A BLOG THAT REPORTS ON RETRACTIONS.

A BLOG THAT REPORTS ON RETRACTIONS. The article by Yudhijit Battacharjee contains a link to the Retraction Watch blog, which is devoted to reporting on scientific articles which are retracted. The number of retractions is surprising. I counted posts on 12 retractions or corrections during the period from April 19 to April 26.

Although the number of retractions may appear discouraging, it is encouraging that the blog exists, as is also the case with journals devoted to negative results (see, for example, my post here). Retractions and corrections are essential to the scientific process. This Retraction Watch blog post identifies what they call a “model retraction in the Journal of Neurochemistry”. The retraction explains that after the paper was published, a variable was discovered that had not been controlled for in the experiment. The blog argues that that other journals should follow the precedent: “See how useful that is to anyone trying to build on this work…?”