[HN Gopher] Nature retracts paper that claimed adult stem cell c...
___________________________________________________________________
Nature retracts paper that claimed adult stem cell could become any
type of cell
Author : susam
Score : 142 points
Date : 2024-06-18 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (retractionwatch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (retractionwatch.com)
| arjvik wrote:
| > Verfaille, agreed with the retraction. She now has four
| retractions, by our count.
|
| Maybe I just don't understand biology, but there seems to be
| something up here.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Probably too many grad students with high expectations and no
| careful review. PI will be "on" the paper but only do a cursory
| review.
| Metacelsus wrote:
| And this is why it's expected that the PI will take
| responsibility for any papers published by their lab - if the
| PI isn't doing their job, they should face the consequences.
|
| (note I wrote "should", not "will")
| o238jro2j5 wrote:
| Can confirm. My PI didn't review anything. Sent their journal
| reviews to students and told us to sign their name at the
| bottom. Straight up told us to falsify our results on more
| than one occasion (I refused). I reported them to admin.
| Admin didn't investigate, didn't even contact the witnesses I
| named, and gave the professor tenure. This was at UT Austin
| about ten years ago. Academia is broken.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Name and shame
| j-krieger wrote:
| I wouldn't dare in their place. Academia is tiny.
| alan-hn wrote:
| I know, I'm in academia. But this silence is why these
| things keep happening. PIs hold power over their students
| to keep them in line, through letters of recommendation
| to networking and post doc/job offers. We need to work to
| correct that.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Damn, academia needs a #me-too moment.
|
| I find this vaguely reminiscent of Hollywood's casting
| couches.
| akira2501 wrote:
| You can pay for an education or you can pay for a degree. It
| seems like some people don't mind getting the latter when
| they aimed to get the former.
| flobosg wrote:
| Along those lines: _When a postdoc in my lab committed fraud,
| I had to face my own culpability_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38766484
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > Maybe I just don't understand biology, but there seems to be
| something up here.
|
| If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| I realize that this probably wouldn't fit in the title, but this
| is about a _specific kind_ of _adult_ stem cell, not stem cells
| in general.
|
| It's trivially obvious that _some_ kinds of stem cell can become
| any type of cell, given that we all had our beginnings as a
| single cell.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| > It's trivially obvious that some kinds of stem cell can
| become any type of cell, given that we all had our beginnings
| as a single cell.
|
| It's not that obvious, as the brain grows, certain kind of
| cells die off and never come back. For example at 4-5 years of
| age being able to speak different phonenes is lost due to mass
| die off of a certain type of brain cell.
|
| Could be the same for the pair of cells that start a human
| life. Once their purpose is served they may never exist again.
| globalise83 wrote:
| Most-cited retracted paper ever is quite a claim to fame!
| kstrauser wrote:
| Citation needed.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| So, according to more credible research, what type of other cells
| can stem cells turn into?
| rolph wrote:
| that is dependent upon the origin developmental state, and
| biochemical history of the stem cell in question
| chrbr wrote:
| 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?
| fredgrott wrote:
| 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.
| delusional wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| cycomanic wrote:
| 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.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| delusional wrote:
| 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.
| gumby wrote:
| 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).
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| 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.
| teekert wrote:
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| 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?
| f6v wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Retractions don't imply wrongdoing, but they are not that
| common so they look very bad.
| bagels wrote:
| 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.
| ta988 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| rolph wrote:
| from the submission;
|
| 1- "The errors the authors corrected "do not alter the
| conclusions of the Article," they wrote in the notice."
|
| 2- "the Blood paper contained falsified images, but Verfaillie
| was not responsible for the manipulations. Blood retracted the
| article in 2009 at the request of the authors. "
|
| 3- "The university found "no breach of research integrity in the
| publications investigated." "
|
| 4- "The notice mentions two image duplications Bik wrote about on
| PubPeer. Because the authors could not retrieve the original
| images, it states: the Editors no longer have
| confidence that the conclusion that multipotent adult progenitor
| cells (MAPCs) engraft in the bone marrow is supported.
| Given the concerns above the Editors no longer have confidence in
| the reliability of the data reported in this article."
| newzisforsukas wrote:
| > contained falsified images
|
| This is so common. Why aren't there more legal outcomes around
| this like
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Poehlman
| bbarnett wrote:
| I think the grant application provided a strong case of
| benefit from the fraud, likely why it succeeded.
|
| (I agree... fraud is fraud, and should be handled with
| criminal law)
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is a big problem with Belgian scientists. Their culture puts
| a lot of pressure on publishing and so on so they tend to falsify
| flashy results over just doing the science.
