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So why is not every paper that cites a retracted paper automatically flagged? THe peer reviewing process seems to have a lot of room for improvement.

by jansan 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chrisseaton 6y ago
Citing a paper doesn't imply you think it's either good or bad. You have to read the text to understand what the authors say about it.
- yawnxyz 6y ago
  editors and peer reviewers really need to do a better job flagging citations of retracted papers...
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Again, the issue is not the citation... it's what the citation is used to do. If an historian cites Mein Kampf it's not because they're agreeing with it, is it?
    - jjk166 6y ago
      If a historian cites Mein Kampf, they're using it as a primary source - they might not agree with the opinions expressed within but they do believe Hitler expressed those opinions. If a historian cited a work that turned out to be a forgery, and did not acknowledge in their paper that it was a forgery, then their paper would certainly be suspect. True citing a retracted paper is not automatically 100% unacceptable, but it is something that should automatically demand further scrutiny.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > If a historian cites Mein Kampf, they're using it as a primary source - they might not agree with the opinions expressed within but they do believe Hitler expressed those opinions. Yes... same as a scientist uses citations. Citing someone doesn't mean 'I fully believe and support this person', it means 'I'm referring to what this person said' and they believe that's what the paper said. That's all. The text using the citation adds the context of what the author thinks.
        jjk166 6y ago
        You've completely missed what I was saying. A historian doesn't cite Mein Kampf to give context to what they're saying, the historian uses Mein Kampf as data. For a historian, Mein Kampf is perfectly valid data. On the other hand, Mein Kampf 2: Meiner Kampfer is not valid data, and any paper citing it as if it were should be immediately considered suspect. A scientist citing a retracted paper is like a historian citing a forgery: fine if it's a harmless aside, catastrophic if their claims hinge upon its reliability.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > the historian uses Mein Kampf as data So... the same way that a scientist could cite a retracted paper. To say that these people said this thing and then it was retracted. To discuss the context of that retraction and what it means, and so on.
    - jansan 6y ago
      Mein Kapmpf is not a scientific paper that can be retracted. Or have I messed some recent developments?
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > Mein Kapmpf is not a scientific paper that can be retracted. I didn't say it was. > Or have I messed some recent developments? Why are you being sarcastic?
        jansan 6y ago
        >Why are you being sarcastic? It's my nature.
- ta988 6y ago
  flagging doesnt mean forbidding, just a warning to make sure everybody is aware.
matthewdgreen 6y ago
Because the way papers are reviewed is highly manual and relies on individual reviewers who are acting as volunteers and don’t work full time doing review work. This makes it very difficult to implement systematic checks of the sort that would catch minor pieces of retracted work that aren’t central to this paper’s results. To fix this systematically you’d either need automated systems or human-executed “checkbox processes” with training. Of course you could implement those systems, but they’d be costly either in terms of further centralizing the peer review process behind companies like Elsevier or taking critical human time away from reviewing the actual results. And the benefits if you implemented these review systems might be highly limited, plus you’d probably run into a host of additional problems. On the “highly limited” side, many papers have a related work section that doesn’t list primary results that are relevant to the paper’s findings, but instead mainly serves as a reference guide. You might be writing a paper on (here I’m making up silly analogies) LED light bulbs, and you’d have a set of references that begins with “a line of work looks at incandescent light bulbs”. An accidental citation to a retracted work there is sloppy, but mostly scientifically irrelevant when no result in the paper actually refers to anything in those citations (which is why these citations slip by manual reviewers, who focus their valuable review time on citations that affect the scientific results in the paper.) You also have the more annoying problem that citation formats aren’t standardized, so it’s easy for a retracted paper to be cited in a format that an automated review system will miss. Google Scholar throws all the might of Google’s systems at this, and still treats the preprint version and conference version of my papers as different works. (This might be the right treatment or it might be the wrong one, but it’s murder on retraction scanners if the author cites the preprint.) Plus then there’s the additional burden of dealing with unimportant retractions that are issued after a paper that cites them has been published, which should be addressed but largely just cause annoying work for scientists and publishers and (as the article notes) are aggravating because it’s difficult for readers to distinguish a minor correction regarding an unimportant reference from a major one that affects the findings of the work.
- jansan 6y ago
  Science needs a standardized and open reviewing and publishing process. The current reviewing process may have been alright in the 80s, not so anymore. Bill Gates, are you litening? This is a chance to revolutionize science!!!

