Dr. Oransky warned of consequences for self-governance failure: "If you don't self-police, if you don't correct the record, if you don't sanction people who commit fraud, [...] someone else will come in and do that. And it very well could be a government that you don't like."

If science had star ratings like Goodreads, what paper in your field would be a 5/5 - and why?

This is how far scientific critique lags behind science. We're just learning subtraction. www.timeshighereducation.com/world-univer...

I’m deeply honored to have been named as the recipient of the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting from the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. It recognizes my work on scientific integrity for Science Magazine over the last five years. 1/7 tinyurl.com/zz54fzyr

There more I think about this, the more disturbing it becomes www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO5u...

The way to increase trust in science is to stop making rules to benefit scientists. Making self-serving rules is so universal in science that the author calls transparency a paradox because it doesn't always help your reputation.

Tylenol and autism. Why normal papers make history:

This is a thorough and important paper. No attempts to replicate previous studies were found in a sample of 465 articles in physical therapy. Many fields have never measured these indicators and it takes a small number of authors to do it.

"Harvard could embed metascience into General Education Courses, ensuring that they reach as many students as possible." Ambika Grover in @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Ivan Oransky of @retractionwatch.com on delayed scientific reform. "The problem when you don't self-regulate or self-police... when you don't do those things, other people will come in a do them. Probably in a way you don't like." www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQaZ...

"The NIH Common Fund has teamed up with NASA’s Tournament Lab to launch the Replication Prize, a competition to advance scientific research by collecting ideas and strategies to make important lines of biomedical research more replicable." commonfund.nih.gov/replication-...

I want this kind of back and forth to be somewhere that everyone can see it and enjoy it, in perpetuity. What if peer review worked more like this, in the open?

Evolution, and why science doesn't mind portraying itself as a bit shit sometimes. www.redteamofscience.com/p/science-ha...

"The question is not whether the factory’s settings are wrong but whether it should be a paper factory in the first place." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/o...

The Red Team of Science is on book leave. Subscribe for occasional science reform updates, paper reviews, and lesson plans. Like the site, the book is for professionals in healthcare, investment, journalism, and anyone learning scientific critique. (Taylor & Francis, 2026)

It's true metascience needs to prune nonsense or end up irrelevant and unscientific. An invitation to debate to three non-positivists in metascience got no reply. (The invitation stands, of course.) www.redteamofscience.com/p/i-believe-...

For the first time, the COPE Retraction guidelines now (version 3) address the possibility of mentioning those who found the issue (e.g. data sleuths). But it only mentions it *can* happen; stops short of recommending it! #metascience

Some excellent points from @stuartbuck.bsky.social including lack of transparency at NIH, dependency on amateur sleuths, and the need to fund post-publication review and replication. www.statnews.com/2025/09/08/n...

Giving feedback to a scientific project continues to spiral out of control, and a FOIA mystery is solved thanks to @publiccitizen.bsky.social www.redteamofscience.com/p/watching-t...

10 years ago?! Holy smokes.

One pattern we've seen in metascience is it tends to become more and more meta. The @comm4rigor.bsky.social saga has reached FOIA levels of meta. www.redteamofscience.com/p/a-document...

"Bounty Hunters for Science" #ResearchIntegrity fas.org/publication/...

"It reinforces a model of publishing that continues to treat peer review as a consulting service for editors, rather than a scholarly contribution in its own right." blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...

The authors omit non-random, intentional errors. sensible-med.com was good enough to allow a reply on self-propagating errors in science. www.sensible-med.com/p/non-random...

The COVID origin debate and a simple argument on proximity: each market is safe. www.redteamofscience.com/p/covid-orig...

Should scientists be self-critical "cautiously or privately to avoid alarming and arming others? Not at all." @briannosek.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

📚 Reflections on adversarial collaboration from the adversaries: was it worth it? link.springer.com/article/10.1...

We found that the results of 42% of registered studies on the OSF are never publicly shared journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/.... Most common reasons are null results and bad logistics. Plan your studies carefully (equivalence testing and good time management) to prevent research waste!

Updates on older posts: COPE, COVID, C4R, and how some people behave decently. www.redteamofscience.com/p/updates-on...

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What makes you an author before publication makes you unmentionable afterwards. An indefensible policy begins to erode.

Schools compromising their principles for government grants. How. utterly. shocking.

The politics of embarrassment: Part III. Universities are worth having. I asked @jonrauch.bsky.social and Sam Harris what would change their views on universities. www.redteamofscience.com/p/the-politi...

“6% of sleuths agreed that current reporting channels for misconduct are effective, compared to 77% of research-integrity officers” I think this is readily explainable by the differential access to information. RIOs do not see what doesn’t even reach them, eg when editors refuse to act.

Excellent! Funding "agenda-free" review is also less expensive than full replication and can cover 25% of citations in a small amount of work. Recommended reading from the last six months below. @jsmoliga.bsky.social in Nature this week. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The overly-political wing of metascience is degenerating, with response from @briannosek.bsky.social. Part II on the politics of embarrassment. www.redteamofscience.com/p/the-politi...

My new contribution to Nature, a review of the book Unreliable by C.Szabo. The book explores the irreproducibility crisis in biomedical research and engagingly addresses both structural problems in science and scientific fraud. Full or irony, caricatures & common sense www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Imre Lakatos unified 20th century philosophy of science and leveled the playing field of public life: stay ahead of reality and you win. www.redteamofscience.com/p/the-politi...

A student's guide to post-publication review: Classroom discussion prompts covering study design, statistical flexibility, and effect size redteamofscience.substack.com/p/a-students...