In a recent tweet (or series of tweets) Kaitlyn Werner shares her experience of having a paper rejected after she posted all her data and code and submitted her paper to a journal. The journal rejected the paper because a reviewer looked over the data and had “a hunch” that there was a mistake.
In a recent interview on Retraction Watch, Andrew Gelman reveals that what keeps him up at night isn’t scientific fraud, it’s “the sheer number of unreliable studies — uncorrected, unretracted — that have littered the literature.” He then goes on to argue that retractions cannot be the answer. His argument is simple.
This summer is the first since my retirement from government that I find myself without academic obligations here or abroad. Instead, I am focused on starting to rehab a tattered house that I recently purchased jointly with one of my children. Surprising parallels exist between repairing a house and pursuing scientific research, at least for persons with an active imagination.