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> “The end result is positive for the scientific community,” Mur said. But because the editors seemed to address the issue he raised only after he and his colle

> “The end result is positive for the scientific community,” Mur said. But because the editors seemed to address the issue he raised only after he and his colleagues submitted a comment article, and “either did not read or did not understand the response to our comment,” he said the experience “made me doubt the integrity of the editorial process at the journal.” I think one issue we have is that authors of a paper shouldn’t be forced to provide “tech support” for life under the sword of retraction. I try to reimplement analysis and algorithms in the literature all the time, and it’s hard to get it right. I don’t want to write to the authors for help without trying my best first. And I don’t get to write to the editors complaining about no response unless I’m thoroughly convinced of an error. That’s why I think the comment article triggering a real investigation is the right process. It showed that Mur put enough effort into his replication effort by thoroughly describing the process. The final exchange with the authors was confusing to me, I don’t get what happened. But I do think Mur was right to be frustrated at that moment.

Beldin 3y ago
I think another issue we have is that Mur had to put in roughly the amount of work needed to get a publication, without any public acknowledgment. He's a postdoc, who should be spending time on getting sufficient quantity/quality of publications to warrant tenure or tenure track somewhere. This entire process was of benefit to science in general and the journal specifically, yet they refused to give him even the (academically lesser) credits of a comment published in their journal. To add some context: a postdoc position typically lasts 1 or 2 years. The investigation plus discussion with the journal easily took 4 months - at least a sixth of the good dr.'s time. And he's got nothing to show for it - he isn't even named in the retraction notice. In this case, it would have been trivial for the journal to do better... but they opted to do nothing, even after being notified of problems, until they received a thorough description. Which they then rejected. TLDR: the journal's editors, likely all tenured academics, refused to take action when notified and refused to give credit once a postdoc spent months of their time.

Beldin 3y ago

I think another issue we have is that Mur had to put in roughly the amount of work needed to get a publication, without any public acknowledgment. He's a postdoc, who should be spending time on getting sufficient quantity/quality of publications to warrant tenure or tenure track somewhere. This entire process was of benefit to science in general and the journal specifically, yet they refused to give him even the (academically lesser) credits of a comment published in their journal. To add some context: a postdoc position typically lasts 1 or 2 years. The investigation plus discussion with the journal easily took 4 months - at least a sixth of the good dr.'s time. And he's got nothing to show for it - he isn't even named in the retraction notice. In this case, it would have been trivial for the journal to do better... but they opted to do nothing, even after being notified of problems, until they received a thorough description. Which they then rejected. TLDR: the journal's editors, likely all tenured academics, refused to take action when notified and refused to give credit once a postdoc spent months of their time.