Cultural psychologist dr. Ruud Abma is associated with the Social Sciences department of Utrecht University (ASW) and the Descartes Centre for History and Philosophy of Science. 

He lectures in history of the social sciences and on topics related to labour, sickness and health. In recent years, Abma studied interdisciplinary in the social sciences and the position of the social sciences within the scientific domain as a whole; sharing their subject matter with the humanities and methodologically tending towards the natural sciences. 

In December 2011 Ruud Abma published the book “The publication factory. On the meaning of the Stapel affair” – a book most relevant to the topic of this podcast: scientific integrity.

 The lecture departs with a discussion of the historical developments within the psychological discipline; a discipline with specific methodological problems. Abma touches upon Freud and Milligram and the rise of experimental social psychology. In the second part of the lecture Abma analyses the Stapel-affair and the public response on the affair.