The Boston Globe reports that Harvard University psychologist Marc Hauser has retracted a 2002 study in the journal Cognition. He is also taking a one-year leave after a lengthy university investigation, the story reports.

(For more on research integrity, click on Boston Health News.)

It is unusual for a scientist as prominent as Hauser — a popular professor and eloquent communicator of science whose work has often been featured on television and in newspapers — to be named in an investigation of scientific misconduct. His research focuses on the evolutionary roots of the human mind.

In a letter Hauser wrote this year to some Harvard colleagues, he described the inquiry as painful. The letter, which was shown to the Globe, said that his lab has been under investigation for three years by a Harvard committee, and that evidence of misconduct was found. He alluded to unspecified mistakes and oversights that he had made, and said he will be on leave for the upcoming academic year.