‘It’s time to devise a more efficient solution’: Science editor in chief wants to change the retraction process

On the heels of a high-profile retraction that followed deep investigations by the Science news team, Holden Thorp, the editor in chief of the journal, says it’s time to improve the process of correcting the scientific record.

In an editorial published today, Thorp, a former university provost, describes the often time-consuming and frustrating process involving journals, universities, and government agencies that are often at odds, or at least have different priorities. Based on the experience of what can feel like gridlock, he calls for breaking the process into two stages:

The first stage should evaluate the validity of the paper without attributing blame. The university would then feel free to determine the validity of the paper before it plunges into a lengthy and more complicated investigation of the underlying wrongdoing.

If the paper is not valid, it can then be retracted much more quickly. The second stage, with journals out of the picture, would be for the university to determine whether there was fraud that rises to the level of research misconduct. This plan would accelerate correction of the scientific record.

At first glance, the idea makes sense. It would seem to be a way to streamline the process, and at least let readers know a paper shouldn’t be relied upon.

But we had some questions about how this would all work, how many problems it would really solve, and whether it would actually lead to less informative retraction notices. Thorp – who said he was “hoping to start a conversation about how to improve things” – was glad to answer.

RW: Who would do that “first stage” of review? Journals? Many say they don’t have the resources (and your editorial says journals “are not an investigatory body”), and that reviewing any allegations at all is the responsibility of institutions. 

HT: In the first stage, the hope is that the universities would be willing to do more (and more quickly) if the personnel issues were separated from the determination of the validity of the paper.  As I say in the piece, the alternative is for us to move more aggressively on our own, but the universities have a lot to lose if that’s where this goes.  According to COPE, we have the ability to move on our own because it’s our job to determine if the universities and authors are giving us a ‘satisfactory’ answer.  Most of the time, we can tell when they’re not, but ‘satisfactory’ is still a pretty subjective term.  The hope is to get them to see that we all have a lot to gain in terms of the credibility of science if they would engage more proactively.  It’s going to require the provosts and research officers to have some courage, because the general counsels at the universities can come up with a million reasons to stall.

RW: Provided journals have the resources, splitting the retraction process into two stages theoretically makes sense. But we have already seen countless cases in which journals have done nothing for years even after receiving definitive findings from universities. How would this new process fix that?

HT: The new process wouldn’t fix the problem of the journal not doing anything even when they have definitive statements from the university.  That’s on the journal.  We took responsibility for the delay in the Science Signaling case in your tweet.

RW: Would journals update retraction notices that simply say a paper is invalid but don’t assign any blame or say what happened? Or would journals allow universities, most of which don’t release investigation reports, to keep that information forever hidden? 

If we get information from the university that the paper is invalid but nothing about the reasons why, we still go ahead with a retraction that says the university has cast doubt on the paper.  One challenge of this, as you point out, is that the origins of the problem may never come out because once the journal posts the retraction, we won’t be hounding the university any more.  But the universities can easily hide all of that now, so at least we could get the record fixed.

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