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A Nature paper published in 2000 currently has around 400 citations, but there is a mistake in the paper and surprisingly, still it gets citations. The mistake affects the result of the paper in a way that half of the arguments in the paper are invalid.

I warned the authors two years ago and they confirmed the mistake. I expected them to put some announcement that there is a mistake in the paper to avoid misleading researchers, but unfortunately they have not done so.

How should we address these situations? Should we send a comment and report it to the editor? Is it rude? Or should we simply dismiss it because it is an old paper?

aeismail
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O_o
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    Why they are not publishing an erratum? It is the best way to do it. –  Sep 30 '14 at 16:56
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    One option: correct their method, redo the experiment, prove them wrong, publish the results in Nature and collect the "job, promotion, and more research funds" that you mentioned in your comment. – Cape Code Sep 30 '14 at 17:06
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    @Jigg, Sounds great, but I am theoretician :( and the experiment needs quite advanced facilities. – O_o Sep 30 '14 at 18:45
  • @Gobinath, I guess, they think it damages their reputation as it was one of the first papers in this field, but as you mentioned, it is the best option for them. – O_o Sep 30 '14 at 18:47
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    I cannot add comments yes, so this by no means is meant to be the actual answer. Have you tried contacting Retraction Watch? Alternatively, a more direct approach would be to contact the editor and outline the reasons you believe there is an error, including proof of your communications with the authors, admitting they were incorrect. – I Heart Beats Sep 30 '14 at 15:03
  • @I Heart Beats, Thank you for your comment and the weblog. The annoying part is that in science community, in many cases a Nature, Science, or Cell publication (or any high impact factor journal) can change a life; people get job, promotion, and more research funds by these publications. They should be more responsible about what they have published. – O_o Sep 30 '14 at 15:14
  • @S.A. is this also something you can approach this blog with? http://www.iflscience.com/ I think the main focus is the integrity of the past research and any future investigations that may have been impacted. If you have proof of wrong doing, and clearly this is bothering you or you would not be posting here, is there a way to draw attention to this using scientifically minded social media outlets? – I Heart Beats Sep 30 '14 at 15:30
  • @I Heart Beats, Actually, I prefer the authors of the paper do this by themselves or in an anonymous way. That is why I informed them directly. I do not like to make it public by myself as it does not build any reputation for me. I will look more carefully into the new weblog, looks interesting. Thank you. – O_o Sep 30 '14 at 15:46
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    Are the authors are reluctant to take action? If so, does this bother you? If it seems that your ideal outcome is not possible, perhaps either you need to let it go (you did mention that the publication is old) or to take action yourself so it can be off your chest. Have there been publications that essentially corrected the original paper with their new knowledge? – I Heart Beats Sep 30 '14 at 16:53
  • @I Heart Beats, Yes, they do not like to do that! I guess, they think it damages their reputation as it was one of the first papers in this field. The only reason that I would like it to be corrected is that I spent 2 months on some project based on their results and after that I realised it has some problem. It prevents people to fall into the same wrong loop. Although in their future papers, somehow indirectly, they recovered the mistake, still people refer to the original paper as well. – O_o Sep 30 '14 at 18:44
  • @ Jigg, they may also be interested in knowing about it, or perhaps starting a side forum for questionable results etc. The logic was that these people are interested in documenting and exposing scientific injustice, which seems to be the case here. – I Heart Beats Sep 30 '14 at 20:34
  • This answer is low quality. Retraction Watch is not going to get into a dispute over the quality of a paper; they care only about retracted papers, and it is clear that the authors are not retracting the paper, so I feel like the Retraction Watch suggestion is a complete misunderstanding of their focus. As far as contacting the editor, in my personal experience I do not think this is going to lead anywhere useful. The best outcome you can hope for is for the editor to tell you "submit a short response paper and I'll have it refereed"; so why wait to contact the editor? Just do that now. – D.W. Sep 30 '14 at 23:08
  • @IHeartBeats, why did you delete your answer? It was very useful :'( – O_o Oct 01 '14 at 20:34
  • Have you checked with other people in the subject about this? It happens that some errors in past papers are folklore, well-known to specialist in the field, and that they stay that way for a long time without being documented. This is very unfortunate as it wastes newcomers to the field time and efforts, but you should know the precise unofficial status of the thing before taking action. – Benoît Kloeckner Oct 13 '14 at 20:43
  • An error is an error and doesn't get any less so for the passage of time. The authors need to correct their paper, it is misconduct if they don't. –  Oct 13 '14 at 19:28

2 Answers2

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Some journals accept a type of short correspondence or comment in which objections to some published material can be submitted. If you can articulate your objections in a scientific way suitable for publishing you may try this approach. For example, imagine the original analysis has some error. Reanalyzing the data gives different results and invalidates the previous publication. Conversely in this approach the authors of the original study have the opportunity to reply to your complaints.

An example of this is a commentary published in Nature Genetics, where the authors highlight important deficiencies in the design of the experiments in an earlier publication that can lead to incorrect conclusions. Of course, the authors of the original paper are allowed to respond to the comments.

Correspondences have the advantage that can be very short. I am not sure at this moment if Nature also accepts this format.

If the material that demonstrates the error in the original publication is substantial it may grant an additional publication. This is for example what happened with the paper that demonstrated the divergence between human and mice inflammatory responses, which led to a response paper analyzing the same data, and arriving at the opposite results.

aeismail
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ddiez
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  • Thank you, good examples. What about the fact that the paper that I have mentioned published 14 years ago?! Does anyone feel it is pointless to comment on such an old paper? Gravedigging! – O_o Sep 30 '14 at 16:25
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    @S.A.: I guess "old" is a relative term. In my field (mathematics) a 14 year old paper would be considered pretty recent. "Old" would start at maybe 40 or 50 years. – Nate Eldredge Sep 30 '14 at 18:44
  • @NateEldredge, You are right, mathematics never ages! but natural sciences are ageing too fast until they mature really well. I should ask editor to force the authors to write the erratum. – O_o Sep 30 '14 at 19:14
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    I think the fact that is an old paper should not be considered. If the paper is highly cited and people still cite the paper then it means it has a significant impact. If the impact is based on some wrong conclusions then it is important to point that out. I would say it is ethically the right thing to do. – ddiez Oct 01 '14 at 05:06
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    A related comment. If the paper is old, chances are that someone else has tried to replicate the experiments or the conclusions. So far no one has been able to find anything wrong? It is possible that even with their mistake their conclusions turned out to be correct... – ddiez Oct 01 '14 at 05:08
  • There was a famous case in biology a few years ago in which a paper was retracted six years after it was first published. The decision to retract was taken by the PLOS Pathology editors, not the original authors, who would have preferred to update the original paper with an erratum. – Gaurav Jun 03 '15 at 05:34
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In addition to the excellent suggestions above, I'd also suggest blogging about it. A recent study found that corrections to the literature were 8x as likely to occur if blogged about, as opposed to corrections that had gone the traditional route (contacting editors, authors, etc).

StacyKonkiel
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  • Very interesting; the web is so frightening! – O_o Sep 30 '14 at 20:07
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    In this case I would say the web is a good thing. It means wrongdoers cannot hide because everyone will know what they did anyway. Well, the problem would be when there are false accusations... – ddiez Oct 01 '14 at 05:10