Readers may recall some ethics objections I raised in my complaint letter to UWA and Psychological Science, and also sent to Frontiers. It seems Frontiers agrees.
This statement was posted on their website today:
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Rights of Human Subjects in Scientific Papers
The retracted Recursive Fury paper has created quite a blogger and twitter storm. A sensational storm indeed, with hints to conspiracy theories, claims of legal threats and perceived contradictions. It has been fury – one of the strongest human emotions – that has (perhaps understandably at first sight) guided the discussion around this retraction. Not surprisingly though, the truth is not as sensational and much simpler.
The studied subjects were explicitly identified in the paper without their consent. It is well acknowledged and accepted that in order to protect a subject’s rights and avoid a potentially defamatory outcome, one must obtain the subject’s consent if they can be identified in a scientific paper. The mistake was detected after publication, and the authors and Frontiers worked hard together for several months to try to find a solution. In the end, those efforts were not successful. The identity of the subjects could not be protected and the paper had to be retracted. Frontiers then worked closely with the authors on a mutually agreed and measured retraction statement to avoid the retraction itself being misused. From the storm this has created, it would seem we did not succeed.
For Frontiers, publishing the identities of human subjects without consent cannot be justified in a scientific paper. Some have argued that the subjects and their statements were in the public domain and hence it was acceptable to identify them in a scientific paper, but accepting this will set a dangerous precedent. With so much information of each of us in the public domain, think of a situation where scientists use, for example, machine learning to cluster your public statements and attribute to you personality characteristics, and then name you on the cluster and publish it as a scientific fact in a reputable journal. While the subjects and their statements were public, they did not give their consent to a public psychological diagnosis in a scientific study. Science cannot be abused to specifically label and point out individuals in the public domain.
It is most unfortunate that this particular incident was around climate change, because climate change is a very serious threat for human civilization. But the importance of the subject matter does not justify abandoning our principles.
Frontiers’ core mission is to improve peer review. One principle that we follow is that scientific publishing should sit in the hands of scientists. Frontiers implements this principle by supporting scientists to operate the peer-review process from the beginning to the end. Frontiers remains faithful to this mission, despite the risks that comes with it. We will stay the course because we fundamentally believe that authors should bear the full responsibility of submitting papers with the highest standards and that scientists should bear the full responsibility of deciding what science is published. After publication, the community is engaged and a post-publication review naturally follows. Post-publication review is facilitated by the Frontiers’ commenting and social networking platforms. This process may reveal fundamental errors or issues that go against principles of scholarly publishing. Like all other journals, Frontiers seriously investigates any well-founded complaints or allegations, and retraction only happens in cases of absolute necessity and only after extensive analysis. For the paper in question, the issue was clear, the analysis was exhaustive, all efforts were made to work with the authors to find a solution and we even worked on the retraction statement with the authors. But there was no moral dilemma from the start – we do not support scientific publications where human subjects can be identified without their consent.
Editor-in-Chief, Frontiers
Source:
http://www.frontiersin.org/blog/Rights_of_Human_Subjects_in_Scientific_Papers/830
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rogerknights
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/frontiers-fires-back-again-on-the-hype-surrounding-lewandowskys-retracted-recursive-fury-paper/#comment-1610787
Moon Hoax was not published in Frontiers, so the editors of Frontiers have no basis to address it. That is up to the editors at Psychological Science.
“It is most unfortunate that this particular incident was around climate change, because climate change is a very serious threat for human civilization.”
I still don’t see this as much of a victory. It’s clear enough they’re standing behind the paper’s conclusions. In effect they’re saying, yes indeed, these people are indeed nut jobs. The mistake we made was in allowing them to be named.
Some will undoubtedly object to frontiers statement about global warming. I do not, becouse regardless of their belief they were not willing to sacrifice their morals for the ‘Cause’. If only the real climate scientists were so honest.
I respect the editor-in-chief of Frontiers (Henry Markram) for standing by the retraction of this terrible paper.
The grounds now appear to be both on the legal front (defamation) and the ethical front (diagnosing an individuals condition in a journal paper without their consent) or perhaps even a mix of both.
We have yet to hear about any academic grounds – which they assert they investigated.
It sounds like a lot of people want to learn what the results of their academic review were (I know I do).
Aside from the ethical and legal problems this paper had – I think it was terrible from an academic perspective.
Their sample was messed up, they treated some sites differently than others, they may have allowed fake responses and duplicate responses, and their categorization was biased. I hope that all of the people trying to get the metadata keep trying – because I am anxiously awaiting an analysis of the methodology behind what looks to be a piece of crap paper.
It seems to me that the paper should have been retracted on all three grounds – ethical issues, legal issues and academic issues.
I am sure more will come out on the academic issues over time and I am looking forward to reading about it.
