Category: studies about retractions

So what should happen to scientific papers that are proven wrong?

There’s been a lively discussion at Jeff Perkel’s guest post from this morning, “Should Linus Pauling’s erroneous 1953 model of DNA be retracted?” Most of our commenters say “no.” Some of those “nos” are quite emphatic, suggesting that Retraction Watch should brush up on epistemology, or that this was a silly question to begin with.

We appreciate all the feedback, of course, and thought this would be a good opportunity to expand the answers a bit from “yes” and “no” — which a few commenters have begun doing. So we’re posting this poll about what should happen to papers such as Pauling’s that are proven to be wrong, knowing that they continue to be cited as if they had no significant flaws. (Pauling’s, as Perkel pointed out, was actually wrong about at least one thing even when it was published, but leave that aside for these purposes.) Vote here: Continue reading So what should happen to scientific papers that are proven wrong?

Is post-hoc statistical analysis the new fraud detection tool? A new review looks at fraudster Reuben’s work

In the beginning, there was Scott Reuben.

Well, not quite. Reuben, a Massachusetts anesthesiologist who fabricated data and briefly topped our list of most-retracted authors, didn’t invent research fraud, although he did spend six months in federal prison for his crimes. But his case was in no small measure responsible for the birth of this blog, and, well, the rest of human history that followed.

Although Reuben’s retractions are behind him now — his count ends at 22 — and other scientists, including two anesthesiologists, Joachim Boldt and Yoshitaka Fujii, have or likely soon will dramatically eclipsed his mark, a new paper has revisited his publications with an eye toward seeing if they could identify statistical evidence of data manipulation. It’s the same  kind of effort that Ed Yong highlighted as noteworthy about the Dirk Smeesters case, which we covered yesterday and which involved an anonymous statistically inclined whistleblower.

Before we get to whether there was evidence of such manipulation Continue reading Is post-hoc statistical analysis the new fraud detection tool? A new review looks at fraudster Reuben’s work

Is misconduct more likely in drug trials than in other biomedical research?

A new paper by Chicago pharmacy researchers suggests that researchers performing drug studies are more likely to commit fraud than are their colleagues in the rest of biomedicine.

In the paper, “Retraction Publications in the Drug Literature,” which appears in Pharmacotherapy, Jennifer C. Samp, Glen T. Schumock, and A. Simon Pickard take a look at previous studies of retractions, including those by Grant Steen and John Budd, both of whose work we’ve covered. They also identify 742 retractions in the biomedical literature from 2000 to 2011, 102 of which were of drug studies, to analyze.

Noting the growing interest in retractions, they write that Continue reading Is misconduct more likely in drug trials than in other biomedical research?

The first-ever English language retraction (1756)?

Benjamin Wilson self-portrait, via Wikimedia http://bit.ly/zkWs5C

We tend to focus on new retractions here at Retraction Watch, and find it difficult enough to even keep up with the hundreds per year. But sometimes it’s illuminating to take a dip into history, so when Richard van Noorden alerted us to what may be the earliest-ever English language retraction, we thought we’d take a look.

The notice appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on June 24, 1756. It reads: Continue reading The first-ever English language retraction (1756)?

No small matter: ACS Nano journal growing alarmed by self-plagiarism

Is self-plagiarism — perhaps best referred to as duplication of your own work — a big problem in nanotechnology research?

The American Chemical Society (ACS) Nano journal retracted a study, “Retraction of Nanoembossing Induced Ferroelectric Lithography on PZT Films for Silver Particle Patterning,”  late last month because of such duplication:

This article was withdrawn at the request of the Editor-in-Chief, with agreement by the authors, due to unacceptable redundant text and figures with a previously published article by the same authors (Langmuir 2011, 27, 5167-5170. DOI: 10.1021/la200377b).

This wasn’t the first such retraction for the journal. In May, they retracted “Conductance Preservation of Carbene-Functionalized Metallic Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes for the same reason:” Continue reading No small matter: ACS Nano journal growing alarmed by self-plagiarism

An arXiv for all of science? F1000 launches new immediate publication journal

Late last year, we published an invited commentary in Nature calling for science to more formally embrace post-publication peer review, and stop fetishizing the published paper. One of the models we cited was Faculty of 1000 (F1000), “in which experts flag important papers in their field.”

So it’s not surprising that F1000 is announcing today that they’re launching a new journal, F1000 Research,

intended to address three major issues afflicting scientific publishing today: timely dissemination of research, peer review and sharing of data.

 The journal will publish all submissions immediately, “beyond an initial sanity check:” Continue reading An arXiv for all of science? F1000 launches new immediate publication journal

The Year of the Retraction: A look back at 2011

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Madrid. Photo by Zaqarbal via Wikimedia

If Retraction Watch was actually a business, as opposed — for the moment, anyway — to a labor of love for two guys with day jobs, 2011 would have been a very good year for business.

It was a year that will probably see close to 400 retractions, including a number of high-profile ones, once the dust settles. Those high numbers caught the attention of a lot of major media outlets, from Nature to NPR to the Wall Street Journal. Science publications, including LiveScience and The Scientist, have done their own end-of-year retraction lists.

It was also a good year for us at Retraction Watch. Many news outlets featured us in their coverage, either picking up stories we’d broken or asking us for comment on big-picture issues. Three national NPR programs — Science Friday, On the Media, and All Things Considered — had us on air. We launched a column in LabTimes, and Nature asked us to write a year-end commentary. We even earned a Wikipedia entry. Continue reading The Year of the Retraction: A look back at 2011

Stop fetishizing the scientific paper: Our invited Comment in Nature

courtesy Nature

If there’s one consistent lesson of covering retractions, it’s that science doesn’t stop when researchers publish a paper. But what also seems true is that once a paper is published, lots of people — authors and editors, in particular — are often reluctant to say just what’s happened next, particularly if it casts the study or the journal in a negative light.

Some of this is understandable, given the weight given papers by tenure committees and granting agencies. Still, Retraction Watch readers will not be surprised to know we’d like that to change, so when Nature asked us to contribute an end-of-the-year commentary, we decided to focus on post-publication peer review. In our piece, which appears this week, titled “The paper is not sacred,” we argue: Continue reading Stop fetishizing the scientific paper: Our invited Comment in Nature

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: What retractions say about scientific transparency

photo by Cea via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/centralasian/

Recently, Ivan has been invited to speak to two groups — the Danforth Center, in St. Louis, and CrossRef members, at their annual meeting in Cambridge, Mass. — about retractions and Retraction Watch. He gave variations on the talk below, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: What Retractions Tell Us About Scientific Transparency.” In it, he discusses a number of cases we’ve uncovered at Retraction Watch, and offers some solutions for improving transparency. Use the arrows at the bottom of the slides to click through the presentation. Continue reading The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: What retractions say about scientific transparency

Join Retraction Watch today for a webchat with Nature

courtesy Nature

Ivan will be joining Richard van Noorden, author of Nature‘s feature last week on retractions, for a live Q&A today at 11 a.m. Eastern (4 p.m. BST). Join us and ask questions here.

And while you have your calendars out, Ivan is part of a SONYC panel next week in New York on retractions. Get a free ticket here.