Ivan Oransky, auteur du blog sur les rétractations, n'est pas d'accord avec les journaux qui ne veulent pas expliquer les raisons des rétractations d'articles. Il a publié plusieurs billets à propos de rétractations dans le Journal of Neurociences. Une rétractation peut être publiée pour erreur ou fraude et les lecteurs doivent connaître les raisons précises. Il faut avec Ivan Oransky demander la clarté et éviter cette suggestion de contacter les auteurs pour avoir des explications… Le rédacteur de The Journal of Neurosciences a ses arguments :
It is the policy of The Journal of Neuroscience to retract an article at the authors’ request at any time without requiring explanation. Our primary motivation is to minimize the barriers to retraction. We believe that authors are generally reluctant to retract articles, and we do not want to impose any requirements that could discourage authors from removing flawed articles from the literature.
We do not publish descriptions of problems in a retracted article. Because retraction removes an article from the literature, eliminating it as a citable authority, describing which parts are or are not valid would be academic. There is no part of the retracted article that can be considered a valid, peer-reviewed observation. Scientists who have done research based on retracted observations would be better served by contacting the authors directly for complete details than relying on a brief published description of the most salient issues. By not identifying specific problems we also avoid the contentious and difficult practice of assigning blame for errors to particular laboratories or authors, which can also discourage retractions.
