Ctrl-Z Awards: Will retracting your paper ruin your career?

About this episode

What happens when you discover that your published paper is wrong? Does retracting it ruin your reputation—or could owning the mistake actually make things better? In this episode, we meet the inaugural winners of the Ctrl-Z Awards, which recognize scientists for correcting or retracting their own work. Behavioral ecologist Kate Laskowski takes us inside a scientific detective story involving suspicious spider data, three retracted papers, and the fear that going public might tank her career. Then computational social scientist Alyssa Smith tells us how one small error in a figure led her to retract the paper at the center of her PhD and job talk. Along the way, we talk about data forensics, the stigma around retractions, and why self-correcting scientists are the heart of science. Statistical topics • Data management and documentation • Open science • Reproducible workflows • Research integrity • Retractions • Scientific misconduct • Statistical forensics Methodologic Morals • “Science is self-correcting, which means scientists need to be self-correcting too.” • “Good documentation is boring—right up until it saves you.” • “If you want scientists to correct their mistakes