Thread by @GidMK

Something I think about a lot is that studies don't get retracted because they're bad, they get retracted because they are famous

Don't get me wrong, they are ALSO bad. It takes a truly awful study to get a scientific journal to wrest itself free of apathy and inertia to take some action

But there are 1,000s of woeful papers

Thing is, no one is paid to catch bad research. It is a thankless, time-consuming task that at best earns you the mistrust of most of your peers

And so, no one does it methodically

I don't have a ton of free time, and I don't go out searching for every error-filled study. I suspect most other people involved in this area are the same based on various conversations

For someone to notice a bad paper, it has to be spread around quite a bit. In the news. Causing a social media storm

Most bad research isn't popular like that. It never gets read by more than a handful of people

Moreover, if the study is not getting news, NO ONE CARES

Journals aren't quick to act when the study is literally impacting policy in a way that could kill thousands - imagine how slow they move when it's a nothing of a study that's been read twice in 10 years

And that's why I say only famous research gets retracted. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but generally it holds surprisingly well

Anyway, when people get mad about how the papers that are retracted tend to be the big flashy studies I just think that they are ignorant about how the whole error-checking in science thing works

Also, I cannot stress enough how foolish it makes you look if you say "why are you only going after THESE studies and not all the bad ones?"

Error detection in science is a job that pays in sleepless nights and ennui. No one pays us to do any of this