> these reasonable journals weren't able to use their retraction process even though they wanted to, because the process never gets used and therefore isn't in a usable state.
Actually, this made me think about a journal purposefully running intentionally spurious papers, with a challenge to the readership to identify which paper was fake. If the system worked, that would cause every paper published in the journal to be investigated adversarially.
The obvious problem with the idea seems to be that so much of the process is voluntary; people might be unwilling to submit papers to that journal.
The government pays bounties to whistleblowers who expose grant fraud under the False Claims act, along with big fines for the perpetrators. Not sure how much it extends to research fraud itself, but it certainly seems like something they should do. Perhaps even they might extend it to publishing stuff that can't be reproduced.
Actually, this made me think about a journal purposefully running intentionally spurious papers, with a challenge to the readership to identify which paper was fake. If the system worked, that would cause every paper published in the journal to be investigated adversarially.
The obvious problem with the idea seems to be that so much of the process is voluntary; people might be unwilling to submit papers to that journal.