ZhangMin.Rmd

---
title: "Ethics and Reproducibility..."
author: "Min Zhang"
topic: "03"
layout: post
root: ../../../
---
  
## Background:
  
## Prompt:
  
  
  In May 2015 Science retracted - without consent of the lead author - a paper on  how canvassers can sway people's opinions about gay marriage, 
see also: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/science-retracts-gay-marriage-paper-without-agreement-lead-author-lacour
The Science Editor-in-Chief cited as reasons for the retraction that the original survey data was not made available for independent reproduction of results, that survey incentives were misrepresented and that statements made about sponsorships turned out to be incorrect.<br>
The investigation resulting in the retraction was triggered by two  Berkeley grad students who attempted to replicate the study and discovered that the data must have been faked.

[FiveThirtyEight](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-two-grad-students-uncovered-michael-lacour-fraud-and-a-way-to-change-opinions-on-transgender-rights/) has published an article with more details on the two Berkeley students' work.

Malicious changes to the data such as in the LaCour case are hard to prevent, but more rigorous checks should be built into the scientific publishing system. All too often papers have to be retracted for unintended reasons. [Retraction Watch](https://retractionwatch.com/) is a data base that keeps track of retracted papers (see the related [Science magazine](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/what-massive-database-retracted-papers-reveals-about-science-publishing-s-death-penalty) publication). 

Read the paper [Ten Simple Rules for Reproducible Computational Research](https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003285) by Sandve et al.


Write a blog post addressing the questions: 
  
1. **Pick one of the papers Retraction Watch features on their website and describe what went wrong**. 

*Diabetes* journal retracted three papers after investigations, because the same images were used to represent different experimental conditions. The corresponding author of the three papers also occured another retraction for the same issue--potential duplication. 

2. **After reading the paper by Sandve et al. describe which rule you are most likely to follow and why, and which rule you find the hardest to follow and will likely not follow in your future projects.**

There are multiple rules I am very (most) likely to follow, as I feel these are what I am supposed to do, including Rules 1 (keep track)/ 2 (no manual manipulation)/ 6 (random seeds)/ 10 (access to stuff).

However, Rule 4 (version control all custom scripts) is hard to realize, because it requires long time maintainance.