Retractions in Science
What happens when a mistake is found in a published research article? Ask Science takes a look at scientific retractions and corrections.
Lee Falin, PhD
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Retractions in Science
In the poem “An Essay on Criticism,” Alexander Pope wrote: “To err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine.”
In my latest episode, called Science Q&A, I made a mistake in answering a reader’s question about water beading up on his windshield. He asked:
“…the areas of the windshield outside the range of the windshield wipers coalesce into droplets on the window, while the area where the windshield wipers had wiped, the water didn’t coalesce into droplets – it just ran off in a sheet.”
In response I stated:
“Generally, when water starts forming droplets like that, it’s because it’s sitting on some kind of hydrophobic surface which is preventing it from making hydrogen bonds.”
This explanation about water beading on the windshield was correct (see this more in-depth explanation about water beading and contact anglesopens XML file ). However my hypothesis for why this was happening was completely wrong, because I misread the reader’s observations completely:
“…most likely the wipers are leaving a residue of rubber and/or teflon across the area of the windshield where they pass. This results in that portion of the window being partially hydrophobic, which causes the water to bead up, since it can’t spread out very well.”
That might have been a great hypothesis if the water had been beading up in the center of the window, but since the question states that the water was beading up in the areas that the wipers weren’t passing, this hypothesis is complete bunk.
Fortunately, several Ask Science listeners were kind enough to write in and inform me of this error, including a listener named Dave who provided his own hypothesis, which sounds considerably more likely than mine:
“The explanation of water beading up on windshields is exactly backwards. The sheets of water are on the central wiped section, because the wipers have scraped off the hydrophobic sheen of oil and rubber that collects as we drive, the water beads up on the outside sections.”
Thanks Dave!.
Retractions and Corrections
As embarrassing as such a mistake can be, I’ve decided to turn this into an opportunity to talk about something that isn’t spoken about nearly enough in the scientific community: corrections and retractions.
As some of you might know, after a scientist has finished a particular batch of research, they typically write about it in a research paper. In that paper they discuss the research questions they were addressing, their hypothesis, the experiments they used to test their hypothesis, and the results of the experiments. At the end of each paper is usually a discussion section where the scientist gives their interpretation of the results and what they might mean for the future.
Once satisfied with their paper, they submit it to a scientific journal for publication. The journal editor will review the paper and then send a copy of it to two or three anonymous reviewers who will look over the paper to determine if the work has merit, if the experimental methods are sound, and if the conclusions reached are supported by the results of the experiment.
The reviewers will make comments and recommendations about the fate of the paper and send those back to the editor. The editor will then decide whether to accept the paper, reject it, or request additional information from the scientist. Collectively, this process is called “peer-review,” because the paper is being reviewed by the scientist’s peers.
Once a paper has been published, it appears on the journal’s website, is (usually) printed in their magazine, and is indexed in several 3rd party indexes, such as Google Scholar and PubMed. Other researchers can then find those papers when they are conducting their own research in similar fields.
Mea Culpa
Unfortunately the process is far from foolproof, and sometimes mistakes slip through the system. When a paper with a mistake is published, one of three things can happen. Either nobody will ever know, someone will realize there’s a mistake and will issue a correction (technically called a corrigendum), or the paper will be retracted, meaning it is stricken from the scientific record.
According to the research journal Nature, the decision to issue a correction versus a retraction comes down to the nature of the mistake and its impact on the overall message of the paper. If the core message of the paper is still valid, but there was some flaw in the methodology or presentation of the results, a correction is issued. If the core message of the paper is no longer valid, then the paper is retracted.
Unfortunately while the media typically reports wildly (and sometimes inaccurately) when a paper is first issued, almost nobody hears about a retraction (much less a correction) unless it’s associated with a sensational scandal.
Since many people store papers related to their field of research in their own personal reference libraries, they might never know that a paper they’re using to guide their research is flawed. Even some major 3rd party indexes suffer from this problem.
A 2012 study in the Journal of the Medical Library Association searched the internet for over 1,700 papers that had been retracted between the years of 1973 and 2010. Over 280 of those papers were still available in a variety of locations, including educational websites, major 3rd party indexing services, and commercial websites. And over 1,300 of the retracted papers were found in multiple online personal reference libraries.
This means that despite the fact that those papers have been retracted either by the journals or the scientists themselves due to inaccuracies, flaws, or flat out scientific misconduct, those papers still sit in the public domain waiting to be used as the rationale behind further research, medical decisions, and public policy decisions.
Who Watches the Watchers?
Fortunately if you’re interested in keeping up with which bits of science turn out to be not as scientific as originally thought, there’s a fantastic resource you can turn to called Retraction Watch.
Retraction Watch is a blog started in 2010 by Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus to address several issues they found with the retraction process, including the lack of transparency that often masks why a retraction occurred.
If you’re interested in the research presented in a paper that was retracted, it’s important to know just why that retraction occurred. Was it because of technical errors which led to the wrong conclusion? If so, you might be able to deduce a different, though similarly interesting conclusion from the same paper. Or was it because the scientists lied about the experiments ever having been done in the first place? Retraction Watch seeks to answer these and further questions.
Conclusion
So now you know more about scientific research papers and retractions, as well as how to keep up with what has been retracted and why.
If you have a question you’d like to see on a future episode (which I promise to try and read more carefully than I did that windshield wiper question), send me a message at everydayeinstein@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email, or on twitter at @QDTEinstein.
