What is the difference between “reproducible” and “replicable”? And how does each relate to results that are “generalizable” and “robust”?
Researchers are using these terms interchangeably, creating confusion over what exactly is needed to confirm a scientific result, argues a new paper published today in Science Translational Medicine.
Berg, now associate senior vice chancellor for science strategy and planning in the health sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, has led the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and was president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) from 2012-2014.
Berg who said in an AAAS press release that he is “thrilled and humbled by the opportunity to work with the team at Science and AAAS,” assumes the role following a year in which one of the world’s most prominent academic journals has faced significant scrutiny. Continue reading Science names new editor-in-chief
Ecologists have retracted a paper published only months ago in Science Advances, after realizing that they had misinterpreted a climate model.
The October paper examined the effects of climate change on populations of 155 species of British moths and butterflies. According to a press release from the authors’ institution, the University of York:
Using data collected by thousands of volunteers through ‘citizen science’ schemes, responses to recent climate change were seen to vary greatly from species to species.
But the authors quickly realized that the variation they had measured was not due to climate change alone, according to the retraction notice they issued for the paper last week:
How easy is it to change people’s minds? In 2014, a Science study suggested that a short conversation could have a lasting impact on people’s opinions about gay marriage – but left readers disappointed when it was retracted only months later, after the first author admitted to falsifying some of the details of the study, including data collection. We found out about the problems with the paper thanks to Joshua Kalla at the University of California, Berkeley and David Broockman at Stanford University, who tried to repeat the remarkable findings. Last week, Kalla and Broockman published a Science paper suggesting what the 2014 paper showed was, in fact, correct – they found that 10-minute conversations about the struggles facing transgender people reduced prejudices against them for months afterwards. We spoke with Kalla and Broockman about the remarkable results from their paper, and the shadow of the earlier retraction.
Retraction Watch: Let’s start with your latest paper. You found that when hundreds of people had a short (average of 10 minutes) face-to-face conversation with a canvasser (some of whom were transgender), they showed more acceptance of transgender people three months later than people with the same level of “transphobia” who’d talked to the canvasser about recycling. Were you surprised by this result, given that a similar finding from Michael LaCour and Donald Green, with same-sex marriage, had been retracted last year?Continue reading “Science advances incrementally:” Researchers who debunked gay canvassing study move field forward
Stefan Franzen doesn’t give up. Ten years ago, he began to suspect the data behind his colleagues’ research about using RNA to make palladium nanoparticles, a potentially valuable tool that ended up as a Science paper. Recently, the National Science Foundation (NSF) decided to cut off funding for Bruce Eaton and Dan Feldheim — currently at the University of Colorado at Boulder — and last week, Science retracted the paper. We talked to Franzen, based at North Carolina State University (NCSU), about his decade-long efforts, and how it feels to be finally vindicated.
Retraction Watch: How did you first begin to suspect the findings by Eaton and Feldheim?
Stefan Franzen: Starting in early 2005, I was collaborating with Drs. Eaton and Feldheim at NCSU, thanks to two joint grants from the W.M. Keck Foundation and NSF. During a group meeting in December of 2005, a graduate student showed electron microscopy data that were inconsistent with the assignment of the particles as palladium. Over time, we kept producing more data that called their findings into question; in April 2006, a postdoc showed that the hexagonal particles could be obtained without RNA. By then, I could see that there was a significant discrepancy between what was written in the articles and what was done and observed in the laboratory.
One correction goes against the recommendation of the ETH Commission to retract the paper for “well documented intentional manipulations.” According to the correction note, the incorrect figures did not “alter the data in any material way that could be construed to benefit the results and their conclusions.” That correction is the only one of the three for which Voinnet takes full responsibility.
Editor in chief Marcia McNutt told us that the journal will make a decision about whether to retract or correct the paper by February 5th.
We are not certain that what he submitted changes anything, but we wanted to consider this new information before acting.
In the meantime, today the journal issued an Expression of Concern for the paper.
The journal’s initial decision to retract the paper stemmed from an investigation at the National Science Foundation, which concluded that co-authors Bruce Eaton and Dan Feldheim — currently at the University of Colorado at Boulder — engaged in “a significant departure from standard research practices,” and cut them off from NSF funding unless they took specific actions. When the report on the investigation came to light earlier this month, Science editor in chief Marcia McNutt told us that she planned to issue a retraction:
We are checking to see how soon we can get it published.
The National Science Foundation will no longer fund a pair of chemists who “recklessly falsified data,” according to a report from the NSF’s Office of Inspector General, unless they “take specific actions to address issues” in a 2004 Science paper.
That paper is going to be retracted as soon as possible, Science told us. The co-authors that the NSF reprimanded are Bruce Eaton and Dan Feldheim, now at the University of Colorado at Boulder; they have been under scrutiny since 2008, when an investigation at North Carolina State University, their former employer, found that the Science paper contained falsified data.
Science magazine has issued an expression of concern for a paper on the discovery of a new immune-boosting protein. The paper’s findings, which received some press coverage when they came out last spring, are now under investigation by Imperial College London.
The expression of concern follows a correction noting a Western blot mix-up. Science Editor in Chief Marcia McNutt told us last month that the mistake resulted from “carelessness” on the part of the authors. But now, an investigation at Imperial College London — where Philip Ashton-Rickardt led the research — is formally looking into the findings.
That investigation is ongoing, according to the expression of concern (signed by McNutt):
What is the difference between “reproducible” and “replicable”? And how does each relate to results that are “generalizable” and “robust”? 
