Category: clinical study retractions

In a recent Retraction Watch guest post on the “Eysenck affair,” James Heathers notes the extraordinary possibility that as many as 61 Hans Eysenck publications might be retracted. I believe this figure is a significant underestimate.

This reckoning has been a long time coming. The issues surrounding Eysenck’s 1980s/1990s collaboration with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek and their unbelievable results linking personality to health outcomes have been known for decades. Many eminent researchers, including Tony Pelosi and Louis Appleby, had lined up to criticise this research even while it was still ongoing. 

In 2010, I published a lengthy biography of Eysenck, Playing with fire, that detailed the context for this collaboration. In the final full chapter, I explained what prompted Eysenck to team up with this outsider figure and laid bare the extent of Eysenck’s deep and longstanding relationship with the tobacco industry. It was backed by extensive archival research and interviews with key players (including two days with Grossarth-Maticek). I had hoped it would provoke a reappraisal and remedial action. But the impact was minimal.

There are various ways to respond to criticism of one’s work. There is the “well, that’s not pleasant news, but thank you, I’ll correct that straightaway” approach. There’s the “I guess we’ll correct this but hope no one notices” approach. There’s the “I’m suing you” approach — often followed by “never mind.”

And then there’s the approach taken by Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Fredrickson is perhaps best known for her work on the “positivity ratio,” around which she has built a significant brand. The idea, in a nutshell, is that you’ll be more successful if you have three positive emotions for every negative one. It is a compelling and bite-sized idea, and has been turned into a book.

We have a tension about resolving inaccuracies in scientific documents when they’re past a certain age.

Specifically, what should we do with old papers that are shown to be not just wrong, which is a fate that will befall most of them, but seriously misleading, fatally flawed, or overwhelmingly likely to be fabricated, i.e. when they reach the (very high) threshold we set for retraction?

To my way of thinking, there are three components of this:

More than two dozen papers by a controversial psychologist who died in 1997 are “unsafe,” according to a recent report by his former employer obtained by Retraction Watch.

The research has been subject to question for decades, because the findings — including some that “bibliotherapy” could dramatically reduce the risk of dying from cancer — seemed unbelievable.

The report by King’s College London into the work of Hans Eysenck and Ronald Grossarth-Maticek notes that: