Anonymous story of the Ph.D. student at a research intensive university in NorthAmerica: "I was 3 months into graduate school when I realized my project was doomed. I had set out to build on the work of a previous student, but as I ran into roadblocks, it became increasingly clear that the previously published work was fundamentally flawed. My supervisor was the corresponding author on the published paper, and when I told him he grew indignant.
Because I couldn’t build on the work, my supervisor instructed me to redo the original publication, eager for me to show the problems were no more than minor oversights. I told him about incorrect data analysis and experimental design, results that couldn’t be replicated, and claims that were contradicted by the data.
I pushed for a complete retraction of the original paper. My supervisor instead lobbied for a small correction, an addendum to gloss over the errors. The journal editors convened a special meeting and reached their verdict: The issues were too systemic and serious for a simple correction. The only viable course was to retract the original publication and replace it with a paper describing my analyses."
