The Lonely Pipette : helping scientists do better science

TLP #33 : The stories behind the retractions - Ivan Oransky

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Episode notes

This month Ivan Oransky joins us to talk about his work as a journalist and advocate for monitoring scientific misconduct.

  • Ivan confesses about his beginnings as a young playwright of the immune system
  • He discusses how and why he left medicine to become a journalist
  • Ivan’s mentors encouraged him to develop by getting experience as a journalist and editor
  • Ivan reflects on how his training as a physician was helpful and allowed people to trust him
  • He stresses how important it is to read in order to develop story-writing skills
  • Ivan explains that curiosity and attention can help to hunt for good stories
  • He thinks the trend to ‘weaponization’ is central to what’s wrong in science and science communication today
  • He suggests that going ‘upstream’ might help to explain the methodology and not just the results of science
  • Ivan describes the origins of Retraction Watch and looking for the stories behind the retractions
  • He also insists that we need to look upstream to understand what leads to the fraud (or sloppiness) behind the retractions
  • Finally, learning to say NO is an important skill to keeping focused


Ivan mentioned these scientists, writers and institutions
Harvard University : https://www.harvard.edu/
The Harvard Crimson https://www.thecrimson.com/
Yale University https://www.yale.edu/
The Scientist https://www.the-scientist.com/
Journal of American Medical Association https://jamanetwork.com/
New York University’s Carter Journalism Institute https://journalism.nyu.edu/
The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com
Lawrence Altman MD https://www.nytimes.com/by/lawrence-k-altman
George Lundberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_D._Lundberg https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1114712/


To find out more about Ivan and his work visit these links  
at NYU https://journalism.nyu.edu/about-us/profile/ivan-oransky-md/
on Twitter/X https://x.com/ivanoransky
Retraction Watch https://retractionwatch.com/
The Transmitter /Spectrum magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transmitter
Ivan’s first play about the Immune System (aged 11) https://theoranskyjournal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/immune-system-play.pdf

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More about the soundtrack :
Music by Amaria - Lovely Swindler https://soundcloud.com/amariamusique/