There seems to be a diminishing return here. An average research paper has an average "life". Science and knowledge move forward continuously. It would be interesting to look at the average age of cited papers in a given year. I would expect that there are not many papers that are cited 15, 30, or 50 years past publication. Moreover, the passage of time itself tends to cull the impact of research based on whether it is confirmed and expanded, or contradicted as the boundaries of our knowledge move forward.
It seems that spending effort to retract a paper that is "X" years old due to questions about method, plagiarism, figures, etc. is effort that would be better spent on the science.
Matthew J. Kerry - 8 years ago
Simply, what would be the benefitting purpose of such a statute?
It is undoutedly a prosaic pursuit, but any statute would just seem lazy.
And what of premature mortalities, worse, mortalities-as-consequences related to research?
To the extent we can buy into cumulative-biomedical science toward extending life expectancies, it could be in our best interest. Than again, so would intelligent-examination of admitting evidence.
There seems to be a diminishing return here. An average research paper has an average "life". Science and knowledge move forward continuously. It would be interesting to look at the average age of cited papers in a given year. I would expect that there are not many papers that are cited 15, 30, or 50 years past publication. Moreover, the passage of time itself tends to cull the impact of research based on whether it is confirmed and expanded, or contradicted as the boundaries of our knowledge move forward.
It seems that spending effort to retract a paper that is "X" years old due to questions about method, plagiarism, figures, etc. is effort that would be better spent on the science.
Simply, what would be the benefitting purpose of such a statute?
It is undoutedly a prosaic pursuit, but any statute would just seem lazy.
And what of premature mortalities, worse, mortalities-as-consequences related to research?
To the extent we can buy into cumulative-biomedical science toward extending life expectancies, it could be in our best interest. Than again, so would intelligent-examination of admitting evidence.