If my friend asks me what the score in lasts night's game was, and I tell him 4-3, but then later realize that it was actually 4-2, I'll send him a txt to correct the mistake. If your argument is that a lower standard applies to one of the premier scientific journals, I think that's pretty messed up.
In reality what happened with the first paper is the editors of the journal sent it out for review, and whoever reviewed it was happy that it met the methodological standards considered sufficient at the time. This is not the same as being happy that it was true. You might consider that 'messed up' (and you are right, it is messed up), but that was how the sausage was made in psychology research in 2008. There is no galactic council that imposes standards of evidence in a journal. They rely on the reviewers, and the reviewers are active researchers in the field.
As an aside, publication in a top journal is not a guarantee that results are water tight, and should never be considered as such. If you want to believe a result, you need to read the paper and think about it carefully. Even then, this approach is susceptible to outright fraud, which also does happen.
We're allowed to question what a peer-reviewed article published in a top-flight journal says?
There might be a possibility that the science in Science might be wrong, and we need to work that out for ourselves?
This contradicts a lot of the messaging about science these days...
You're required to question!
-At least if you actually want to derive any benefit from the process.
Science is most assuredly a "use your (own) brain" kind of endeavor. ;-)
Climate Science isn't alone in this, though. Archeology also requires a PHD before you can comment on the purpose of any artifacts dug up by archeologists, even though archeology degrees don't teach anything about (for instance) textile production.
And then there's the various interesting parts of Social Sciences, which often require you to have a particular identity or experience before you can question any part of their conclusions.
I agree that Science should be a "use your own brain" kind of endeavour, but increasingly it is not, unless you have the appropriate letters after your name.
That's what they should have said to the first paper, but since they decided to publish it they can no longer say "who cares" to the correction. They should either retract the original, or publish this.
It's like any other paper that reports a statistically non significant result. The appropriate response is, "Well, OK. Sure, whatever." But yeah, we're not gonna take up space from something else that may be important, just to go back and forth over this statistically non significant result. You let them do that in your journal that crap will go on forever and you'll never have space for anything substantive. I'm sure liberal and conservative political types must have some other place they can do that at.
If you have a new result in some new area, that's one thing. But if all you have is the exact same result saying that the old non significant result is, um, non significant? I mean, I gotta agree with HN User "Gatsky". "Who cares?"
But I'm a research scientist by training and a stickler for protocol. So it's likely my age is showing and the rest of the world wants to loosen up these days? I'm just the old man yelling at the liberal and conservative kids to get off my lawn.
As for why it got lots of press: It's the kind of study that would drive clicks/engagement, increasing ad impressions. So... Capitalism.
The same is true of all studies, but for some reason people lose their critical faculties when considering work published in the "top" journals.
Science cares, clearly!