This article has been sitting in my folder for the blog for a long time, and seems especially timely in light of everything that has happened with Lehrer recently. While I'm still reading a lot of interesting things about Lehrer specifically, I think it is important to broaden the discussion a bit, too. There are a few interesting things that I take from this article about scientific retractions:
1. Clearly fraud is not limited just to the genius intellectual that was discussed in yesterday's article. Most of these articles that are published are pretty obscure as far as the public eye goes. Nevertheless, there are a host of inaccuracies and falsifications.
2. As someone who believes in the concept of the scientific process, it's frustrating to hear that retracted publications continue to get cited. In fact, it's kind of shocking that this problem exists in the first place let alone that it is getting worse.
3. There's something interestingly circular about linking to an article about retractions that was written by Jonah Lehrer. I tried to follow the WSJ article linked at the beginning, but I don't have subscriber access. I did follow the link to the journal article of the UW researchers, and it looked like that quotation was accurate.
"Why Are Scientific Retractions Increasing?" by Jonah Lehrer
Published in Wired, August 15, 2011
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/why-are-scientific-retractions-increasing
Eric
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