Science Needs Vigilantes
By Neuroskeptic | December 31, 2013 11:36 am
Lately, there have been increasing numbers of online, unofficial – what might be called vigilante – investigations into published scientific work.
The blog Retraction Watch and its comment section are a good example of this. Commenters, often anonymous, will get onto the trail of a certain researcher (generally following a retraction) and scrutinize their publications (e.g. here) looking for plagiarism, image manipulation, statistically improbable data, or other evidence of bad practice.
Other venues for this scientific vigilantism include PubPeer, dedicated blogs such as Science Fraud (now on hiatus after legal threats). On occasion I’ve turned my hand to this.
Now, when one of these investigations gets underway, a funny thing often happens: someone will ask about the “motives” of the investigators.
article continues at: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2013/12/31/publish-damned