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I disagree. The paper should never have been published. Science should not happen in the news with people making wild claims about non peer reviewed papers. Mor

I disagree. The paper should never have been published. Science should not happen in the news with people making wild claims about non peer reviewed papers. More so about papers that were getting lots of negative public peer review in real time. The only reason this story has a happy ending is the authors included manufacturing instructions. But everything else about the paper is not a good model of how to publish (wild claims that you will revolutionise the world, the title, the bad graphs, the 2nd paper that was published with different authors...). The fact that papers get retracted is nothing new. Science as a field is already generally good at retractions. Science is generally bad at incentivising reproduction... But this case was extreme and not a good model. It should not require sensationalist news and dozens of labs to reproduce a paper that was failing peer review.

nickelpro 3y ago
> The paper should never have been published. The paper wasn't published, despite the phrasing in the nature article. arXiv is effectively a moderated blog
fnordpiglet 3y ago
I think we disagree about what science is. Science isn’t something that is a optimal condition process. It’s a process resilient to human nature. Everything you hold up as a failure is in my mind a victory for science. The failures of science are the papers that are outright fraud and as such are cunningly crafted to deceive and it actually works, and we believe falsehoods to this day - which I think we agree on being the failure of science. This however was not. Yes the paper shouldn’t have been published. But it was. Etc. As humans are wont to do. Science didn’t happen in the news - excitement happened in the news. Human failures and bias reigned. Yet Science happened in the lab. That is victory. Yet, the fact there are failures in no way impugns the victories.
tony69 3y ago
Agree except on the peer review part. Peer review is a farce perpetrated by the journal industry, both of which are an unnecessary burden and tax on science. What “peer review” pretends to accomplish should happen after publication (comments or the sort).
beowulfey 3y ago
None of this WAS published.

nickelpro 3y ago

> The paper should never have been published. The paper wasn't published, despite the phrasing in the nature article. arXiv is effectively a moderated blog

fnordpiglet 3y ago

I think we disagree about what science is. Science isn’t something that is a optimal condition process. It’s a process resilient to human nature. Everything you hold up as a failure is in my mind a victory for science. The failures of science are the papers that are outright fraud and as such are cunningly crafted to deceive and it actually works, and we believe falsehoods to this day - which I think we agree on being the failure of science. This however was not. Yes the paper shouldn’t have been published. But it was. Etc. As humans are wont to do. Science didn’t happen in the news - excitement happened in the news. Human failures and bias reigned. Yet Science happened in the lab. That is victory. Yet, the fact there are failures in no way impugns the victories.

tony69 3y ago

Agree except on the peer review part. Peer review is a farce perpetrated by the journal industry, both of which are an unnecessary burden and tax on science. What “peer review” pretends to accomplish should happen after publication (comments or the sort).

beowulfey 3y ago

None of this WAS published.