| rafram wrote:
| The authors were all employed by the University of Minnesota
| Medical School, and I think only one is Belgian. Not sure how
| much Belgian science culture has to do with it.
| renewiltord wrote:
| PI is Belgian. That culture seeps through to the lab. It's a
| risk to science.
| hangonhn wrote:
| This heavily cited but then retracted paper also involved
| University of Minnesota:
| https://www.science.org/content/article/researchers-plan-
| ret...
| f6v wrote:
| I hope you realize there're many different labs with different
| attitudes. I have one of my degrees from Ghent and what you
| describe never came up. AFAIK there wasn't even a requirement
| to publish a paper for a PhD student to graduate anymore.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| This statement holds up pretty well if you drop the country
| from it. Academia follows incentive structures just like
| everything else.
|
| Say you were a software engineer who was paid by how often you
| shipped code with a nice title but you didn't have to give
| people the binaries so noone ever ran them. That is, the
| difference between nice documentation about code that never
| quite existed and scruffy documentation about code that does
| really useful things is you get money for the first and fired
| for the second.
|
| Academia isn't quite that extreme but it does have incentives
| pointed in that direction.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| I have long maintained that the NIH should set aside 25% of its
| budget to fund spot checking of the research output of the
| remaining 75% of funded research. Even if this funding is only
| sufficient to review a handful of papers each year, it stands to
| have a transformative effect on the level of hype and p-hacking
| in many fields, and could nearly eliminate the rare cases of
| actual fraud. It would also improve the overall quality and
| reliability of the literature too.
| epgui wrote:
| I think if we devoted only 1% to this it would be a huge
| improvement.
| ta988 wrote:
| Agreed, once you know what to look for and how to reproduce
| it. What do you do if you can't reproduce? That may mean the
| original research paper doesn't disclose everything
| (malicious or not, but malicious is REALLY frequent) or
| missed an important factor (sometimes doing a reaction in a
| slightly scratched glass container will change the outcome
| entirely).
|
| To come back to the malicious part, for many researchers, not
| publishing the exact way they do things is part of how they
| protect themselves from people reproducing their work. Some
| do it for money (they want to start a business from that
| research), others to avoid competition, others because they
| believe they own the publicly funded research...
| jltsiren wrote:
| And sometimes you fail to reproduce something because you
| failed to do it properly. I don't know how often that
| happens in the field on in the lab, but it's extremely
| common on the computational side.
|
| Very often, the thing you are trying to reproduce isn't
| exactly the same that was published. You have to adapt the
| instructions to your specific case, which can easily go
| wrong. Or maybe you did a mistake in following the
| instructions. Or maybe you mixed the instructions for two
| different cases, because you didn't fully understand the
| subtleties of the topic. Or maybe you made a mistake in
| translating the provided scripts to your institute's
| computational environment.
| subroutine wrote:
| Part of the problem is that methods sections in
| contemporary journals do not provide enough information
| for exact replication, and in the most egregious cases
| let authors write stuff like "cultured cells prepared
| according to prevailing standards".
| faeriechangling wrote:
| It could also stand to go out of its way to try and give more
| prestige to people who manage to get influential papers
| retracted.
| spamizbad wrote:
| This is already happening in academia.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Unfortunately there isn't a neat mechanism like short-
| selling.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Unfortunately 'prestige' is bestowed by the author's peers -
| Police internal affairs detectives don't have much prestige
| within the Police department.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| If I was rich I'd start a journal solely dedicated to
| publishing papers trying to recreate other papers.
| 317070 wrote:
| Wait, you don't need to be rich. With pay-to-publish (also
| known as free access), it is an absolute goldmine.
|
| People generally don't want to do the work of editing and
| publishing, or lack the academic knowhow to do it. But if
| that is not an issue, I don't think money will be an issue
| either.
| caddemon wrote:
| There isn't enough incentive currently to publish
| reproductions, starting a new journal using the same
| general publishing model isn't going to change that. But
| with money to burn you could add some incentive, or you
| could at least do things to improve publication quality
| like actually paying for good peer reviewers.
| burkaman wrote:
| Here's one effort, unfortunately it looks like it never got
| off the ground: http://rescience.org/x.
|
| Here's their motivation in a Nature letter to the editor:
| https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-
| assets/d41586-020...
