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I'm curious if anybody here frequents retraction watch enough to address this concern I have.
I find articles here very effective at announcing retractions and making testimonies from lead figures in investigations a frequent fallback, but rarely do you get to see the nuts and bolts of the investigations being discussed. For example, "How were the journals misleading?" or "What evidence was or was not analyzed, and how did the journal's analysis deviate from correct protocol?" are questions I often ask myself as I read, followed by an urge to see the cited papers. And then upon investigating the articles and their retraction notices, I am given a reason that I can't myself arbitrate. Maybe data was claimed to have been manipulated, or analyzed according to an incorrect framework.
Studies such as these I find alarming because I'm forced to trust the good intentions of a multi-billion dollar corporation in finding the truth. Often I find myself going on retraction watch, trusting the possibly non-existing good intentions of the organization's leadership, as I read the headlines without time to read every detail of the article. I am given certain impressions from the pretentious writing of the articles, but none of the substance, when I choose to skim selections.
Perhaps I am warning against laziness. Perhaps I am concerned about the potential for corruption in even a crusade to fight misinformation that retraction watch seems to fight. Nonetheless, I'm curious if people here have had similar or differing experiences with these articles...
Crimes and trials are the same. Much goes on in closed rooms. You rightly feel that you are in the dark.
Often there is some material on pubpeer which can help understand what happened.