Journals

Publishing corrections

From an Andrew Gelman blog comment thread:

Two views of journals are: 1. Start a conversation. 2. Only publish dependable true results.

These are very different in what gets published, but identical in their response to corrections: they'd both publish them eagerly.The correction continues the conversation, and it makes the articles dependable. Indeed, in view (2) corrections are *more* important, since truth is more important and standards for acceptance of articles is higher.

The problem is a third view of the purpose of journals: 3. To certify how intelligent and creative the authors are, so as to help departments decide who to tenure.

For purpose (3), you don't want to publish true but "easy" results, and it doesn't matter if there are fatal flaws, so long as the article accurately signalled IQ.