What really counts as an error and which errors should be corrected in scientific literature?

This is the third episode of Science in the Grey Zone in which we present questions raised in July 2024 at the joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) - EASST-4S in Amsterdam. In this episode, we will talk about simple cases of error. Are errors an inevitable, or even essential, part of scientific research? What can we learn with scientific errors?

We’ll be hearing from Willem Halffman, Maarten Derksen, Bart Penders, Nicole Nelson, Sergio Sismondo, Nicolas Rasmussen, Maha Said and Melina Antonakaki.

Speakers (listed in order of appearance):

Willem Halffman

Senior lecturer in Science & Technology Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands and associate member of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE) at Edinburgh University.

Maarten Derksen

Associate Professor of the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen

Nicole Nelson

Associate Professor in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Sergio Sismondo

Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, and editor of the journal Social Studies of Science

Nicolas Rasmussen

Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales, Editor in Chief of the Journal of the History of Biology

Maha Said

Postdoctoral researcher based in Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, cellular biologist. Implicated in the replication sub-project of the ERC Synergy Project NanoBubbles, which is the first formalized replication project in the nanobio-sciences;

Bart Penders

Associate Professor in ‘Biomedicine and Society’ at Maastricht University, Senior Fellowship at RWTH’s Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Cultures of Research’

Melina Antonakaki

Ph.D. candidate in STS at the Technical University of Munich, developing a dissertation project exploring how visions and applications of regenerative biomedicine obtain social credibility in different political cultures; research on the scientific controversy and replication experiments of the STAP cell phenomenon.

Cited researchers and references:

• Sergio Sismondo & Maud Bernisson, How an opioid giant deployed a playbook for moulding doctors’ minds

Datasheet

• Narration: Masha Matalaev
• Plot: Mady Barbeitas
• Production: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni - Chakalaka Medialab
• Recording and editing: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni & Guillaume François
• Visual ID: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni

This podcast has been financially supported by 'NanoBubbles: how, when and why does science fail to correct itself', a project that has received Synergy grant funding from the European Research Council (ERC), within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grant agreement no. 951393.