CP Snow might be best known in the field of science studies for his influential lecture on the two cultures problem in UK society, between arts and science, and that lecture still retains its salience in contemporary UK debate about the value of humanities.

But CP Snow also wrote a series of novels about academic life, the “Strangers and Brothers” series, and the Affair deals with the repercussions of the firing of a research fellow in a Cambridge College for fraud. Marcel C. Lafollette analyses the work as an insight into the ambiguities of universities investigating their own fraud. 

A key factor is there the role played by the fear of negative publicity potentially outweighing a desire for truth, and in particular, to reinstate the fired Fellow when new exonerating evidence comes to light.  This can have extremely negative conditioning effects on the field, and result in a wilful blindness by involved actors that compound rather than resolve the original situation.

Latour highlighted that 'the scientific crisis' in general is one of the moment when the social structures of the ‘tribes’ being studied – scientists in this case – become visible because so much of the ‘taken-for-granted’ collapses and the social action is evident. This means that scientific fraud is one of the main occasions when science is open to the public, and has indeed the necessary ingredients to form a story with traction in the mainstream media.

This creates a dangerous situation in terms of the way public perceptions of science are formed.  In particular, the stories which are created around fraud are simple and memorable, whilst more general stories of research contributions are much more diffuse can lack a pithiness.

The Netherlands at the moment is in the grip of a wave of scientific misconduct revelations. 

• Wageningen University was drawn into controversy regarding the selective presentation of findings about milk in a press release that was apparently closer to the sponsor than the academic interest.
• A cardiac professor at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, was fired after having forged research results.
• Radboud University issued a warning to a professor for recklessness in publicising and disseminating research in which she lacked a command of the underlying studies. 

That latter case arose as part of a scandal now engulfing Dutch science, and generating furious debate in the popular media.  The case of Diederik Stapel, already covered in Times Higher, has exploded into the general conscience here, drawing coverage in mainstream as well as specialist-scientific media outlets.

The basic facts of the Stapel affair are straighforward if not simple.  A professor fabricated large numbers of psychology studies which were then analysed by his researchers and turned into academic articles, that formed the basis for Ph.D.s, research grants and media attention.

It is interesting to trace the rise of the ‘Media Stapel’, and using LexisNexis it is possible to get an insight into the evolution of the ‘Stapel story’.  The following is a simple analysis based on a search for “Diederik Stapel” in Dutch language media, that returned 198 hits dating back to the year 2000.

The first nineteen of these are standard pieces of science communications, either written by a reporter or by Stapel himself as opinion pieces.  On two occasions there are multiple reports of the same event, namely of a ‘research finding’ by Stapel which multiple outlets find newsworthy.  One was his appearance on the “Hart & Ziel” television show, and the other was a paper in the American journal Science (later the subject of a formal Expression of Concern).

The second phase began on 8^th September 2011 when the story of the scandal broke.On that day there were 8 listed articles in the press concerning the scandal.  In the intervening two-and-a-half months, there have been a total of 179 further articles, clustering around three main events, the breaking of the crisis, the result of the initial inquiry at the end of October, and his surrender of his Ph.D. and doctoral rights (mid-November).

At the same time, there is a clear connection between political action and the media portrayal of science: on the 1^st November (ie. after the Inquiry report), Jasper van Dijk asked a Parliamentary question about university behavioural codes, a level of detail that Parliamentary discussion about scientific and university affairs seldom reaches.

The point of the Stapel affair is that it became a story that resonates down the ages, and the press coverage reflects that.  His media profile built up over a decade, starting with commentating on subjects as diverse the TV Show Big Brother, public attitudes to war, and the influence of daylight saving time on individual behaviour. 

With echoes of Icarus, Dr. Faustus and the Dans Macabre, at some point something went wrong, the scandal broke, it was investigated and the sinner stood before his own grave and repented his sins.  That formed the basis of the coverage in the last quarter year, of the burning out of one of the bright young stars of the firmament.

What the Stapel affair reveals is an apparent appetite amongst the media to report the sinner and not the science.  The Stapel affair is not primarily about science in the media, but at the same time the laying naked of science in all its messiness provides a useful lens through which to reflect on the wider issue of the relationship of ‘science’ and the media.

Indeed, it also illustrates rather neatly two problems faced by scientific communications in the arts & humanities.  Clearly, media appearances are important in building public acceptance of the value of science investments, but at the same time they appear to occupy a marginal niche in the ecosystem of reportable stories.

The public debate about the value of arts & humanities research is one in which political figures and the media clearly play important roles.  But there is an issue that the stories emerging from arts & humanities research, ironically enough, seem to lack the human interest to really achieve effective traction. 

Paul Benneworth, Enschede, 23^rd November 2011.

Photograph appears courtesy of trawets1.

Note: in the interests of clarity, the chart does not show results for Sundays given the absence from the media list of any outlets that publish on a Sunday.