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Better yet have bounties like how the tech world has bug
| bounties.
| epistasis wrote:
| Do you really think that the current situation poses a >25%
| cost on scientific productivity? Do you think your system would
| be able to recapture that?
|
| That assessment does not match up with what any practicing
| scientist thinks is even within the realm of possibility for
| harm to science.
|
| Reading these conversations is like listening to C-suite execs
| at big companies talk about what employees are getting away
| with via work at home policies.
| lastiteration wrote:
| Most stuff in papers can't be replicated so you can't really
| trust anything and are forced to see what actually works and
| is worth building upon. This is very expensive both in time
| and money.
| j-wags wrote:
| > Do you really think that the current situation poses a >25%
| cost on scientific productivity? Do you think your system
| would be able to recapture that?
|
| Yes and yes. I'm 6 years past defending my PhD and I have low
| confidence in being able to reproduce results from papers in
| my field (computational biophysics).
|
| I was recently at an industry-heavy biophysics conference
| that ran a speed dating event, and my conversation starter
| was "what fraction of papers in our field do you trust?". I
| probably talked to ~20 people, with a median response of
| ~25%.
|
| Even a tiny amount invested in reproduction studies and
| accountability would go a long way. Most papers in
| _computational_ biophysics still don't publish usable code
| and data.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| It's so bad that often I trust companies more than
| academics nowadays. At the end of the day, a company has to
| answer to the customer. If what they offer doesn't actually
| work, they go out of business. Academics often don't have
| to answer to anyone. Just be smart and make the paper look
| good while being careful not to do something that could get
| you nailed for outright fraud.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| We can quibble over the number, maybe it is low as 10%. The
| cost to reproduce a study will be significantly higher than
| to produce it in the first place, due to different
| expertises, equipment and so forth. I estimate at least a 10X
| factor.
|
| And I am intimately familiar with what researchers "get away
| with' while 'working at home'. As a researcher who tried to
| reproduce several research papers only to discover the
| original scientists were wildly exaggerating their claims or
| cleverly disguising fundamental shortcomings, I can assure
| the cost is quite high to the scientific community, well in
| excess of 25% of the annual $48B NIH budget.
|
| I hold a healthy disdain for my fellow scientists. The only
| way to get them to play by the rules in my view is to have a
| threat of a research audit hanging over them.
| purpleblue wrote:
| Does this mean that stem cells cannoot become any type of cell?
| Certainly this should have been easy to test over the last 22
| years?
| jjw1414 wrote:
| It's important to distinguish between the types of stem cells
| when referring to pluripotency (i.e., the ability for a cell to
| differentiate into almost any cell type in the body). Embryonic
| stem cells are considered pluripotent. Adult stem cells are
| more correctly referred to as "multipotent" in that they can be
| coaxed into differentiating into other cell types, but
| typically into cell types close to their own lineage.
| JackFr wrote:
| Doesn't this paper make a fairly straightforward claim, which is
| either true or not? Hasn't there been any further research in the
| past 22 years to either effectively support or undermine the
| conclusions?
| fnord77 wrote:
| There used to be so much hype about the potential for stem cells
| in medicine.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| Nothing should be publishable to the public until it is vetted.
| neilv wrote:
| I personally know two people who complained about fabrications,
| and both had to restart their careers, no longer pursuing
| research.
|
| I've heard stories from others, such as when a fabrication was
| known to students in a lab, and of some playing along with it
| anyway.
|
| We routinely hear on HN of fabrications discovered in journal
| publications.
|
| Exactly how bad is the problem? What's the prevalence, scale, and
| impact?
|
| What are the causes, and how does society address the problem?
| caddemon wrote:
| Straight up fabrication is more common than we'd hope, but
| probably not systemically threatening. I'm much more concerned
| about how poorly replication goes even when authors are not
| malicious/generally following the "status quo" for methodology
| in their subfield.
| gershy wrote:
| It would be so interesting if we came to a consensus that
| "cascading deletes" should apply to research papers. If a paper
| is retracted 20+ years later, and it has 4,500 references, those
| references should be retracted non-negotiably in cascading
| fashion. Perhaps such a practice could lead to better research by
| escalating the consequences of fraud.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I suspect this would have some unintended consequences, not all
| good.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Like what? Currently, there are no consequences when a paper
| is retracted. If we retracted more papers, what would the
| difference be?
