A Menagerie of Imposters and Truth-Tellers: Diederik Stapel and the Crisis in Psychology

Abstract

The large-scale fraud of social psychologist Diederik Stapel has fuelled debates about the state of the discipline and the need for reform. Stapel became a tool to think with in the crisis in psychology. In the process a collection of imposters and truth-tellers were constructed and performed, each representing a different relation to the truth. Whereas Stapel was denounced as a cynical con man by his colleagues, he himself performed the role of a tragic imposter, and while many social psychologists presented themselves as the unwitting victims of Stapel, critics saw the affair as evidence that psychology is a wannabe science in need of fundamental reform. The various imposters and truth-tellers that made their appearance imply different ways of drawing distinctions between honesty and deception, appearance and reality, truth and story telling, frankness and civility.