Anatomy of a Scientific Scandal

Key passage: The activist playbook here was simple: get the Diaz and Bailey paper retracted over a technicality, then spin the retraction as an invalidation of the study’s main findings.

To elaborate on the full absurdity of that technicality: Springer chose to disregard the spirit of the consent requirement. Consent for the publication of anonymized data on a public website, it alleged, does not equate to consent for that data’s publication in a scholarly peer-reviewed article.