advice from scientists who retracted their papers

Early last month, evolutionary biologist Nicole King and postdoctoral fellow Jacob Steenwyk retracted their paper in the journal Science¹. King was shaken when she realized that the paper — which attempted to use a new data-analysis approach to work out which animal lineages were the first to emerge on Earth — had serious technical errors. But the decision was still clear: “If you know you made a mistake, you’ve got to reverse it,” she says.

Retractions caused by honest mistakes are extremely stressful, say researchers

Retractions, which have long been associated with misconduct or poor scientific practice, can carry a lot of stigma. As of a decade ago, only about 22% of retractions resulted from authors self-reporting errors², rather than other scientists raising concerns to journals. Authors whose papers are retracted often stop publishing, especially if the retractions are well publicized³.

So King, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, was pleasantly surprised to see some scientists celebrating her decision online. “One reason for loving science is how graciously we sometimes deal with errors,” said a bioinformatics researcher on the social-media platform Bluesky.

Research has shown that when authors self-retract because of honest mistakes, their earlier work continues to be cited². These data, along with anecdotes such as King’s story, suggest that attitudes about retractions might eventually shift. Nature reached out to scientists who have openly retracted their studies, and asked about their experiences and lessons learnt.

“I completely understand why people are scared about it,” but correcting the scientific literature is important, says Ivan Oransky, co-founder of media organization Retraction Watch, which maintains the world’s most comprehensive database of scientific retractions.

Oransky hopes to incentivize researchers with the Ctrl-Z Award — a reference to the ‘undo’ command on a keyboard — launched this week by the Center for Scientific Integrity, Retraction Watch’s parent organization in New York City. Each year, the prize, worth US$2,500, will go to early-career and senior researchers “who discover substantial errors in their published work and take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record”, despite the professional risks.

Advancing science

Benjamin de Haas, now a neuroscientist at Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany, navigated a retraction early in his career by reminding himself that mistakes happen, and fixing them is an important part of science.

These universities have the most retracted scientific articles

Susanne Stoll, then a PhD student at University College London (UCL), was the first to let Haas know that there might be a problem with a paper he had worked on. She joined the laboratory of one of Haas’s co-authors and was examining some of Haas’s old work. The research found that, when people concentrate on a detailed object, the brain’s vision centre blurs out the object’s surroundings — leading to a kind of ‘tunnel vision’⁴.

Stoll suspected that the data analysis was flawed and led to an incorrect conclusion. So, along with her supervisor, she e-mailed Haas.

When Haas saw the e-mail, he dug up his old data and, after some frantic analysis, realized that Stoll was right. “That was a real ‘oh shit’ moment,” Haas says.

Even so, he didn’t hesitate to contact the journal Current Biology and ask for a retraction. Although he had just launched his own lab and was worried about his career, Haas wanted to be as transparent as possible, to make it clear that there was no misconduct.

Now, looking back on that time six years ago, he wishes he could tell himself to remain calm: “You’ll end up with tenure anyway.”

Not pointing fingers

What helped Haas was the reaction of his former PhD adviser, Geraint Rees, now a vice-provost at UCL. When it became clear that the paper needed to be retracted, Rees offered Haas support, rather than expressing blame or disappointment, Haas says. Working together on the retraction made it less intimidating.

The way in which Stoll initially approached him was also essential, Haas says. She was kind and respectful, and they worked together to understand the issue. “We had a common goal,” he adds.