News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Why I retracted my Nature paper: correcting the scientifi... by cantankerous on Wednesday June 19, 2013 @12:49PM (#5906649)
I'd tend to agree if we had some 3rd party verification of the inability to reproduce the results of the initial study. Right now it's somebody vs somebody else.
Re:Why I retracted my Nature paper: correcting the scientifi... by prospero on Wednesday June 19, 2013 @01:05PM (#5906756)
The article mentions several independent failures to reproduce.
Re:Why I retracted my Nature paper: correcting the scientifi... by dllthomas on Wednesday June 19, 2013 @01:50PM (#5907026)
Further, "We think it's reproducible" is an absurd defense. If it's reproducible, point to a reproduction. If it hasn't been reproduced, you don't have any clue if it's reproducible.
Re:Why I retracted my Nature paper: correcting the scientifi... by ScottBurson on Wednesday June 19, 2013 @03:50PM (#5907751)
I agree that some caution seems advisable.

What I would really like to see in such cases is not so much other people simply trying to reproduce the results, but an investigation into why one group got different results. Certainly it could be for a scientifically uninteresting reason -- ranging from outright fraud, to sloppy experimental technique causing contamination, to arithmetic errors in analyzing the results -- but it could also be for a scientifically interesting reason: perhaps they used cells from a different supplier that differ in some relevant property that nobody had previously noticed, for example.

In short, there might be some interesting discovery to be had, buried underneath the discrepancy. I hate to see us overlook that possibility in our haste to get the "right" answer.