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> All a small retraction rate tells us is that it’s very difficult to get a retraction. You're just making the data fit your preconceived beliefs, which would

> All a small retraction rate tells us is that it’s very difficult to get a retraction. You're just making the data fit your preconceived beliefs, which would is how we get fraudulant research.

ekianjo 3y ago
> making the data fit What? this is literally what happened (someone pushing hard to challenge the results) for these 4 retractions related to this guy's work. You don't get a retraction just by posting a comment on HN or something.
vlovich123 3y ago
I don’t think that’s correct. I’m saying that the retraction rate tells us nothing either way and highlighting why a low retraction rate could exist even in the face of massive problems using actual facts that are not in question as examples to illustrate that point. You’re the one making definitive statements of a position and then claiming the data backs up your position and then arguing with anyone who posits that your interpretation of the data may be flawed.
mike_hearn 3y ago
No he isn't, everyone who has ever investigated academic fraud reports that it's extremely difficult to get papers retracted, even when the evidence is blatant and obvious. The extreme difficulty of getting journals to care is, though, exceeded by the difficulty of getting universities to care - most investigators draw the line at just trying to get a retraction because even that is exhausting. Elizabeth Bik has said: “Science has a huge problem: 100s (1000s?) of science papers with obvious photoshops that have been reported, but that are all swept under the proverbial rug, with no action or only an author-friendly correction … There are dozens of examples where journals rather accept a clean (better photoshopped?) figure redo than asking the authors for a thorough explanation.” I wrote an essay about this in 2021. The photo at the start is indicative of the level of problem we're talking about here: you can literally just look at it and notice it's a Photoshopped photo, yet the journal contacted the authors who gave them a transparently nonsensical explanation, fully accepted without question. The people who did the fake research of course suffered no penalties and continued to be employed, most likely their employer never even found out. https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-i-7e9764571422 https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-i-7e9764571422 The retraction rate in science is small because standards are low, and whenever random outsiders stumble across problems the system closes ranks. Getting even one paper retracted is a giant struggle and succeeding doesn't cause other papers based on the first to be retracted either. Consider that in psychology papers, basic statistical consistency checks of the numbers in them fail about half the time. Were half of all psychology papers retracted when this fact was discovered? Definitely not. Also, bear in mind that journals and universities have very narrow criteria for retraction. They care a lot about plagiarism and data forgery, but if the paper is merely filled with nonsense then nobody cares. The DCM paper I call out in the blog post "calculated" that the average Brit lives in a household with 7 other people. This problem was noticed during peer review but never fixed, and the paper has been cited 75 times so far. It would certainly not be retracted if anyone asked.

> All a small retraction rate tells us is that it’s very difficult to get a retraction. You're just making the data fit your preconceived beliefs, which would is how we get fraudulant research.

ekianjo 3y ago

> making the data fit What? this is literally what happened (someone pushing hard to challenge the results) for these 4 retractions related to this guy's work. You don't get a retraction just by posting a comment on HN or something.

vlovich123 3y ago

I don’t think that’s correct. I’m saying that the retraction rate tells us nothing either way and highlighting why a low retraction rate could exist even in the face of massive problems using actual facts that are not in question as examples to illustrate that point. You’re the one making definitive statements of a position and then claiming the data backs up your position and then arguing with anyone who posits that your interpretation of the data may be flawed.

mike_hearn 3y ago

No he isn't, everyone who has ever investigated academic fraud reports that it's extremely difficult to get papers retracted, even when the evidence is blatant and obvious. The extreme difficulty of getting journals to care is, though, exceeded by the difficulty of getting universities to care - most investigators draw the line at just trying to get a retraction because even that is exhausting. Elizabeth Bik has said: “Science has a huge problem: 100s (1000s?) of science papers with obvious photoshops that have been reported, but that are all swept under the proverbial rug, with no action or only an author-friendly correction … There are dozens of examples where journals rather accept a clean (better photoshopped?) figure redo than asking the authors for a thorough explanation.” I wrote an essay about this in 2021. The photo at the start is indicative of the level of problem we're talking about here: you can literally just look at it and notice it's a Photoshopped photo, yet the journal contacted the authors who gave them a transparently nonsensical explanation, fully accepted without question. The people who did the fake research of course suffered no penalties and continued to be employed, most likely their employer never even found out. https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-i-7e9764571422 https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-i-7e9764571422 The retraction rate in science is small because standards are low, and whenever random outsiders stumble across problems the system closes ranks. Getting even one paper retracted is a giant struggle and succeeding doesn't cause other papers based on the first to be retracted either. Consider that in psychology papers, basic statistical consistency checks of the numbers in them fail about half the time. Were half of all psychology papers retracted when this fact was discovered? Definitely not. Also, bear in mind that journals and universities have very narrow criteria for retraction. They care a lot about plagiarism and data forgery, but if the paper is merely filled with nonsense then nobody cares. The DCM paper I call out in the blog post "calculated" that the average Brit lives in a household with 7 other people. This problem was noticed during peer review but never fixed, and the paper has been cited 75 times so far. It would certainly not be retracted if anyone asked.