It’s never an easy thing, finding out that your work isn’t completely right AFTER it’s been published. The career of a scientist still hangs on the number of publications they have, so how do you manage a retraction?
“The rise in retractions could be because scientists are making more errors, but it could also indicate a growing culture of coming clean on errors.”
Apart from human errors, what is causing the increasing number of retractions? According to a PNAS study from 2012, “two-thirds of retracted life-sciences papers were stricken from the scientific record because of misconduct such as fraud or suspected fraud — and that journals sometimes soft-pedal the reason.”
One of the main themes of this particular Nature Careers article, Retractions: A clean slate, is that scientists should be open and honest about the mistakes made. A retraction doesn’t need to be a dirty secret anymore – as the world of science depends on people adding to published work. If your work contains errors, theirs might have some too. This is something that drove Pamela Ronald, a crop scientist at the University of California Davis, who was interviewed for the article, to come clean about her errors.
“Once she was sure that there was a problem, she contacted colleagues to highlight the issue and gave a public seminar to inform the international community. “I was alarmed that others were trying to build on this work when we couldn’t, and I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time,” she says.”
If you’ve got any comments or thoughts on this article, leave them in the comments section below.
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Here are some more additional links to the retraction that happened in laboratory of Pamela Ronald at UC Davis. They highlight the insight of early career scientists stuck within these reproducibility dilemma and retraction process. Absolutely worth a read if you are interest in the full transparency of the retraction process from view points of all career stages.
https://bit.ly/1dgcfT5, https://bit.ly/1pfrOdF and https://tmblr.co/ZhEPVw16J-gwQ
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Dear Ben,
thank you very much for bringing these to our attention, they definitely are worth a read. The answer to the question: What is the single most important thing each of you have learned from this, that you would like others to know? is, I believe an important one, and one I would like to share:
“Take your time. Get it right. It is tempting to rush a retraction but that is not possible. You must put the effort in to get the experiments right. You need to communicate with each other and as a PI, must work hard to encourage lab members to work together and be patient. Dont blame yourself or each other. Just do your best. Trust that the scientific process will eventually lead you to the answer.”
There is an incredible amount of pressure on young scientists in this “publish or perish” scientific economy, with some being put to the test when it comes to doing experiments and publishing asap. So it is worth taking a step back and considering your research motives, considering the hassle caused when you need to make a retraction. but not only that, the impact false results can have on the further scientific community.
Thanks again Ben, this is great!
Julie