In the latest scientific scandal, an internal investigation at Harvard University concludes that Marc D. Hause, their star evolutionary psychologist, is guilty of scientific misconduct for falsifying research on monkeys.
Earlier this month, the Boston Globe reported that Hauser, 50, the author of Moral minds: How nature designed a universal sense of right and wrong, a noted researcher in the roots of animal cognition, had been placed on leave following accusations by his students that he had purposely fabricated data in his research. His work relied on observing responses by tamarin monkeys to stimuli such as changes in sound patterns, claiming they possessed thinking skills often viewed as unique to humans and apes.
The experiment that Hauser falsified was rather simple:
The experiment tested the ability of rhesus monkeys to recognize sound patterns. Researchers played a series of three tones (in a pattern like A-B-A) over a sound system. After establishing the pattern, they would vary it (for instance, A-B-B) and see whether the monkeys were aware of the change. If a monkey looked at the speaker, this was taken as an indication that a difference was noticed.
The method has been used in experiments on primates and human infants. Mr. Hauser has long worked on studies that seemed to show that primates, like rhesus monkeys or cotton-top tamarins, can recognize patterns as well as human infants do. Such pattern recognition is thought to be a component of language acquisition.
Hauser claimed that the monkeys turned their heads when they heard the patterns; they didn’t.
At this point, you might be wondering what this type of research has to do with anything and how much it can really tell us about human psychology. So let’s look at the description of his book:
[Hauser] argues that humans have evolved a universal moral instinct, unconsciously propelling us to deliver judgments of right and wrong independent of gender, education, and religion. Experience tunes up our moral actions, guiding what we do as opposed to how we deliver our moral verdicts.
For hundreds of years, scholars have argued that moral judgments arise from rational and voluntary deliberations about what ought to be. The common belief today is that we reach moral decisions by consciously reasoning from principled explanations of what society determines is right or wrong. This perspective has generated the further belief that our moral psychology is founded entirely on experience and education, developing slowly and subject to considerable variation across cultures. In his groundbreaking book, Hauser shows that this dominant view is illusory.
For hundreds of years scholars believed that humans reasoned their way into moral judgments. Hauser comes along, runs some experiments that involve things like monkeys turning their heads when they hear sounds, and concludes that everyone else had it wrong: the moral instinct of human and other primates is all in our genes.
This is what passes for science at Harvard.
Of course, goofy theories about human psychology are nothing new. The human race spent far too many years believing that an infant’s relationship to his own excrement would determine his personality. A world that can take Freud seriously is a world that will believe anything.
But everyone eventually acknowledged that Freud’s theories weren’t scientific. How long before we wise up and recognize the same about “evolutionary psychology”?
August 26th, 2010 | 12:37 am
J.C. says: “For hundreds of years scholars believed that humans reasoned their way into moral judgments. Hauser comes along . . . and concludes that everyone else had it wrong.”
Although one needn’t take it this way–and having not familiarized myself with Hauser’s work, I couldn’t say for sure–it appears to this reader that his work is intended to counteract the aforementioned “common belief today” of morality as purely socially (and therefore artificially) constructed. Indeed, as your excerpt itself notes, “Hauser shows that this dominant view is illusory.”
Of course, none of this proves that Hauser’s “science-y” endeavors are either worthwhile or particularly sound, methodologically speaking, merely that his particular alleged species of silliness perhaps ought not be too quickly lumped in with others of apparently similar inanity.
August 26th, 2010 | 12:43 am
Mike H. merely that his particular alleged species of silliness perhaps ought not be too quickly lumped in with others of apparently similar inanity.
My problem with Hauser theory is not so much whether it is right or wrong, but that he couldn’t possibly make such an extrapolation from the type of research he was doing. His expertise is in animal cognition (and even that is a bit iffy) yet he proposes to explain how humans make moral decisions. Perhaps instead of playing music for monkeys he should examine how actual humans go about making moral decisions.
August 26th, 2010 | 6:27 am
Isn’t it a strange how research in morality leads to immoral actions?
August 26th, 2010 | 8:12 am
Hauser’s morality is what needs to evolve.
Also, Joe makes a good comparison between evolutionary psych and Freudianism. It’s not science if it’s not falsifiable (thank you, Mr. Popper). So much of that pseudo-science is just a thin excuse to make ad hominem attacks on the people you don’t like.
August 26th, 2010 | 8:36 am
Nice Beatles reference.
August 26th, 2010 | 9:22 am
For the record, Hauser and his students also conducted studies on moral decision making in people and in animals.
