Last Thursday, Kenneth Chang of The New York Times reported, in a brief story, that the Nobel Prize winner Linda B. Buck (left) had retracted two research papers originally published in Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Buck shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004 for her work on the sense of smell.
The Times has reported occasionally on Buck’s work, so it was important–and responsible–for the Times to note the retraction. The retracted papers were not part of the work that won Buck the Nobel, and so the consequences, from the public’s point of view, are minimal.
But it’s an important bit of follow-up; if we report what researchers are doing, we should report what they are undoing.
The Times has also reported regularly on the work of Savio Woo, a cancer researcher and the head of the gene and cell medicine department at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and a past president of the American Society for Gene Therapy. He is, in short, a prominent researcher.
Woo also retracted two papers last week, following the earlier retraction of four others. Yet, as far as I can determine, the Times did not report on that retraction. Admittedly, Woo is not a Nobel Prize winner, but he is a notable researcher whose doings the Times has covered. Should not the paper have also covered these undoings? It could even have done so in the same article in which it reported on Buck.
I found out about the Woo retraction from the excellent (and relatively new) blog Retraction Watch, presided over by Adam Marcus, managing editor of Anesthesiology News, and Ivan Oransky, executive editor of Reuters Health. Not only did Retraction Watch report on Woo’s latest retraction, it has been covering him regularly for a month. Where were the rest of us on this? If you’ve written a story on Woo, you owe this reporting to your readers, listeners, or clickers. (Incidentally, Chief Tracker Charlie Petit beat me to the punch on this one, mentioning Retraction Watch last month in connection with the Marc Hauser affair at Harvard.)
I confess that when Retraction Watch appeared, I predicted (silently, so nobody could catch me on it later) that it would die a slow death, because there would be too few retractions to justify paying attention to this worthy but misguided endeavor.
For what must surely be the first time in my reporting career, I was wrong.
Marcus and Oransky are finding something to post several times a week. The scientific establishment is apparently publishing and retracting unsubstantiated research papers all the time. That’s a story! And it’s one that most of us have missed.
Add Retraction Watch to your feed. I’m guessing you will find plenty of ideas to steal. And your editors will marvel at how well connected you are.
– Paul Raeburn
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