‘Now is not the time to fade’: Retraction Watch awarded Council of Science Editors’ highest honor

Retraction Watch has been honored with the Council of Science Editors’ highest honor: The 2025 Award for Meritorious Achievement.

CSE gives the award each year to an organization or individual who has made “significant contributions” toward the goal of CSE, “namely, the improvement of scientific communication through the pursuit of high standards in all activities connected with editing.” 

We were honored to be at the CSE Annual Meeting in Minneapolis today to accept the award. Below is a lightly edited version of our acceptance speech.

We’re so honored to be receiving this award, which has been given to so many of the people whose work we consider foundational to the field of scientific integrity and to what we have tried to do with Retraction Watch. 

We like to think that when we launched Retraction Watch 15 years ago, we knew what we were doing – as journalists, at least. We’d each been reporting on science and medicine for more than a decade, which seemed like a long time then. And by and large, that instinct has proved correct. 

But it’s also fair to say that we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. To quote ourselves, speaking to Nicholas Wade of the New York Times in October 2010: “We wondered if we’d have enough material.”

That was one of the many things we’ve been wrong about. As Minnesotans might say, “uff da.”

We’ve published more than 6,700 posts since our first one went live on Aug. 3, 2010. There are more than 59,000 retractions and counting in The Retraction Watch Database, which is now part of Crossref and is being used every day by bibliographic software, scholars, and others around the world to help paint an ever more granular picture of the state of scientific publishing. 

Along the way, we’ve chronicled good behavior, bad behavior, and everything in between. And we are even still surprised by stories, albeit less frequently than we used to be. 

In 2010, we were, if not quite the only game in town, one of just a few journalists and groups looking at retractions with any regularity. We have plenty of competition now: In contrast to 2010, when research scandals were covered only rarely by the mass media, they’re on front pages regularly. And as addicted as we are to scoops, we’re happy for that competition. It keeps us motivated, and it’s good for public discourse. It forces us to be curious, humble, and always learning.

All of these things make the work of Retraction Watch compelling – and gratifying – for the two of us and our colleagues.

In short, it has been the privilege of our professional lives. And we are deeply grateful –  and humbled, really – by this award from a group as respected as CSE. The list of previous winners – starting with Patty Baskin, who was kind enough to nominate us this year – includes many of the most important innovators, heroes and heroines, and standard bearers we have long admired. The Center for Open Science;  Annette Flanagin and Drummond Rennie;  the aforementioned Crossref; Barbara Gastel; Eugene Garfield, whom I had the privilege of learning from during my time at The Scientist magazine. The list literally goes on and on, and unless I read every name, I’ll leave out titans.

The honor is even greater when we consider that Retraction Watch has always viewed scientific publishers and publishing service companies – the very companies that employ many of you, either directly or indirectly, who provide services to your journals, and who sponsor this meeting – among those whom we hold accountable. 

This kind of intellectual honesty – giving credit to those who may sometimes be on the other side of an argument – is now more important than ever. We are living through a time when retractions are being weaponized, scientific publishing is facing scrutiny, and even science itself is under attack. 

That makes the work of Retraction Watch, and of CSE, all the more important. Now is not the time to fade like Homer Simpson into the shrubbery, and turn away from difficult truths. Fraudulent work must be called out, and the scientific record corrected, no matter how much pressure or how many legal threats publishers, editors and sleuths face. We remain committed to our work, and we know that many others are making the same choices.

We thank CSE for this award on behalf of the small but mighty staff at Retraction Watch. We also thank you on behalf of our readers, our sources, our financial supporters – and our critics.

We look forward to continued conversations about the critical issues we cover. Thank you again for this great honor.

(Fun?) postscript: The Lucite award earned us a stop at airport security. 

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].