By Julianna LeMieux — May 5, 2017
Late last year, a story emerged questioning the validity of a paper that had made a big splash when it was published in Science earlier in 2016.
The paper was high profile, in large part because of its subject — the effect of plastic microbeads on fish. The authors claimed their data showed that young fish preferentially eat plastic microbeads instead of their other food options.
Other scientists said the paper was chock full of mistakes, negligence and even potential fraud. It was such a captivating story that we wrote about it in December of last year, after Science issued an 'expression of concern."
The story was perplexing, though because, even though the paper seemed like a hot mess all around, a preliminary investigation conducted by Uppsala University (the home institution of the research team) not only found no evidence for scientific dishonesty and misconduct, they also did not recommend a full investigation.
Thankfully, that recommendation fell on deaf ears and a large investigation was launched by Sweden's Central Ethical Review Board. Well, the results are in, the verdict is guilty, and the paper will be no more. Even though it took 10 months, Science finally retracted the paper on May 3rd......To Read More.....
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