Setting the record straight?
Brian Wansink, a prominent food researcher from Cornell, was forced to retire earlier this year. Andrew Gelman has some good perspectives. Wansink’s research was on contextual effects on eating — eg, the impact of plate size — and a bunch of these papers have now been retracted.
This week, Wired has a Thanksgiving-themed article about his research. It includes this quote from an email he sent to colleagues ahead of his retirement
“We may believe that our papers have been unfairly retracted. But what they can’t retract is the impact these have had on people’s lives and the impact they will continue to have.”
That’s a perfect summary of the problems with studies that over-promise and are over-publicised. Whether the research was done well or not, it’s going to stick. Subsequent developments — whether modifications, replication failures, or retractions — never get the impact of the original claim.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »