'I did not cheat', says Erasmus professor

Tuesday 26 June 2012

The Erasmus university professor who quit his job on Monday following allegations of fraud, says he did not cheat.

Dirk Smeesters, professor of consumer behaviour and society, resigned when doubts were raised about his academic integrity.

His departure came after two other professors were forced to stand down for fiddling with research results. The most notorious is behavioural science professor Diederik Stapel of Tilburg university, whose research data was found to have been faked in at least 30 scientific papers.

Erasmus University has withdrawn two articles in which the statistical results are considered to be extremely unlikely, the Volkskrant reported on Monday. The data on which they are based is 'no longer available', the paper said.

'I am no Stapel,' Smeesters told the Algemene Dagblad on Tuesday. He did not make up any data, he made a scientific mistake,' he told the paper in an interviews.

According to Smeesters, he tendered his resignation in January for 'personal reasons' and it has nothing to do with the fraud claims.

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