August 26th, 2010 | 9:23 am
The only way an experiment like this, even if not fake, could prove anything about moral decision making would be if moral decision making were substantially similar to aural pattern recognition. If that premise is demonstrable through scientific means (and I suspect rather that the question of whether it is, will always remain in the realm of metaphysics) it would take a lot of groundwork to establish it; you can’t just assume it. But this is how psychology is done today, more’s the pity.
August 26th, 2010 | 12:39 pm
This is what’s wrong with the web: people who post without taking even 1 minute to research a topic. As Ryan said, Hauser and others have done lots of experiments on sense of fairness, reciprocity, etc. in monkeys. (Read them–they’re clever and fascinating–I just hope the data can be believed. :-) ) Isn’t it kind of silly (to put it politely) for you to read about one of his studies on Topic A, notice that he is writing a book on Topic B, and assume that the studies on Topic A must be the only evidence he is relying on for his book on Topic B?
However, your ending comment about Freud is pretty good, in CharlieBarlie’s humble opinion.
August 26th, 2010 | 12:46 pm
CharlieBarlie Isn’t it kind of silly (to put it politely) for you to read about one of his studies on Topic A, notice that he is writing a book on Topic B, and assume that the studies on Topic A must be the only evidence he is relying on for his book on Topic B?
I see what you’re saying. That wasn’t really my intent, though I worded it poorly. What I should have said (and assumed was implied) was that the type of research Hauser did (studies with monkeys) is absolutely irrelevant to the topic he was pontificating on (human moral behavior).
Most psychologist will admit (finally) that the type of research they do may be flawed because it tends to universalize behavior based on the types of research subjects they have access to (usually white, American, middle-class college students). If we have reason to be suspicious about the conclusions we can draw from studying this group, how much more so should we be about studying monkeys who share almost nothing in common with us except for genetic material?
August 26th, 2010 | 1:57 pm
There’s seems to be some basic misunderstandings about science at work in here. All the experiment was meant to show was whether or not rhesus monkeys can recognize patterns in sound. By itself it doesn’t show anything about morality, and no one ever claimed otherwise. If you want to know why this experiment would have been interesting had Hauser not botched it up so horribly, you might actually have to do a bit of work, starting with bothering to understand what is and what is not being claimed. Then you can move on to how this very small piece fits into a much bigger puzzle.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that successful scientific theories typically rise out of the wreckage of ideas that turn out to be false. No one who understands science has a problem with that.
August 26th, 2010 | 4:54 pm
Tristian, I don’t know what you think we’re assuming, but I’m simply saying that studying aural pattern recognition in monkeys, humans, or anyone else cannot give us ANY information, not even a tiny piece-of-the-puzzle bit of information, about moral reasoning, unless we first either assume or sufficiently demonstrate that moral reasoning and aural pattern recognition have one, single, tiny thing in common. Even if similar ability in pattern recognition shows a commonality between monkeys, primates, and humans, it is worthless as a link applicable to other forms of thinking unless there is reason to assume or believe that it is a commonality more significant than being fur-bearing. And I find absolutely no reason to assume it, and highly doubt that Hauser or anyone else has demonstrated it.
August 26th, 2010 | 11:18 pm
Um, make that “monkeys, APES, and humans.”
August 31st, 2010 | 1:11 am
Those people arguing that Hauser’s research tells us nothing about morality haven’t done any work to make sure they know what they’re talking about.
The “aural pattern recognition” as you call it, is part of a line of research investigating which components of the human capacity for *language* (not morality) are domain specific to language, and which are domain general relevant abilities (for example, the ability to hear could be necessary for a species to develop language, but is not specific to it). This study is simply a completely different line of work than the morality research. CharlieBarlie’s comment is dead on here.
The morality research deals with studies of reciprocity, cooperative behavior, sharing, helping, and more. And the reason any of that is relevant is precisely because, if monkeys can do those behaviors, than we can tentatively conclude that it might NOT be necessary for humans to go through a complicated cultural learning process to develop a sense like fairness or altruism. That’s what made Hauser’s research exciting and groundbreaking, and what landed him at Harvard.
It is amazing to me how lay people, even educated ones, are willing to dismiss counterintuitive findings without any understanding of the research process or methodologies, simply assuming that they know better than the smart people who have spent their lives studying the topic and designing carefully controlled experiments to test their theories. I read a similarly silly Salon article yesterday where the author claimed Hauser’s work with dogs could never yield interesting results simply because “anyone who owns a dog knows that they can’t…”
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