Correction notices in psychology: impactful or inconsequential?

Abstract

Science is self-correcting, or so the adage goes, but to what extent is that indeed the case? Answering this question requires careful consideration of the various approaches to achieve the collective goal of self-correction. One of the most straightforward mechanisms is individual self-correction: researchers rectifying their own mistakes by publishing a correction notice. Although it offers an efficient route to correcting the scientific record, it has received little to no attention from a metascientific point of view. We aim to fill this void by analysing the content of correction notices published from 2010 until 2018 in the three psychology journals featuring the highest number of corrections over that timespan based on the Scopus database (i.e. Psychological Science with N = 58, Frontiers in Psychology with N = 99 and Journal of Affective Disorders with N = 57). More concretely, we examined which aspects of the original papers were affected (e.g. hypotheses, data-analyses, metadata such as author order, affiliations, funding information etc.) as well as the perceived implications for the papers’ main findings. Our exploratory analyses showed that many corrections involved inconsequential errors. Furthermore, authors rarely revised their conclusions, even though several corrections concerned changes to the results. We conclude with a discussion of current policies, and suggest ways to improve upon the present situation by (i) preventing mistakes, and (ii) transparently rectifying those mistakes that do find their way into the literature.

Characteristics of correction practice and its citation in library and information science journals

“…It showed that some subsequent authors had been aware of the correction practice of papers and reflected the effectiveness of correction as well as the rigor of following researchers. Although this effect seemed to be limited, as found in previous studies (Heyman and Maerten, 2020;Peterson, 2010;Thomsen and Resnik, 1995). Except for this type, the other four types were relatively unreasonable.…”

“…This finding was consistent with some previous studies in other fields. Heyman and Maerten (2020) drew a similar conclusion that the most frequent corrections in psychology journal articles were in authorship and references. Akhaddar (2021) found that authorship was the most common reason for publishing correction notices, followed by text content, figures, and tables.…”

“…The correction practice means that when errors in scientific publications were found, the journal would issue a correction notice to correct errors in a published paper (Akhaddar, 2021; Heyman and Maerten, 2020). Besides, the link between correction notice and corrected paper would be made to alert users (Molckovsky et al, 2011).…”

“…Correction of scientific publications is another mechanism to correct honest publication errors by issuing correction notices (Ajiferuke and Adekannbi, 2020). When one or more honest errors or omissions are found in a paper, the journal publishes a notice to inform readers what errors in the paper are corrected and whether those errors affect the paper’s conclusions (Heyman and Maerten, 2020; Pichardo-Corpus et al, 2019). This publishing notice is often called a “correction” or “erratum” (Akhaddar, 2021).…”

“…However, not all the knowledge in scientific publications is correct. Even after peer-review and other error-detection procedures, some errors are still present in parts of the published manuscripts (Heyman and Maerten, 2020). The dissemination of errors in scientific publications could negatively affect subsequent research (da Silva and Bornemann-Cimenti, 2017).…”