Researchers in Brussels and Calgary had long-standing concerns about the way the fraudulent former associate professor of psychology from Nijmegen handled scientific integrity rules. This emerges from an investigation by Vox.

The fraud committed by the dismissed psychology researcher Yannick Griep is not an isolated issue. There had been previous concerns about the integrity of the former associate professor, according to a Vox investigation based on interviews with current and former colleagues and a review of documents. According to several sources, these concerns led to Griep leaving his previous university in Canada under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and to former colleagues from his doctoral period in Brussels no longer wishing to collaborate with him.

From 2019 onward, Griep served as an associate professor in the Department of Work and Organizational Psychology at Radboud University. One and a half years ago, he was dismissed for expense fraud, a decision he later challenged in court. Ultimately, the court did not issue a ruling, as the parties reached a termination agreement.

In a parallel process, Griep became the subject of a scientific integrity complaint concerning the unauthorized manipulation of research data. The complaint was upheld by the Committee for Scientific Integrity (CWI), a recommendation that was adopted by Radboud University’s Executive Board at the end of March. The associated scientific publication in the Journal of Business Research has since been retracted. Radboud University is currently conducting further investigations into the reliability of other articles by Griep from his period in Nijmegen.

Accumulation of incidents

Griep earned his PhD from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2016, after which he accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Calgary. In 2019, he moved to Nijmegen. By that time, his former colleagues in Brussels had already terminated their collaboration with him.

“It was an accumulation of incidents that led to that decision”, explains Tim Vantilborgh. Vantilborgh is a professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and was one of Griep’s doctoral supervisors. He continued publishing with him for another three years during Griep’s time in Canada. Vantilborgh explains: “His line of research was closely related to mine because of his doctoral work, and when he was able to start his own lab there, we were eager to continue collaborating.”

Within the “Mutuality and Reciprocity Lab,” which focused on reciprocity between employers and employees, the plan was to jointly supervise a PhD candidate who would alternate between Belgium and Canada. However, that never materialized. According to Vantilborgh, Griep became increasingly secretive about data and equipment. “At one point, one of the models he applied to his research data produced highly implausible results. It was part of a joint project involving a student from another colleague, so we asked him to share the data so we could investigate what had gone wrong.”

Getting data shared was difficult: “He had forgotten, or his computer had crashed”

Such requests are routine in academia, but Griep repeatedly avoided doing so. Vantilborgh says he always had a different excuse: “He had forgotten, or his computer had crashed.” There were several other incidents, including a follow-up experiment that Griep conducted contrary to agreements made with an external partner. On another occasion, a mobile brain-scanning device supposedly went missing, only to later reappear in its usual location without anyone knowing how it got there.

Vantilborgh emphasizes that these incidents did not constitute conclusive evidence of fraud. However, the incidents generated enough distrust that he and his colleagues formally ended the collaboration. Griep never responded to the email in which they outlined their concerns, a message reviewed by Vox. Since then, they have had no further contact. “It is an enormously painful situation”, says the professor.

Loss of position

At the University of Calgary, too, questions arose about how Griep handled research data, according to several sources. “It’s time that people knew”, a former Canadian colleague of Griep told Vox. The researcher declined to provide further details and requested anonymity out of concern for their own position. Three other independent sources described Griep’s departure from Calgary as involuntary. According to these sources, concerns about his research practices led to an internal investigation, after which he left under the previously mentioned non-disclosure agreement.

Keith Yeates, who at the time was head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary, stated by email: “I’m afraid I’m not permitted to disclose any information about personnel issues, even for former employees.” He referred inquiries to the university’s legal department, which provided a similar response.

The existence of earlier integrity concerns surrounding Griep aligns with the findings in the Committee for Scientific Integrity’s report on his data fraud at Radboud University. That report already noted that “signals concerning suspicions of data fabrication … at a previous employer” were one of the triggers for the integrity complaint. An overview of specific signals is contained in an appendix to the report that has not been made public. Griep has, however, removed publicly available datasets associated with three of his earlier publications. It is plausible that these are among the articles currently being scrutinized as part of the university’s ongoing follow-up investigation.

Griep did not respond to multiple requests by Vox for a reaction, through various channels. Until August, he does not respond to emails, he writes in an out-of-office reply from his private email address.