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On evaluating NYT review #12
I am of the idea that the review should have been written without knowing that the article was retracted (even if one researched it).
If the reviewer rejected the article and gave as reasons the fraudulent data fabrication and subsequent exposure, how should one proceed? It’s a foresight the original reviewers never had.
Moreover, was this a reason for assigning this specific article? Did you expect students to research about it and find the fraud?
It is not an expectation that you investigate this on your own. But it is a definite possibility that you already knew about this case or looked it up.
Now if you wrote a review purely on the basis of the article that is totally fine. And you should not give or receive feedback in the form “ha, you didn’t catch this - gotcha! zero points - muhahahar”.
If you find a review that says “reject because based on fraudulent data”, I’d say it is OK from the perspective of this homework assignment. Clearly a person writing this has the benefit of hindsight but I don’t mind as long as this is not the complete review.
The paper (aside from being based on fraudulent data) has clear strengths and weaknesses, which a reviewing homework should address, and which we discussed in class as well.
The didactic purpose beyond this is to raise awareness that you should not be blinded by someone’s reputation when reviewing, as well as questioning whether the used methodologies are presented in a way that would make their replication possible, and thus lead to the eventual falsification of wrong data (could be other reasons for being wrong than blatant fraud as well). Are all possible confounding factors explicitly addressed? Are the limitations adequately discussed? etc.