Author Of Tainted Gay Marriage Study Admits To Destroying Data But Stands By Results
Michael LaCour, the UCLA graduate student who has been accused of making up data and lying about how his research was funded, has published a much-anticipated response to these allegations.
On Friday LaCour sent BuzzFeed News and other outlets a 23-page documentoutlining how he believes his critics went wrong. But he also admitted to lying about how his study was funded, writing: “I also take full responsibility and apologize for misrepresenting survey incentives and funding.”LaCour’s study — which reported in the journal Science that a 20-minute conversation with a gay person could change California voters’ minds on same-sex marriage — was retracted last week by LaCour’s co-author, Columbia University’s Donald Green. On Thursday, Science issued an official retraction.Months after the study made headlines, independent scientists scrutinized the data and found that it was, statistically, too good to be true. This spurred a UCLA investigation that is still pending, university representatives told BuzzFeed News.In his response, LaCour admitted to destroying the study’s raw data, but claims that he did so “in the interest of institutional requirements” to protect the privacy of the study participants.Surprisingly, LaCour’s response also links to a letter he received from UCLA’s ethical review board in January telling him to notify Science that he hadn’t applied for study approval until more than a year after starting the work. Several UCLA faculty also received this letter.LaCour has not responded to requests to discuss his statement in more detail. BuzzFeed News reached out to the scientists — David Broockman, Joshua Kalla, and Peter Aronow — who first published the irregularities in LaCour’s work. They responded by email:“In our view, none of the claims made in LaCour’s response meaningfully address the concerns articulated in our report, Professor Green’s retraction request, or the Science retraction.”Read more at...BuzzFeed News, May 2015.