So why is not every paper that cites a retracted paper automatically flagged? THe peer reviewing process seems to have a lot of room for improvement.

by jansan 6y ago

So why is not every paper that cites a retracted paper automatically flagged? THe peer reviewing process seems to have a lot of room for improvement.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

chrisseaton 6y ago

Citing a paper doesn't imply you think it's either good or bad. You have to read the text to understand what the authors say about it.

yawnxyz 6y ago
editors and peer reviewers really need to do a better job flagging citations of retracted papers...
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Again, the issue is not the citation... it's what the citation is used to do. If an historian cites Mein Kampf it's not because they're agreeing with it, is it?
  - jjk166 6y ago
    If a historian cites Mein Kampf, they're using it as a primary source - they might not agree with the opinions expressed within but they do believe Hitler expressed those opinions. If a historian cited a work that turned out to be a forgery, and did not acknowledge in their paper that it was a forgery, then their paper would certainly be suspect. True citing a retracted paper is not automatically 100% unacceptable, but it is something that should automatically demand further scrutiny.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > If a historian cites Mein Kampf, they're using it as a primary source - they might not agree with the opinions expressed within but they do believe Hitler expressed those opinions. Yes... same as a scientist uses citations. Citing someone doesn't mean 'I fully believe and support this person', it means 'I'm referring to what this person said' and they believe that's what the paper said. That's all. The text using the citation adds the context of what the author thinks.
      - jjk166 6y ago
        You've completely missed what I was saying. A historian doesn't cite Mein Kampf to give context to what they're saying, the historian uses Mein Kampf as data. For a historian, Mein Kampf is perfectly valid data. On the other hand, Mein Kampf 2: Meiner Kampfer is not valid data, and any paper citing it as if it were should be immediately considered suspect. A scientist citing a retracted paper is like a historian citing a forgery: fine if it's a harmless aside, catastrophic if their claims hinge upon its reliability.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > the historian uses Mein Kampf as data So... the same way that a scientist could cite a retracted paper. To say that these people said this thing and then it was retracted. To discuss the context of that retraction and what it means, and so on.
  - jansan 6y ago
    Mein Kapmpf is not a scientific paper that can be retracted. Or have I messed some recent developments?
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > Mein Kapmpf is not a scientific paper that can be retracted. I didn't say it was. > Or have I messed some recent developments? Why are you being sarcastic?
      - jansan 6y ago
        >Why are you being sarcastic? It's my nature.
ta988 6y ago
flagging doesnt mean forbidding, just a warning to make sure everybody is aware.

matthewdgreen 6y ago

Because the way papers are reviewed is highly manual and relies on individual reviewers who are acting as volunteers and don’t work full time doing review work. This makes it very difficult to implement systematic checks of the sort that would catch minor pieces of retracted work that aren’t central to this paper’s results. To fix this systematically you’d either need automated systems or human-executed “checkbox processes” with training. Of course you could implement those systems, but they’d be costly either in terms of further centralizing the peer review process behind companies like Elsevier or taking critical human time away from reviewing the actual results. And the benefits if you implemented these review systems might be highly limited, plus you’d probably run into a host of additional problems. On the “highly limited” side, many papers have a related work section that doesn’t list primary results that are relevant to the paper’s findings, but instead mainly serves as a reference guide. You might be writing a paper on (here I’m making up silly analogies) LED light bulbs, and you’d have a set of references that begins with “a line of work looks at incandescent light bulbs”. An accidental citation to a retracted work there is sloppy, but mostly scientifically irrelevant when no result in the paper actually refers to anything in those citations (which is why these citations slip by manual reviewers, who focus their valuable review time on citations that affect the scientific results in the paper.) You also have the more annoying problem that citation formats aren’t standardized, so it’s easy for a retracted paper to be cited in a format that an automated review system will miss. Google Scholar throws all the might of Google’s systems at this, and still treats the preprint version and conference version of my papers as different works. (This might be the right treatment or it might be the wrong one, but it’s murder on retraction scanners if the author cites the preprint.) Plus then there’s the additional burden of dealing with unimportant retractions that are issued after a paper that cites them has been published, which should be addressed but largely just cause annoying work for scientists and publishers and (as the article notes) are aggravating because it’s difficult for readers to distinguish a minor correction regarding an unimportant reference from a major one that affects the findings of the work.

jansan 6y ago
Science needs a standardized and open reviewing and publishing process. The current reviewing process may have been alright in the 80s, not so anymore. Bill Gates, are you litening? This is a chance to revolutionize science!!!