\nWhy MacArthur is Backing a Popular Blog About Flawed and Fraudulent Science<\/a><\/div>\nInside Philanthropy <\/font><\/strong><\/div>\nby Tate Williams<\/div>\nDecember 23, 2014<\/div>\nMacArthur just gave $400,000 to a popular blog about flawed and fraudulent science, so it can deepen its coverage and build a comprehensive database of journal retractions. We chatted with the program officer behind the grant about why got Mac into the science watchdog game, and the foundation’s adventurous side program for such grants. <\/p>\n
Since editor and physician Ivan Oransky and science writer Adam Marcus launched Retraction Watch<\/em> in 2010, the blog cataloging retracted articles in science journals has drawn a lot of attention, and had more fodder than it can keep up with.<\/p>\n
Now, thanks to a two-year grant from the MacArthur Foundation, Retraction Watch<\/em><\/a> is going to expand from a scrappy watchdog to a full-fledged monitoring program that will catalog nearly all retractions issued by major journals in a database, and do deeper analysis of the root causes. <\/p>\n
As Ivan Oransky told the program<\/a> BioCentury This Week, “It’s easy and fun — and useful — to write about the fraud in particular cases, but looking at the big picture is always much more interesting and important. And so we’re going to be able to do that and to look at the scale of these things and see what’s actually happening”…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n[see also Retraction Watch is growing, thanks to a $400,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation<\/a>] Good for the MacAurthur Foundation! Adam and Ivan’s blog is top notch already, promoting a level of transparency in science reporting long needed. Adding in-depth reports on the details and reasons for the retraction will just put icing on the cake. In the psychiatric literature I follow, there are a number of articles, particularly articles on clinical drug trials funded by industry, that should have never been published, have not been retracted, and still show up as references. While it would be an extremely tricky undertaking, I can coneive of some group that might undertake investigation of articles so identified by multiple observers. I’m not aware of that being done, but there’s a need. The journal editors themselves seem reticent to undertake such a task, and that’s understandable. But it does science nor medicine no real service to let this kind of article stand in perpetuity. But that’s not for Retraction Watch<\/a> to worry with right now – just a wish list item for the universe. Their proposed expansion into investigative work and cataloging sounds ambitious enough, and a real solid addition to the science watchdog world…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why MacArthur is Backing a Popular Blog About Flawed and Fraudulent Science Inside Philanthropy by Tate Williams December 23, 2014 MacArthur just gave $400,000 to a popular blog about flawed and fraudulent science, so it can deepen its coverage and build a comprehensive database of journal retractions. We chatted with the program officer behind the grant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52558"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52565,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52558\/revisions\/52565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}