Retraction

13 Responses to Retraction

1. Mark Tummers says:

   25 July 2008 at 05:20

   And it gives you another publication to put on your CV!
2. Boris Cvek says:

   25 July 2008 at 08:26

   Excatly, Mark 🙂 Two papers in Science!:
   1. retracted
   2. retraction
   This is my point for a long time: what the publication is ABOUT (not where it is).
3. Mark Tummers says:

   25 July 2008 at 08:40

   On the other hand, the paper who presented “spurious” data could have elicited a lot of discussion in other groups, and therefore could have stimulated science in general more than a paper that was actually correct.
   I must admit immediately that this is just speculation since I have absolutely no qualifications in the field of physics other than absolutely failing most of my exams when I was still a wee lad. And hence I cannot assess the situation at all since I’m not an expert in this subfield of physics. In fact, I am merely a biologist.
   I also didn’t fail to note that one PhD student of the same lab probably spend years on a false lead due to the paper.
   Maybe I should return to the point I was trying to make: why are we so obsessed with being correct to the point that it is seen as a defeat when we are proven wrong, when science is the process where no truth lasts.
   In that respect this retraction was very classy. They have taken it with the chin up.
4. Richard P. Grant says:

   25 July 2008 at 08:42

   That was, I guess, my point Mark. On the chin. Which is good for science as an endeavour.
5. Boris Cvek says:

   25 July 2008 at 08:58

   Mark: Maybe I should return to the point I was trying to make: why are we so obsessed with being correct to the point that it is seen as a defeat when we are proven wrong, when science is the process where no truth lasts.
   Boris: I agree! When I was creating my reply on your comment, I wanted to add somehing like this: the intelectual fruitfulness of the work, no matter if retracted or not, is much more important than its accuracy. That is the question what the publication is ABOUT… When von Laue suggested that X-rays could be diffracted by crystals, he received Nobel Prize, not physicists who proved it.
   Simply, your words are brilliant: “…when science is the process where no truth lasts.”
6. Mark Tummers says:

   25 July 2008 at 09:14

   “Simply, your words are brilliant:”
   I must have plagiarized that from somewhere then, since I am just a run-of-the-mill biologist.
   (although google doesn’t seem to come up with any direct hits)
7. Jennifer Rohn says:

   25 July 2008 at 14:37

   Yet another example of the robustness of the publication system, despite its much-maligned reputation.
8. Mark Tummers says:

   25 July 2008 at 14:47

   How would you define robustness?
9. John Hogenesch says:

   25 July 2008 at 15:07

   Resistance to perturbation (e.g. genetic, environmental,).
10. John Hogenesch says:

    25 July 2008 at 15:08

    Resistance to perturbation.
11. Bob O'Hara says:

    25 July 2008 at 16:20

    This reminds me of an erratum I saw. It was re-published in The Scientific Literature, but the original was Breene (1967) Journal of Chemical Physics 47: 1882. This is it:

    The material contained in this article is nonsense and should be discarded in toto. As will be shown elsewhere, one of the most serious defects is the poor transformation given by Eq. (9). It is to be emphasized that the printer set the manuscript precisely as the author concocted it.

    And yes, that was written by the author of the original article.
12. Cath Ennis says:

    25 July 2008 at 18:37

    I spotted this one too. Basically, now that we know more about this technique, we realise that we have no idea how to use it.
13. Richard P. Grant says:

    25 July 2008 at 22:12

    I think I’d go for ‘strong and healthy’, John and Mark.

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