Does Your Law Review's Cite-Checking Process Include Retraction Checking for Cited Scientific Articles?

It's analogous to checking whether a case has been overruled, or whether a statute has been repealed.

The UCLA Law Library has a new guide by librarian Lynn McClelland with recommendations on that, Understanding Scholarly Metrics and Retractions for Law Students. Let me know, please, what law reviews that you've worked with have done along these lines.

Likewise, if your law firm often cites scientific articles (social, physical, medical, or otherwise), please let me know if you have a procedure for checking whether there the cited articles have been retracted.

Comments

[Cheshire]

I recommend referencing the Retraction Watch Database for this purpose: http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx?

And if you want to be super diligent, look up the paper or the authors on PubPeer (search by name or DOI). Concerns about papers are often posted there which may be relevant in some situations. https://pubpeer.com/

[Bruce Hayden]

I clicked over here to make your latter point. Plenty of research is criticized, even heavily so, without a retraction. A good example may be Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick. He seems more willing to sue a critic for defamation, than admit statistical ineptitude in his landmark research. A good friend got flunked in a class in grad school, when he essentially disproved his Prof’s PhD dissertation assertion in class. The prof never bothered proving the friend wrong - he just flunked him. Very often professional position and status are a result of previous research, and what happens to that if it is discredited? The point is that there is an incentive to not retract, esp when professional position and status are at risk.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

According to ChatGPT, the article "Judges Who Rule for Plaintiffs Have Larger Manhoods," in the Journal of Stuff, was never retracted.

[TheAmazingEmu]

I never checked scientific articles and can't recall if any of the Law Review articles published during my time there had scientific issues. That being said, my work generally checked the citations raised to determine if they actually stood for the proposition suggested. I don't think I would have gone outside the articles themselves (although I believe we did shepherdize cases). If the article did not support the proposition raised, it would have been my job to find a better citation for their point.

[aswetnatex234]

A thorough law review's cite-checking process should include retraction checking for cited scientific articles to ensure the credibility and accuracy of the legal scholarship. Retraction checking helps prevent the use of flawed or discredited research, maintaining the integrity of the review. This process involves verifying the publication status of each cited article through databases and retraction watchlists. Just as Baddiehub (https://baddiehub.news/) keeps users informed with the latest updates, a law review must stay updated on retractions to uphold the quality and reliability of its published content.