In general, science writers must learn to navigate the complicated terrain of two different professions – their own writerly world and the world of scientific research. Understanding the former helps the writer stay solvent. Understanding the latter helps the writer stay smart – figure out what research is worth reporting, which scientists are credible, and how to put a given study into the context it deserves.
Among my favorite tools in this regard, is Retraction Watch, the blog created by Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, which details and investigates scientific retractions and the reasons for the withdrawal of certain papers. If you follow the blog, you end up with a surprising wealth of insight into the high demand way that science works, the standards set by research journals, the evolving rules meant to insure integrity. And you also get sense of repeat offenders in this process – for instance, as in this post, titled "Retraction 46 arrives for Diederik Stapel".
One can imagine that researchers thus profiled are not members of the Retraction Watch fan club. And this brings me to this week's very curious news about the website and about a former Duke University cancer researcher named Anil Potti. Currently employed by the Cancer Center of North Dakota, in Grand Forks, Potti lost his place at Duke following charges of data fabrication, charges notable enough that even 60 Minutes produced a feature on his story. It was titled Deception at Duke.
Meanwhile, Retraction Watch continued to track withdrawn Potti papers as the investigation into his issues continued. Until this week that is, when this notice was posted:
If you went looking for ten of our posts about Anil Potti today, you would have seen error messages instead. That’s because someone claiming to be from a news site in India alleged we violated their copyright with those ten posts about the former Duke University cancer researcher who has had 19 papers retracted, corrected, or partially retracted.
In response to the claim, Word Press removed all the Retraction Watch posts about Potti. But in a fascinating analysis, John Timmer at Ars Technica called this one of a long line of spurious DMCA takedowns. For instance, Oransky discovered that the "news site" didn't exist until after Retraction Watch had published nine of the pieces that were supposedly first published in India.
Timmer wasn't the only writer to find the claims, let's say, dubious. At Geek-o-Meter, Ian Chant wrote up the events under the headline "Bogus DMCA Claim Takes Down Retraction Watch Blog Posts." At Fudzilla, Nick Farrell's piece was titled "DMCA Abuse of the Day." Not surprisingly Retraction Watch has filed a counter to the so-called copyright violation claims, seeking to restore the original posts.
Meanwhile, it's worth considering what inspired those DMCA claims. As Ars Technica points out, Potti coincidentally recently hired a company that focuses specifically on improving the online reputation of its clients. When I asked Oransky whether he thought the DMCA notice was related to that action, he answered: "On the record, I can only say we know he has hired an online reputation manager and that this is a common tactic."
Right. And this really brings me back to my starting point. We can learn about the high-demand world of science and how scientists operate – for better and for worse – in that world by following Retraction Watch.
— Deborah Blum
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