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Like very valid research being lost because they mention a
| retracted paper for some minor point that doesn't really
| have a major impact on the final results.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That's already something that doesn't happen to blatantly
| invalid research which is retracted directly. What are
| you worried about?
| jfengel wrote:
| That would certainly lead to people checking their references
| better. But a lot of references are just in passing, and don't
| materially affect the paper citing it.
|
| One would hope that if some work really did materially depend
| on a bogus paper, then they would discover the error sooner
| rather than later.
| arp242 wrote:
| The question is how many of the citations are actually in
| support? As in: some might be citations in the form of "Donald
| Duck's research on coin polishing[1] is not considered due to
| the controversial nature". Or even "examples of controversial
| papers on coin polishing include the work of Donald Duck[1]".
|
| I don't think "number of citations" typically make this
| distinction?
|
| Also for some papers the citation doesn't really matter, and
| you can exclude the entire thing without really affecting the
| paper.
|
| Regardless, this seems like a nice idea on the face of it, but
| practically I foresee a lot of potential problems if done "non-
| negotiably".
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| I love the idea. It would also dampen the tendency to over-
| cite, and disincentivize citation rings. But mainly encourage
| researchers to actually evaluate the papers they're citing
| instead of just cherry picking whatever random crap they can
| find to support their idea.
|
| Maybe negative citations could be categorized separately by
| the authors and not count towards the cited paper's citation
| count and be ignored for cascading citations.
|
| If the citation doesn't materially affect the paper, the
| author can re-publish it with that removed.
| arp242 wrote:
| > If the citation doesn't materially affect the paper, the
| author can re-publish it with that removed.
|
| This paper is 22 years old. Some authors have retired. Some
| are dead.
|
| I really think that at the very least it needs a quick
| sniff test. Which is boring uninteresting work and with
| 4,500 citations that will take some effort, but that's why
| we pay the journals big bucks. Otherwise it's just going to
| be the academic variant of the Scunthorpe problem.
|
| And/or do something more fine-grained than a binary
| retraction, such as adding in a clear warning that a
| citation was retracted and telling readers to double-check
| that citation specifically.
| epistasis wrote:
| This is a completely bonkers idea that would accomplish nothing
| positive and would mostly erase tons of good science.
|
| The idea of punishing third parties for a citation is weird. If
| I quote somebody who lied, I'm at fault? Seriously?
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| You might not be at fault but your work depends on that wrong
| work, so your work is probably wrong too and readers should
| be aware of that. If it doesn't depend on it, then don't cite
| it! People cite the most ridiculous crap, especially in
| introductions listing common sense background knowledge with
| a random citation for every fact. That stuff doesn't really
| affect the paper so it could just be couched in one big "in
| my opinion" instead.
| epistasis wrote:
| > but your work depends on that wrong work, so your work is
| probably wrong
|
| No, absolutely not, that's pure fallacy.
|
| There might be some small subset of citations that work
| like a mathematical proof, but how many of these 4500
| citations could you find that operate that way?
| mkl wrote:
| Academic papers have to cite related research to situate
| their contribution, even if they're not directly building
| on that research. When researchers can't reproduce a
| paper's results, they have to cite that paper when
| reporting that, or no one will know what they're talking
| about and the bad paper cannot be refuted. The whole system
| also needs many compare and contrast citations that aren't
| built on directly or at all, so you know what a paper is
| doing and not doing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The priority isn't about punishing you, or about your
| feelings or career at all. It's about the science.
|
| If you cite something that turns out to be garbage, I'd
| imagine the procedure would be to remove the citation and to
| remove anything in the paper that depends on it, and to
| resubmit. If your paper falls apart without it, then it
| should be binned.
| neilv wrote:
| > _If a paper is retracted 20+ years later, and it has 4,500
| references, those references should be retracted non-negotiably
| in cascading fashion._
|
| Imagine you're reading a research paper, and each citation of a
| retracted paper has a bright red indicator.
|
| Cites of papers that cite retracted papers get orange. Higher
| degrees of separation might get Yellow.
|
| Would that, plus recalculating the citation graph points
| system, implement the "cascading deletes" you had in mind?
|
| It could be trivial feature of hypertext, like we arguably
| should be using already. (Or one could even kludge it into
| viewers for the anachronistic PDF.)
| armchairhacker wrote:
| That would be overwhelming and coarse. You wouldn't know if
| an orange or yellow paper actually relies on the retracted
| citations or it just mentions them in passing, unless you dig
| through the paper yourself to figure this out yourself, but
| most people won't do that.
|
| I think a better method would be for someone to look over
| each paper that cites a retracted paper, see which parts of
| it depend on the retracted data, and cut and/or modify those
| parts (perhaps highlight in red) to show they were
| invalidated. Then if there's a lot of or particularly
| important cut or modified parts, do this for the papers that
| cite the modified paper, and so on.
