seats is actually a mousetrap. But this means, dialectically speaking, that the biases attributed to the subjects (in the Science article) actually reflect the biases of the researchers themselves. Indeed, “The play is the thing in which I will catch the king's conscience” (Hamlet, Act II, scene 2) and the row of chairs is the mousetrap used to capture veiled “white” prejudice.
His Science paper indeed becomes an experiment, a mousetrap of the second order, so that peers, reviewers, colleagues, etc. Stack's experiment seems to confirm what social psychologists expect will happen, namely that the “x effect”, the object a, the prejudice (as a coping mechanism, as a defense mechanism) will reveal itself in a disorderly, polluted environment. And step by step the absurdity of his “solution”, the absurdity of his fabrications, increases.
The Collapse of Truth: Three Responses to the Crisis
For the time being, however, instead of reverting to absurdism (like an academic apostate), he continues to try to discern some intelligibility in the disobedient reality, but seems to be able to do so only by changing his results. Stapel somehow manages to push this strategy to the limit, drastically exaggerating this kind of questionable behavior so that in his case the deception becomes absurd (and indeed, grotesque exaggeration is a well-known technique of course in the theater absurdist). . From a psychoanalytic point of view, this confirms the view that Stapel is essentially a cursed, tortured subject facing an epistemic crisis, whose erratic behavior is symptomatic of frustration and despair, as "by-products" of university discourse.
Taking his deceptions one step further, building on the congruence between experiments and plays, his research becomes truly theater, so that ultimately social psychology (as a certain part of university discourse) gives way to absurdism (S2. In the following paragraphs). three responses to this crisis of the university discourse will be analyzed, in accordance with Lacan's thesis: three steps away from the university discourse, towards (a) the discourse of the Master, (b) the discourse of the hysterical and (c The analyst's discourse. The three committees (the normative trinity) attempt to restore order by acting in accordance with the dynamics of the master discourse, whereby Stapels exposes misdeeds in a top-down, apodictic manner and a purification operation, so that the resurgence of absurdism can be averted and the university discourse can become functional again.
This Master's discourse (discussed more fully below) is exemplified by their final report, published on November 28, 2012. However, a few days later, Stapel responds with a paper of his own, which takes an entirely different tack. of discourse, precisely the book Avoidance which, as an autobiographical Fallgeschichte (or self-analysis) rather reflects the basic structure of the analyst's discourse, as specified by Lacan. A third answer is Stapel's later return to the theater of the absurd, exemplified especially by his dialogues with the literary author Dautzenberg (Stapel and Dautzenberg 2014), an example of the discourse of hysterism, as we shall see, of cynicism, even in the meaning. as discussed by Sloterdijk (1987).
The Normative Trinity: The Power Dimension and the Master’s Discourse
Doubts and uncertainties regarding the validity or viability of the social-psychological paradigm as such are moved below the bar ($ move to the lower-left position). These "fathers" are said to be amazed by the sloppiness of the "research culture" they encounter, but they also clearly enjoy the confessions about deviations. The Dutch name Stapel literally means 'heap' or 'heap' and is strangely reminiscent of the German word Hochstapler, i.e.
By this I mean that, when examining his oeuvre, the committees concentrated on making a quantitative estimate of the extent of the misconduct ("The Committees came across a total of fifty-five publications in which fraud was established", p. 25 ). ), but for some reason they don't really read Stapel. But in the committee report, Stapel doesn't really get to speak, which explains why he decides to publish his own (“bottom-up”) version of events (i.e. Derailment) just a few days after the formal presentation. of the (“top-down”) report.17. Methodologically flawed research practice (“sloppy science”) constitutes “an unintended and unexpected finding” of the research (p. 47).
Researchers actively involved in a work environment will be aware of the inevitable discrepancies between the context of discovery (the laboratory world) and the context of justification (the paper world of research papers). This reluctance to actually read the content may actually reflect a significant aspect of the current academic crisis, which is confirmed rather than repaired by the report. And this suggests that the return of the repressed (of absurdism) cannot be limited only by returning to S1 (the Discourse of the Master, represented by the Committees).
Cynicism and Absurdism: The Hysteric’s Discourse
In order to understand the depth, the content of the crisis, we must give the floor to two more modes of discourse that want to respond to the collapse of the university discourse in the case of Stapel, namely the discourse of the hysteric ($), presented here by a series of publications in which Stapel seems to he actually returns to the absurdism of his adolescent years – and the discourse of the analyst represented by Derailment (Stapel's self-written case history). Precisely this radical anonymity of normal social science is reversed in the "discourse of the hysterical," a type of discursiveness that is clearly subjective. Even in Stapel's decision to publish his personal record just days after the official report of the three commissions was circulated, one can discern a provocative gesture, as if Derailment is essentially an answer, but not in the sense that the author challenges or refutes the arguments and conclusions of the report. but in the sense that he publishes his own and completely different discursive account of what is happening.
In short, the confusingly fluid line between fact and fiction is a key motif in his writing, and the author seems to be conducting experiments by making confessions that are later retracted. Samaritan is Dautzenberg's counterpart to Derailment, an ostensibly truthful autobiographical account that is nevertheless reproducible and serves as an experimental window into the sociocultural theater of the transplant industry. Stories that may or may not be true are used as literary mousetraps to capture the latent beliefs (prejudices, etc.) of the author's readership.
Although the literary quality of the work (essentially a collection of free-floating, epistolary confessions of two slightly overweight men experiencing a midlife crisis) may be questionable (I myself experienced the book as quite average compared to Derailment and Samaritan), it is nevertheless an interesting document, precisely as a prototypical example of what Lacan calls the hysteric's discourse. That there is a connection to Derailment is emphasized by Albee's quote at the beginning of the book about the fictitious son George and Martha "made up" to cover up the painful family gap. But this means that we have already entered another mode of discourse, which involves another quarter-clockwise turn that takes us from the discourse of the hysteric to that of the analyst.
Writing as a Practice of the Self: The Discourse of the Analyst
Pinocchio (object a), for example, diverts Geppetto's life ($), while the seductive nature of "effect x" diverted Stapel from his initial course. Stapel (2001) defined social psychology as "the science of everyday life", combining specificity with precision, a title reminiscent of one of Freud's publications, namely The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens 1904/1941). In this book, Freud aims to demonstrate how minor, everyday occurrences of malfunctions (forgetting names, memories or foreign words, slips of the tongue, reading errors, etc.) are symptomatic of unconscious complexes and inhibitions.
According to this principle, our reactions are often triggered by very unique and transient aspects of the situation. Stapel's dramatic revelation ultimately proves to be a liberating experience, freeing him from his epistemological captivity within the boundaries of the classical paradigm. It would also entail a reconciliation of social psychology with the genres of imagination that Stapel practiced in the pre-academic phase of his career.
In other words, the principles of specificity aim to achieve a negation of the negation, a convergence of the search for general cognitive mechanism (social psychology) with a radical openness to the transitory theater of everyday existence, which social psychology on bring a higher level of complexity ( M3). Fabrication and falsification are desperate attempts of a yearning subject to remain faithful to the logic of the established paradigm, so that the transgression can be seen as a desperate act of fidelity, committed in response to the fact that the social-psychological fact - manufacturing factory as such falters. Stapel only becomes a novelist in his subsequent, post-traumatic attempt to overcome the crisis, namely by writing Derailment as a "therapeutic" practice of the Self, an autopathography that at least partially allows him to express his διεσχισθημεν overcome (Aristophanes) ), his Spaltung (as discussed in Chapters 2 and 8), while being "specific" enough to acknowledge reality's messiness.
