TFA tries to claim that this single paper misled the field for 16 years, but that’s an incredibly strong claim for which it offers no real evidence. In fact, in the first few paragraphs the author admits that there were many other papers that drove scientists to pursue this hypothesis. The fraud is clearly tragic, but the tenuous arguments made in this piece are pretty flimsy.
The nature of science is that there are a lot of papers. Not all are replicated but generally “we pursued this direction for 16 years” type of hypothesis are based on many results, which acts as an error correcting code on mistakes and fraud — and is exactly how the system is supposed to work.
The nature of science is that there are a lot of papers. Not all are replicated but generally “we pursued this direction for 16 years” type of hypothesis are based on many results, which acts as an error correcting code on mistakes and fraud — and is exactly how the system is supposed to work.