|
| This may also be tedious. But you can have people who aren't
| the original authors do it (ideally people who like to look
| for retracted data), and you can pay them full-time for it.
| Then the researchers who work full-time reading papers and
| writing new ones can dedicate much less their time
| questioning the legitimacy of what they read and amending
| what they've written long ago.
| neilv wrote:
| I don't know which way would be better, since I don't know
| the subtleties of citations in different fields. I'll just
| note that automatically applying this modest taint to
| papers that cite retracted papers is small incentive for
| the person to be discerning in what they cite.
|
| Of course, some papers pretty much have to be cited,
| because they're obviously very relevant, and you just have
| to risk an annoying red mark appearing in your paper if
| that mandatory citation is ever retracted.
|
| But citations that are more discretionary or political, in
| some subfields (e.g., you know someone from that PI's lab
| is going to be a reviewer), if you think their pettiness
| might be matched by the sloppiness/sketchiness of their
| work, then maybe you don't give them that citation, after
| all.
|
| If this means everyone in a field has incentive for
| citations to become lower-risk for this embarrassing taint,
| then maybe that field starts taking misconduct and
| reviewing more seriously.
| hex4def6 wrote:
| Riffing on this,
|
| I wonder if you could assign a citation tree score to each
| first-level citation.
|
| For example, I cite papers A,B,C,D. Paper A cites papers
| 1,2,3,4. Paper 1 cites a retracted paper, plus 3 good ones.
|
| We could say "Paper 1" was 0.75, or 75% 'truthy'. "Paper A"
| would be 3x good + 1x 075% = 3.75/4 = 93.7% truthy, and so
| on.
|
| Basically, the deeper in the tree that the retracted paper
| is, the less impact it propagates forth.
|
| Maybe you could multiply each citation by it's impact factor
| at the top level paper.
|
| At the top level, you'd see:
|
| Paper A = 93.7% truthy, impact factor 100 -> 93.7 / 100 pts
|
| Paper B = 100% truthy, IPF 10 -> 10/10 pts
|
| Paper C = 3/4 pts
|
| Paper D = 1/1 pts
|
| Total = 107 / 115 pts = 93% truthy citation list
|
| If a paper has an outsized impact factor, it gets weighted
| more heavily, since presumably the community has put more
| stock in it.
| demondemidi wrote:
| Cascading invalidate. I don't think it should disappear, I
| think it should be put in deep storage for future researchers
| doing studies on misinformation propagation.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| It probably makes sense to look over papers that cite retracted
| papers and see if any part of them rely on the invalidated
| results. But unless the entire paper is worthless without them,
| it shouldn't be outright retracted.
|
| How many papers entirely depend on the accuracy of one cited
| experiment (even if the experiment is replicated)?
| Neywiny wrote:
| Jumping in with the others, this is not good. When I've written
| papers in the past, and used peer reviewed, trusted journals,
| what else am I supposed to do? Recreate every experiment and
| analysis all the way down? Even if it's an entirely SW project,
| where maybe one could do that, presumably the code itself is
| maliciously wrong. You'd have to check way too much to make
| this productive.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| Most citations are just noting previous work. Here are some
| papers citing the retracted one. (Selected randomly).
|
| >Therefore, MSC-based bone regeneration is considered an
| optimal approach [53]. [0]
|
| >MSC-subtypes were originally considered to contain pluripotent
| developmental capabilities (79,80). [1]
|
| Both these examples give a single passing mention of the
| article. It makes no sense for thousands of researchers to go
| out and remove these citations. Realisticly you can't expect
| people to perform every experiment they read before they cite
| it. Meanwhile there has been a lot of development in this field
| despite the retracted paper.
|
| [0] https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4409/8/8/886
|
| [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3402/jev.v4.30087
| __lbracket__ wrote:
| Professors: Lying, cheating, back-stabbing for a fistful of
| federal dollars. These same leeches brought us DEI. Next the
| feminists will cry discrimination ("Academic honor code
| disproportionately affects women!!")
| Harmohit wrote:
| We strongly need a "prestigious" journal devoted to publishing
| reproductions of other studies. Moreover, we need to change our
| perception of a good scientist. Doing novel research is awesome
| and great but reproducing other people's work is also important -
| it is a fundamental pillar of science.
|
| The problem is even more pronounced with more and more
| specialized and expensive equipment required for doing certain
| experiments.
| brightball wrote:
| Is there a site that tracks retractions?
| mkl wrote:
| You mean like https://retractionwatch.com, the site that this
| very article is on?
|
| It's pretty popular on HN too:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=retractionwatch.com
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-06-18 23:00 UTC)