| Summary: | Retraction Watch is a science watchdog that may give the impression of
being both an anti-bad science and an anti-science blog. This blog has tried to legitimize
its ethical stance by naming its parent organization The Center for Science Integrity Inc.
(CSI), and by appointing a former Chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics
(COPE), Elizabeth Wager, to the CSI board of directors. Jeffrey Beall, another science
watchdog, often appears in public alongside Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, the CSI
secretary and president, respectively, and participates in events with Wager. Beall
became academically redundant on January 15, 2017. This is because his blog, which
hosted a faulty, controversial and misleading list (and thus potentially libelous) of
“predatory” open access journals and publishers, suddenly went blank. Beall offered no
apology or explanation to the public, but was offered intellectual asylum and protection
by the University of Colorado, Denver, where he works as a librarian. After a grace
period of almost two months, members of the global academic community have now
largely lost respect for Beall because of his silence, which may be equated with
irresponsibility and/or cowardice. Despite this near extinct academic status, Retraction
Watch continues to laud Beall, refer to his now-defunct site and lists as valid, as many
as 25 times, and even rely on the Beall blog and lists to support several of their
journalistic claims. In the world of science publishing, the legitimization of a “fact”
using a defunct or false (i.e., non-factual) source, is equivalent to publishing
misconduct, and feeds into the “false facts” and “alternative truths” epidemic in
journalism that Retraction Watch is now impregnating into science publishing. Why
then is Retraction Watch allowed to operate under an ethically superior platform, while
expecting scientists and academics to respect basic rules of citing valid references, but
while practicing suspect or unethical citation practices? This attitude undermines the
ethical publishing foundation of the CSI, the CSI directors, and Retraction Watch as a
reliable “journalistic” source of information, undermining trust and respect in this blog,
while emphasizing its biased nature.
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