Globe writer Gareth Cook thinks we’re better at discovering and dealing with scientific fraud. But he argues:

… the scientific establishment’s efforts to discover and correct errors are scattershot and overly time consuming. Harvard’s handling of the (psychology researcher Marc) Hauser case was almost laughably opaque. Scientists still don’t know what to make of many of his papers.

We need to do better. Science is a quest for the truth. And to know what is true, one must know what is false.

Cook’s coverage of the embryonic stem cell debate won him the 2005 Pulitzer for explanatory reporting.

More on the rise in medical journal retractions on the ever-busy Retraction Watch.