Richard Franz Heber (born January 12, 1932) is an American educational psychologist and expert on mental retardation. He is known for his work on the Milwaukee Project, and for his subsequent conviction on charges of

fraud In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...

and misuse of federal funds. As a result of this conviction, Heber was sentenced to a three-year term in a

federal prison A federal prison is operated under the jurisdiction of a federal government as opposed to a state or provincial body. Federal prisons are used for people who violated federal law (U.S., Mexico), people considered dangerous (Brazil), or those sen ...

in Bastrop,

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

Early life and education

Heber was born on January 12, 1932. He received his BA from the University of Arkansas in 1953. He then served as principal of the Manitoba School for Mental Deficiency for a year before enrolling at

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...

, where he received his

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

in 1955. In 1957, he received his Ph.D. from George Peabody College.

Academic career

In 1959, Heber joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison as coordinator of their

special education Special education (also known as special-needs education, aided education, alternative provision, exceptional student education, special ed., SDC, and SPED) is the practice of educating students in a way that accommodates their individual di ...

program. He later chaired the President's Panel on Mental Retardation during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. Until December 1980, he was director of the University of Wisconsin's Center on Mental Retardation and Human Development.

Milwaukee Project

In the 1960s, Heber and his colleagues helped to initiate the Milwaukee Project, an early intervention program involving 20 ghetto children, with Heber later assuming the role of director of the project. A total of $14 million was eventually spent on the project, which led Ellis Batten Page to describe it as "grotesquely costly". Among the early results reported from the project were that the children's IQs had been raised by about 30 points, and that even children whose mothers had suffered from mental retardation were able to benefit from intensive

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

education programs in the first several years of their lives. However, despite considerable popular media coverage of the project's purported results, few details of the project were reported in peer-reviewed journals. Soon after the project's results were first described in a brief 1972 conference presentation, its methodology was criticized by Page, who criticized it for "biased selection of treatment groups; contamination of criterion tests; and failure to specify the treatments". Kavale and Mostert concluded in 2004 that "the rather telling criticisms offered" of the project "were never really answered", despite Heber and his colleagues having numerous opportunities to do so.

Criminal conviction

From January to October 1981, a series of articles were published in the Madison,

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

newspaper '' The Capital Times'' revealing that Heber and his associates had inappropriately diverted research funds for personal use. Revelations from these stories included that Heber and his associate Patrick Flanagan had diverted $165,000 of such funds into their personal bank accounts, and that Heber's legal residence was in

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, despite the fact that he was being paid for "full-time" work in Wisconsin. Heber and several of his associates were subsequently charged with multiple federal offenses, including conspiracy to commit

, as well as multiple state charges, including embezzlement and

tax evasion Tax evasion or tax fraud is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to red ...

. On July 30, 1981, Heber was found guilty of multiple federal charges of diverting research funds in a federal court in Madison, for which he was later sentenced to three years in prison. Several months afterward, Heber was sentenced to four additional years in prison by a state court, to be served concurrently with his federal sentence. Heber and Flanagan were also both ordered to repay the funds that they had stolen. This conviction has led to questions about the validity of the Milwaukee Project's reported results. According to Cecil Reynolds and Marie Almond, "It is now questionable whether the project ever actually existed as it had been described by Heber." Similarly, Gilhousen et al. argued in 1990 that "The failure of the principal investigator, Howard Garber, to respond to methodological criticisms and questions regarding the impact of Rick Heber's criminal activities on the integrity of the project data does nothing to quell the cloud of suspicion surrounding the research." In contrast, Kavale and Mostert noted that "The consensus was that...it was a mistake to assume that convictions for fraud in any way implied the presence of fraudulent data."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heber, Richard Franz 1932 births Living people American educational psychologists 21st-century American psychologists University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty American people convicted of fraud American people convicted of misusing public funds People convicted of embezzlement University of Arkansas alumni Michigan State University alumni Peabody College alumni 20th-century American psychologists