Retractions of scientific papers-and the lack of retractions-draw international media attention
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0178
It’s often said that science self-corrects, but how well does the scientific literature self-correct? The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have recently pressed that question in long, prominently displayed articles—and this week Nature publicized what may be an important component of the answer: the CrossRef coalition’s new CrossMark system for helping published papers continue to evolve online.
On 17 April, the Times‘s Science Times front page featured Carl Zimmer’s “ A sharp rise in retractions prompts calls for reform .” It reported that retractions of scientific papers are “rising at an alarming rate” and suggested that the phenomenon might be revealing “a much more profound problem,” namely, “a dysfunctional scientific climate.” Zimmer cited an October 2011 Nature report that “published retractions had increased tenfold over the past decade, while the number of published papers had increased by just 44 percent.”
On 21 April, the Wall Street Journal‘s front page featured Amy Dockser Marcus’s “ Lab mistakes hobble cancer studies but scientists slow to take remedies .” It argued that there now exists “a largely secret fellowship of scientists whose work has been undermined by the contamination and misidentification of cancer cell lines used in research labs around the world.” Marcus reported that “a fifth to a third or more of cancer cell lines tested were mistakenly identified—with researchers unwittingly studying the wrong cancers, slowing progress toward new treatments and wasting precious time and money.”
She also reported a corresponding problem with correcting the scientific literature:
It is a problem hiding in plain sight. Warnings to properly test cancer cell lines have sounded since the 1960s, a decade after scientists started making human cancer cell lines. But researchers who yelled loudest were mostly ignored by colleagues fearful such a mistake in their own labs would discredit years of work. Leaders in the field say one of the biggest obstacles to finding a cancer cure may not be the many defenses nature affords malignancies, but the reluctance of scientists to address the problem.
Marcus quoted the consequent dismay of John Masters, a professor of experimental pathology at University College London. He cherishes but now has misgivings about the belief that the “whole ethos of science is to strive for the truth and produce a balanced argument about the evidence.” Masters co-chaired an international committee that issued voluntary guidelines to rectify the problem, but he also said that in the worst cases, “it may be causing drugs to be used which are inappropriate for that particular type of cancer.”
Marcus’s key paragraph bears directly on the self-correction-of-science issue of retractions: “One challenge is getting scientists to acknowledge their cell line is contaminated. The prevailing attitude, according to researchers, is that the other lab’s cell line may be contaminated but not mine.”
The CrossMark initiative bears on retractions and more. Nature announces it in this week’s Seven Days section but also directs readers to Richard Van Noorden’s 27 April Nature News Blog posting, which is headlined “ Has this research paper been updated? Click here to find out. ” Van Noorden explains:
The system consists of a logo ... that will appear on every PDF. Clicking on the logo brings a pop-up box; clicking on its ‘Status’ tab shows Internet-connected users updates to the work, such as retractions, corrections or other notes. Scientists will also be able to sign up for alerts to changes in a research paper’s status.
But there’s also a ‘Record’ tab, in which publishers could record much more than official updates. In theory, the tab could show additional content, such as a paper’s peer-review process, publication history, funding sources and, perhaps, media coverage or download metrics.
Van Noorden emphasizes the expectation that CrossMark “could help the published scientific record become more self-correcting.”
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.