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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
| Well, now that that's over, let's get back to it. What better way is there to start a new calendar year than by pointing out a mistake made in the previous calendar year? A bit from Ars Technica: Journal that published faulty black plastic study removed from science index  Chemosphere cut from Web of Science, which calculates impact factors. Some people might not have noticed the black plastic crisis. I didn't see anything about it until the retraction, myself, so I was less prone to primacy bias. This article goes beyond one single retraction, but I'll point this out anyway: usually, people hear about the study, usually through some breathlessly urgent reporting by someone trying to be first out of the gate, and then the retraction happens... and radio silence ensues, leaving people believing the first report. Worse, some people (exhibiting the aforementioned primacy bias) do hear about the retraction, but the falsified original stays in their brain. Rarer is the case where an entire journal faces consequences for publishing shoddy studies. The publisher of a high-profile, now-corrected study on black plastics has been removed from a critical index of academic journals after failing to meet quality criteria, according to a report by Retraction Watch. If you've been lucky enough to avoid the whole made-up controversy, this article does a fair job explaining the events timeline. It's there if you want to read it. However, it gets worse. It appears that the people responsible for the original, retracted study on black plastic kitchenware did make a math error. This is bad enough, as it contributes to primacy bias, though anyone can make math errors or other mistakes (which is one reason you have peer review in science). But the worst part is, it looks like the authors of the original study had an Agenda: The statement says that, regardless of the math error, the study still found unnecessary flame retardants in some products and that the compounds can "significantly contaminate" those products. That is not science. That is opinion contaminating science. It's like if the Committee for Bug-Free Food found that 1% of the contents of canned tomatoes was bugs (there is, as I understand it, a maximum allowable bug level in food, as attempting to remove all insect parts reaches a point of diminishing returns, but I can't be arsed to research what it is), but then said they misplaced a decimal and it's actually 0.01%—and then still insisted that there's still bugs in the food and so canned food should be avoided at all costs. Usually, the next thing you find out is that the Committee for Bug-Free Food is in the employ of someone with a vested interest in selling their own line of (more expensive) bug-free food. Now, I'm not weighing in on whether you "should" use these plastic utensils or not. It's not an issue of grand global importance, the way the Wakefield disaster was, and still is. I just think any such decision should at least take the science into account. The actual science, not the one with math errors and strongly-held opinions. |
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