Quintet of study retractions rocks criminology community

By Dalmeet Singh ChawlaNov. 26, 2019 , 4:45 PM

Criminology researchers are retracting five studies that have sparked a bitter battle over potential scientific misconduct and issues of race. The episode has riveted the criminology community—and severed a once close relationship after one of the researchers accused his former mentor of falsifying data.

On 10 November, Justin Pickett, a criminologist at the State University of New York in Albany, announced on Twitter that he and his co-authors have agreed to retract a 2011 study published in Criminology that examined public support for taking a suspect’s ethnicity into account at sentencing. Four additional disputed papers, published between 2015 and this year in the journals Criminology, Social Problems, and Law & Society Review, have been or are in the process of being be retracted with the agreement of all the authors, ScienceInsider has learned. Eric Stewart, Pickett’s former mentor and a criminologist at Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee, is a co-author of all five studies.....

....The five papers were also scrutinized by Nick Brown and James Heathers, two researchers who have gained notoriety as “data thugs” for exposing poor science and potential misconduct, after “John Smith” emailed them as well. The pair identified a number of troubling issues within the papers, including an unexpectedly high phone survey response rate and no mention of who funded the work.-- excerpt, rest at link above --

So, social justice science doesn't work?