How? Do they consider Emily McKeown is a means to this end? Sheesh.
schitzree says:
Some will undoubtedly object to frontiers statement about global warming. I do not, becouse regardless of their belief they were not willing to sacrifice their morals for the ‘Cause’. If only the real climate scientists were so honest.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valid point, but there was no need to reference the issue at all. The AGW mention is a back handed hat-tip acknowledgement that although LEW’s data, methods and ethics were a shambles and unacceptable, his “heart” was in the right place. Utter garbage.
These kinds of problems will not occur during Obama’s third term because officially insane people like Anthony Watts will no longer have standing to complain about the diagnosis and start this kind of trouble.
REPLY: You forgot the /sarc tag though it goes without saying- Anthony
If the “cosensus” is so well established why would such “tricks” be necessary and why do so many condone their usage?
Don’t be too hard on Lew. It’s probably difficult for him to think of deniers as human subjects, this was the sort of mistake one would expect him to make.
/sarc.
The important point is that the Frontiers people stuck to proper ethical and proceduralprinciples of scientific investigation. The grown up response is to respect them for that.
Rick
If only he’d written “the Global Warming hoax is a very serious threat to Western civilization”.
Praise to Frontiers, yes, but they fall into the same trap with their climate change assertion that a person does when declaring, “we need to do something about the proliferation of ghosts”. Both are based on a false premise out of the gate.
Skeptic scientists questioned AGW, so an industry of ‘Skeptic-Trashing Environmental Sociologists’ (enslaved to a false accusation, I should add http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=1237 ) popped up to stop the skeptics by any means possible. Ironic that Lew et. al would put out such material as scientific studies considering how anti-science their position is on marginalizing one entire side of the climate science assessments.
I note that the desire to use ridicule against political opponents is so strong with the academic Left (see Alinsky, Rule 5), that Lew and crew were unwilling to concede the issue. Likely because it would have set a dangerous precedent obstructing a key tool they use to expand their power and control.
Looks like UWA is not going to take down this paper, instead they say: “The article is now hosted on a website of the University of Western Australia, which has come to a different assessment of the risk posed by this article and reaffirms its commitment to academic freedom. Further details about the history of this article and continued attempts to supress inconvenient science con be found at sks.to/rf.”
Link to the paper below.
http://www.psychology.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2523540/LskyetalRecursiveFury4UWA.pdf
This is noting but disgusting.
Did the chappie who resigned from Frontiers resign because they were following ethical standards?
Echoes of “Rathergate” (“Fake, but accurate.”). They were so eager to publish a pro-AGW piece they giddily chucked any standards they may have possessed. But there could be a silver lining – if other ancillary journals and journalists now take a closer look at the slimy yellow underbelly of the warmist’s “scientific method.”
“But the importance of the subject matter does not justify abandoning our principles.”
—
However, it is also clear that the pressure to do so is building. It will be interesting to see how far the alarmists will go to force Frontiers to abandon their principles. They have already succeeded in getting the BBC, the Guardian, the LA Times, and many other media outlets to abandon the principle of fairly reporting opposing viewpoints when reporting on climate change. How long can Frontiers resist the pressure to also make an exception for climate change?
In the category of things caused by global warming, perhaps the line “Causes otherwise reputable science magazines and media outlets to abandon long-held publishing principles” should be added to the list. When the end justifies any and all means, there is no longer any room for principles.
Bravo to Frontiers for seeing the issue and taking a stand on ethics. We are often defined by such difficult decisions. I see two consequences. First, the sloppy research demonstrated by Lew, et al will be harder to pass of as science. Second, the quality of data collected under these conditions will be much higher. Win.
Harry
I think you meant Elaine McKewon…..?
That is Quote of the Day material, in the Spin Factory category. Gold Star, kiddies.
They do make one serious mistake — they think the “end” of peer-review is publication. That is actually just the beginning of the real peer-review. They have a lot to learn.
@Col A flat earthier could, possibly ,write and excellent article on gravitation, or a pharmaceutical researcher could write a paper about the wonders of a drug: it is the conflict of interest statement that should address this. It is not morally right to gag them.
Looking at it from all sides, weighting the benefits and the damages, Frontiers has made skeptics position better.
Looking forward to the responses of Lew and his cronies, I suspect that they will dig the hole they are in even deeper
Dangerous climate change is definitely a threat to all living things and the future of the yet to be born. Fortunately that kind of climate change is not something we’re facing today or in the immediate future. The natural variability of the Holocene we witness today is simply what it is and all existing species have adapted to the inter-glacial climate we were plunged into at the end of the Pleistocene. Well done, all, for a successful transition and best wishes to those who are left to deal with the end of the current inter-glacial period of the Holocene. Hopefully that end won’t come because of uninformed climate manipulation by noble cause driven empty headed green alarmists.
Sorry for the typos “con” should be “can” and “noting” should be “nothing”, brain and finger connection……
I don’t think they get points for ethics on this. Before, they had left open the possibility that they recognized their own unethical behavior in allowing the publication through. Now they have removed that aspect.