(This article was originally published at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, and syndicated at StatsBlogs.)
Under the heading, “Why that Evolution paper should never have been retracted: A reviewer speaks out,” biologist Ben Ashby writes:
The problems of post-publication peer review have already been highlighted elsewhere, and it certainly isn’t rare for a paper to be retracted due to an honest mistake (although most retractions are due to misconduct). Moreover, one could argue that the mistakes in Kokko and Wong’s 2007 paper were sufficient to warrant a retraction as they significantly affected the conclusions. But by that logic, a large number of empirical studies should also be retracted due to incorrect statistical analyses or overreliance on fickle p-values, leading to irreproducible results.
OK, I have no problems so far, except to note that this is never gonna happen.
The part I don’t like is what comes next:
My concern is that the forced retraction of the original paper sends a bad message to the scientific community. Kokko [co-author of the original paper that got retracted, and also of the later paper that pointed out the error] has effectively been penalized for critiquing her own work, when in fact she should be applauded for her honesty.
No no no no no! Retraction is not a “penalty,” it is just a matter of correcting the scientific record.
Maybe there should be no such thing as retraction, or maybe we could ban the word “retraction” and simply offer “corrections.” That would be fine with me. The point is never to “expunge the record,” it’s about correcting the record so that later scholars don’t take a mistaken claim as being true, or proven.
But, to the extent there are retractions, or corrections, or whatever you want to call them: Sure, just do it. It’s not a penalty or a punishment. I published corrections for two of my papers because I found that they were in error. That’s what you do when you find a mistake.
I agree with Ashby when he writes:
These problems need to be highlighted at source (i.e. as corrections/erratum next to the original paper), with readers directed to the new paper for a fuller exploration of the corrected model.
I just don’t see how this differs from any other correction or retraction in the scientific literature. When there is an error, you want it to stay in the record, along with its correction.
Summary
Ashby writes:
In the case of Kokko and Wong (2007), does a retraction achieve anything that an Erratum or Technical Comment could not? In my opinion, no.
I agree and will go one step further. Does a retraction (in the sense of expunging the original material from the published record) ever achieve anything that an Erratum or Technical Comment could not? In my opinion, no.
P.S. Just to elaborate slightly: In general, I don’t imagine this correction procedure will be done by journals. There are just too many papers with serious errors. Even if only 10% of published papers have serious errors, that represents millions of possible corrections to be written, evaluated, and published. So I expect most of this will be done using external post-publication review.
But, when publications do want to correct the record, I think it makes sense to do so with corrections rather than retractions.
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