Diederik stapel, the infamous "lying Dutchman" who in 2011 admitted to inventing the data in dozens of psychology research papers, unwittingly signalled his deceit through the language he used. As well as inflating the certainty surrounding his results, Stapel included more science-related terms to describe his methods when writing up his fraudulent "findings" than when describing genuine results. Researchers who have analysed Stapel's papers say they can separate his genuine and fictional research with about 70 per cent accuracy. Jeff Hancock's team at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has previously studied the language used by liars in situations including politics and online dating. Hancock and colleague David Markowitz suspected that there may be specific linguistic tics that signal deceit. Stapel's fraud provided the ideal testing ground.
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