Yesterday was our fourth birthday. We published our first post, “Why write a blog about retractions?” on August 3, 2010, and the anniversary seems as good a time as any to review where we’ve been.
Here were some highlights of the past twelve months:
- We hired our first intern, Cat Ferguson, thanks to the generosity of our community. Cat’s efforts — which are terrific, we know you’ll agree — have helped us cover even more retractions.
- We sued someone who filed a false Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) claim against us, a case later read into the Congressional Record.
- We introduced two new features, “Weekend Reads” and our “Doing The Right Thing” category.
- We published an op-ed in The New York Times.
- The blog continued to break traffic records, with an all-time high 750,000 page views in July of this year. In January, we surpassed 10 million cumulative page views.
- We were invited to speak around the world, in venues including London, Seoul, Stockholm, Toronto, and Vienna.
- The number of citations of Retraction Watch in the scientific literature has grown to at least 40.
As has been true since we began, none of this would have been possible without our loyal readers and your story tips, encouragement, and constructive criticism. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
We have even more developments in in store for our fifth year. Anniversary gifts aren’t necessary, but if you wanted to contribute to our continued growth so that we can continue our internship program in the future and take on other initiatives, we would be most grateful.
Congratulations! Your blog has become a veritable institution for science. Keep up the great work!
Happy birthday Retraction Watch. Keep up the great work.
Congratulations!
Happy Birthday! Where did year 3 go? I remember the first and second anniversary – and now it is 4 already! Your blog is becoming a must read for many people and, I know from comments, scientists are discovering this on their own – and reporting to us when they recognize “Marcus.”
Feliz cumpleaños, Retraction Watch (Vigilante de Retracciones?)!!
Congratulations. You have shifted the “paradigm”in important ways.
Happy birthday and congratulations. The retraction watch emails are the 1st I open each day. Some make me sad, others mad or angry, yet some make me smile. Keep up the good work.
Happy Anniversary!… keep shining your light on the process of science and making some folks squirm out there!
Congratulations on your 4th Birthday, Retraction Watch.
Here’s the latest on the “Australian Paradox” scandal – it continues to trend towards retraction: http://www.australianparadox.com/pdf/RR-response-to-inquiry-report.pdf
Regards,
Rory Robertson
Reblogged this on prior probability and commented:
How rampant are fraud and deceit and general bullshit in science and academia generally? Thanks to blogs like “Retraction Watch” we now know by name who some of the worst offenders are. (Social psychologists are an especially bad bunch.) Happy Birthday “Retraction Watch”!
Happy Birthday, though we will all be happier when there is just a trickle of posts here, all under the “doing the right thing” category.