In The Great Pretender, former New York Post investigative reporter Susannah Cahalan uncovers evidence that Stanford University psychologist David Rosenhan fabricated at least some of the details in his famous 1973 paper "On Being Sane in Insane Places."

If true, this certainly wouldn't have been the only time a high profile researcher's work has turned out to be flawed or even downright fraudulent. A particularly brazen example is that of repeat offender Diederik Stapel, a former professor of social psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Stapel rose to prominence in his field with a series of studies that gained media attention around the world. One study purportedly showed that carnivores are more selfish than vegetarians. Another claimed to show a correlation between dirty, trash-filled environments and racist attitudes. His fame came crashing down in 2011, however, when the university determined that he had been faking his data. So far, a whopping 58 of his ...