(Jan 12, 2021 07:26 AM)C C Wrote: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/checkpoints/202101/the-bad-retraction

INTRO: Just before Christmas, the prestigious journal "Nature Communications" retracted an article that examined the informal mentorship of junior scientists. Among other findings, the paper concluded junior female scientists benefitted from male mentors more than they did female mentors. This set off a firestorm of moral indignation on social media, putting pressure on the journal which then retracted the article following a second (and very unusual) round of peer-review.

Is such a retraction warranted? Or are we seeing retraction increasingly being used by journals as censorship of unpopular conclusions in the “cancel culture” age? Wired magazine recently documented that retractions of controversial science seem to be on the increase. The Wired article made an unironic comparison to The Purge movie, acknowledging that politically charged papers are judged differently than those that are not.

Obviously, any research paper with fatal flaws should be retracted. But this shouldn’t be based on popularity or Twitter mobs. Indeed, the argument that controversial papers should get more scrutiny is an odd one, scientifically. Such an argument is a recipe for disturbing scientific inquiry, which obviously distorts the scientific record: you better find the right things with your data or else you’ll be canceled. Further, papers that support popular moral narratives are arguably as likely to do harm as those that contradict them. Bad science leads to bad policy, bad medical decisions, bad use of grant funding, promotion of societal myths, and distracts from real solutions to real problems. That’s true whether the finding is popular or not... (MORE - details)