These researchers critique bad science. Now their own paper has been retracted.
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A study trumpeting the value of applying rigorous standards to scientific research was retracted, in part because the authors didn’t follow their own advice. In the sprawling project, scientists in four labs designed and tested experiments and then tried to replicate one another’s work.
The intention, according to the study, was to test methods aimed at ensuring the integrity of published research. But the group neglected to fully document key aspects of the project ahead of running the experiments, one of the practices the study was looking to test, leading to the retraction. The authors—who include two of the most prominent voices advocating for research reforms—dispute some of the criticisms and said any errors they made were inadvertent.
“It wasn’t because we were trying to fool someone, but it is because we were incompetent," said Leif Nelson, one of the authors, a marketing professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Nelson helps write the Data Colada blog, a website known for discussing research methods and debunking studies built on faulty or fraudulent data. Recently, the blog gained attention for its blistering critique of a star Harvard Business School professor’s work, alleging that her research contained falsified data.
After its own investigation, Harvard placed the professor, Francesca Gino, on unpaid administrative leave. Gino, who has denied wrongdoing, is suing the university. Her defamation claims against the bloggers were dismissed.
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