Physics fraud compared to fraud and junk science in the social and behavioral sciences

A few months ago I read this book, Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World, by Eugenie Reich. The book was from 2009, and I’d never heard of it, or of the case of fraud it discusses; indeed I don’t even remember who recommended the book to me, maybe it was a blog commenter? Anyway, the book was interesting. Short story is that there was a mediocre young physics Ph.D. who achieved some success by faking data, he got a research job at Bell Labs, faked more data, got more success, eventually got too much success in that people were interested enough in his findings that they tried to use his methods themselves, but the methods never worked. After a bit more struggle he then got fired. Compared to the usual glacial pace of such scandals in academia, the whole thing was pretty quick and clean. From receipt of Ph.D. to getting fired was just a bit over five years. That might seem like a long time, but it’s quick compared to the careers of Wansink,…