[chrbr]

Unfamiliar with academia here, and I can't quite figure it out from TFA - does a retraction always imply wrongdoing, instead of mere "wrongness?" Or are papers sometimes retracted for being egregiously wrong, even if their methods were not intentionally misleading?

[semi-extrinsic]

I've certainly seen papers retracted over copyright/IP issues with images or other details. Funnily enough, this doesn't mean the article goes away, just that it gets covered with a "Retracted" watermark.

Retractions are primarily associated with wrongdoing, but are sometimes also issued for "honest mistakes". If so it's typically with a very clear explanation, like in the link below.

https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/an...

[jhbadger]

Also, in biomedical research papers can get retracted if they can't show the subjects consented to have their samples (e.g. removed tumors) used in research even if the science itself is sound.

[WhitneyLand]

Well, consider this:

- The overall retraction rate is 4 in 10,000.

- Most researchers go their entire career without a retraction

- She now has 4.

[crazygringo]

Not being familiar with her, that isn't telling me anything.

It seems like you're implying she's written exceptionally shoddy papers.

But on the other hand she could also just be exceptionally honest -- one of the very few researchers to retract papers later on when they realize they weren't accurate, as opposed to the 99+% of researchers that wouldn't bother.

Also I would imagine that retraction rates might vary tremendously among fields and subfields. Imagine if a whole subfield had all its results based on a scientific technique believed to be accurate, and then the technique was discovered to be flawed? But the retractions wouldn't have anything to do with honesty or quality of the researchers.

So I'm gonna need more context here.

[teekert]

Having been in academia, having felt the pressure, knowing reproduction is not sexy and takes time away from "actual experiments", knowing some theories or groups have cult-like status, knowing that not having papers means not getting a PhD, despite working hard, being smart, knowing that this is (experienced as) very unfair, etc... I'm very sure that 4 in 10.000 is the tip of the iceberg.

We need more reproduction. Or have some rule: Check all assumptions. Yes, it's a lot of work, but man will it save a lot of fake stuff from getting out there and causing a lot of useless work.

[olddustytrail]

Having considered it I reckon it could be due to some systemic abuse of the process. Or it could be that she is working in a field where there is a high uncertainty rate.

Why don't you explicitly state which you think it is?

[ta988]

No, many honest researchers retract their own papers because they found a problem that cannot be solved by publishing a correction/errata (a kind of mini publication that corrects the original work). It is extremely bad to use number of retracted papers as a judging factor for a researcher. Using the number of retracted papers because of fraud (fabrication of images, data, stealing work, plagiarism...). Self plagiarism is a slightly different case with a much broader grey area.

[kenjackson]

I actually retracted one of my papers. It was before it was published, but after I had submitted it. I had discovered a flaw in my methodology the night before that did have material impact on the results. I was so stressed out for 24 hours until I spoke to my advisor.

My advisor was very chill about it. He said that retractions aren't a big deal and was glad I spotted the issue sooner rather than later.

I corrected the experimental methodology and while the results weren't quite as good, they were still quite good and I got published with the correct results.

[CoastalCoder]

> I corrected the experimental methodology and while the results weren't quite as good, they were still quite good and I got published with the correct results.

I disagree. Your new results were much better, because they were sound.

Very well done.

[dekhn]

Minor detail- I believe this would be called "withdrawing" a paper rather than retraction as it had not been published yet.

[kenjackson]

Yes, that sounds correct. I retract my original comment!

[gumby]

The article said there was no finding that the primary author did anything wrong but that the original photos were no longer available so the paper could not be corrected.

NOTE: I DON'T FOLLOW THIS WORK CLOSELY: I am not sure that there are any successful programs using pluripotent somatic (adult) stem cells, if they even really exist, though there's lot of successful work with differentiated stem cells. So I think there's an unstated subtext as you surmise.

This paper was very important and eagerly received because the GW Bush administration had banned federal funding for research using foetal stem cells as a sop to the religious right (all that work moved to sg and cn, and continued in Europe).

[bagels]

If wrongdoing is the same as intentional deceit, I would guess there are some that were not intentional, but instead driven by incompetence or simple mistakes.

Fraudulent/doctored images don't fall in to the incompetence/mistake category though.

Some types of mistakes/incompetence: improperly applied statistics, poor experiment design, faulty logic, mistakes in data collection.

[fredgrott]

Okay, I can answer this. Papers are never retracted for theory proven wrong and they are always retracted when wrong-doing is found. This is why the high level research stuff always has researchers recording their data and notes. Before computers, my exp early 1990s, We had to record everything in a notebook and sign it.

[cycomanic]

That statement is wrong. Papers do get retracted because a major innocent error is found. This often happens at the request of the author (typically with an explanation from the authors). . See the comment a bit further up for an example.

[delusional]

There's a difference between "theory proven wrong" and "proof being wrong". A finding that Theory A is wrong is still a valid finding. A wrong finding about Theory A is just a lie, it carries no value, and should thus be retracted.

[mjn]

In practice, wrong findings that aren't due to misconduct and aren't very recent are usually not retracted though. It's just considered part of the history of science that some old papers have proofs or results now known to be false. It is pretty common in mathematics, for example, for people to discover (and publish) errors they found in old proofs, without the journal going back and retracting the old proof. A famous example is Hilbert's (incorrect) sketch of a proof for the continuum hypothesis [1].

[1] https://mathoverflow.net/questions/272028/hilberts-alleged-p...

[CJefferson]

I have a friend who got their paper retracted, because it turns out they had made a big mistake in implementing an algorithm -- so big that after fixing it, the results entirely disappeared.

In that case, the retraction isn't didn't really get any publicity, and I'm actually proud of them for doing it, as many people wouldn't bother.

However, in practice I would say the majority of retractions are for wrongdoing on the part of the authors.

I wish, particularly in the case of the modern internet, that it was easier for authors to attach extras to old papers -- I have old papers where I would like to say "there is a typo in Table 2.3", and most journals have basically no way of doing this. I'm not retracting the paper over that of course! This is one advantage of arXiv, you can upload small fixes.

[f6v]

> Or are papers sometimes retracted for being egregiously wrong, even if their methods were not intentionally misleading?

There could be a mistake the authors made which led to a wrong interpretation. Like, someone might write another article commenting on that mistake and wrong conclusions. But that wouldn’t be a reason for retraction. Something should be incredibly wrong for authors or journal to do that. Retractions due to fraud are much more common.

[epgui]

Retractions don’t imply wrongdoing, but they are not that common so they look very bad.

[delusional]

Academic research rarely (if ever) cares about "intentions" of the authors. I'd say papers are exclusively retracted for being "egregiously wrong" (or at least not trustworthy), and never for any "wrongdoing". The wrongdoing just happens to be a pretty good indicator that the conclusions probably aren't trustworthy.