Retractions in anthropology

An editorial in the British Medical Journal earlier this week described Andrew Wakefield’s controversial 1998 Lancet article linking the MMR vaccine with autism as an “elaborate fraud”. Although the article was retracted in 2004 by ten of Wakefield’s co-authors, Wakefield himself continues to insist on its validity, despite new evidence presented by the journalist Brian Deer in the BMJ that the study was not simply flawed but that data were fabricated by Wakefield in a way that could not possibly have been accidental.

I’ve been reading the academic blog Retraction Watch for a few months now, and find it interesting for more than just the Schadenfreude that comes from seeing others go down in flames, because of the ethical meta-commentary that accompanies notices of retractions, and because it has made retractions much more prominent than any one journal could (except presumably the highest-tier ones). But that leads me to think: can anyone name cases of retraction in anthropological publications? I’m not talking about Piltdown-style refutation without retraction, or disputes such as Mead vs. Freeman or Chagnon vs. Tierney, or of anthropologists publicly changing their minds about earlier publications. Obviously in a non-experimental science we wouldn’t expect them at nearly the rate or in the same circumstances, but surely there must be cases of blatant plagiarism or ethical dishonesty that have resulted in a formal retraction … right?

Does anyone know of a list of anthropological publications that have been formally withdrawn from the academic record? Or, can anyone name some?

From ancient to digital archives

Belatedly, I note that Numerical Notation features prominently in the annual report of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project published online last month (the section on my book is near the end). Matt Stolper, the head of the project, graciously gave me permission to reprint the Old Persian cuneiform tablet Fort. 1208-101 in my book, as it features the first evidence of the Old Persian numerals for the higher hundreds (in the numeral phrase ’604′), and is the only known Old Persian document that serves an administrative function. Ultimately, the tablet was chosen by my editors to grace the extremely attractive cover.

Stolper alludes indirectly in the report to the serendipitous inclusion of this tablet in my research. I’ll be more direct: online publication and open access to the research findings of the Archive are the only reason I was able to integrate this important artifact into my research, at what was a fairly advanced stage of publication. If Stolper and his co-author Jan Tavernier had not published their findings directly online (Stolper and Tavernier 2007), enabling me to rapidly track it down once the media began to report on the tablet’s analysis, I could never have discussed it. (I should also give full credit to my wife, who first alerted me to the news articles on Fort. 1208-101). There are other arguments, such as cost, in favour of this model of publication, but access and speed – especially in fields like this, where data can lie unpublished for decades – are absolutely critical.

Romeyka

Happy New Year! I’m not a believer in new year’s resolutions but I do intend to post more frequently here over the next couple of months, at least with news items of interest.

Check out this interesting article in the Independent yesterday presenting Ioanna Sitaridou’s claim that Romeyka, an endangered dialect of Pontic Greek still spoken by around 5000 Muslim Greeks on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, preserves features of archaic Greek not known in any other modern variety. For instance, Romeyka preserves the use of the infinitive in various contexts in which you would never find it in standard Greek, or (apparently?) even in the Pontic Greek spoken in Greece and the diaspora. Sitaridou is completely correct in noting,”What we don’t yet know is whether Romeyka emerged in exactly the same way as other Greek dialects but later developed its own unique characteristics which just happen to resemble archaic Greek.” There doesn’t appear to be a formal publication associated with this article, but I’ll be looking out for one.