Marc Hauser, a Harvard academic who gained prominence with the publication of a book on the origin of morality, has gone on leave after an investigation by the university into problems with his research.

Dr. Hauser, whose field is the comparison of human and animal minds, is the author of “Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.”

A Harvard press officer, Jeff Neal, at first refused to confirm that Dr. Hauser was on leave or that Harvard had conducted any investigation. But a message on Dr. Hauser’s laboratory phone says he will be on leave until the fall of 2011, and at least two scientific journals are acknowledging problems in Dr. Hauser’s articles that were brought to light by an internal Harvard inquiry.

The journal Cognition published an article by Dr. Hauser and others in 2002 saying that tamarin monkeys could learn certain rules much as human infants do. The journal is about to run a retraction saying that an internal examination by Harvard “found that the data do not support the reported findings.”

“We therefore are retracting this article,” it continues. “MH accepts responsibility for the error.” The initials M.H. refer to Dr. Hauser.

Harvard’s silence about the nature of the problem in Dr. Hauser’s laboratory has stirred concern among other researchers who fear their field will be discredited unless the full facts are made known.

“I think that Harvard has to make public what they found,” said Herbert Terrace, a professor of psychology at Columbia University. “They say they have to protect Harvard and Hauser, but how about protecting the field?”

Dr. Hauser is one of Harvard’s most visible academics, being frequently quoted in articles about language, animals’ cognitive abilities and the biological basis of morality. He is widely regarded as a star in his field.

In a widely noticed book of 2006, “Moral Minds,” he argued that a universal moral grammar is genetically wired into the human mind, similar to the universal grammar posited by Noam Chomsky to underlie the language faculty. Dr. Hauser is currently working on a book called “Evilicious: Why We Evolved a Taste for Being Bad.”

Dr. Hauser is a fluent and persuasive writer, and his undoing seems to have been his experiments, many of which depended on videotaping cotton-topped tamarin monkeys and noting their responses. It is easy for human observers to see the response they want and so to be fooled by the monkeys.

Dr. Terrace said there had been problems for some time with Dr. Hauser’s work.

“First there was arbitrary interpretation of the videotapes to suit the hypothesis,” he said. “The other was whether the data was real. There have been a number of papers using videotape, and all of them have to be reviewed to see if the data holds up.”

Dr. Terrace noted that it was easy for a researcher to see what he wanted in a videotaped animal’s reactions, and that independent observers must check every finding.

In one case, according to an article in The Boston Globe on Tuesday, Gordon G. Gallup Jr. of the State University of New York at Albany asked Dr. Hauser for videotapes of an experiment in which cotton-topped tamarins were said to recognize themselves in a mirror. When he received the videotapes, Dr. Gallup could see no evidence that this was the case. Dr. Gallup did not return a call or respond to e-mail on Wednesday.

Dr. Hauser’s 2002 article in Cognition was published with two co-authors, but he has accepted responsibility for the error. One co-author, Gary Marcus of New York University, said he saw the summary of Dr. Hauser’s experiments but not the raw data. He was informed that there was a problem with the data, but has not seen the result of the investigation.

Mr. Neal, Harvard’s press officer, declined to say when the university’s examination of Dr. Hauser’s laboratory had started, when it was completed or how many other papers besides that in Cognition were under question.

Legislation to provide billions to save the jobs of teachers and other public workers is on track to pass the U.S. Senate, helped along by the votes of a couple of GOP moderates.

Democrats cracked a GOP filibuster on Aug. 4, and the U.S. House of Representatives was being called back from its summer break for an expected final vote next week to help cash-strapped states and school districts.

The $26 billion measure would help states ease their severe budget problems and, advocates said, stop the layoffs of perhaps 300,000 teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees. Though scaled back, the bill also would salvage a victory for Democrats who have been unable to deliver most of the jobs help they and President Barack Obama promised.

The legislation advanced by a 61-38 tally that all but ensured it would pass the Senate on Aug. 5. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would call the House back into session next week to approve the measure to get it to Obama for his signature before most schools reopen.

Many Republicans objected to the expense at a time of record budget deficits, but moderate Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine cast the key votes to break the filibuster–as they did last month in helping Democrats pass a six-month extension of jobless benefits.

This newest bill would extend programs enacted in last year’s economic stimulus law.

The measure comes on the heels of successful efforts to extend unemployment insurance for the long-term jobless and to provide a payroll tax credit this year to businesses that hire the unemployed.