Correction for: Behavioral and physiological evidence that increasing group size ameliorates the impacts of social disturbance
HM Anderson, AG Little, DN Fisher, BL McEwen, BM Culbert, S Balshine, J.N. Pruitt
Journal of Experimental Biology 223 (14), jeb217075
Other
Overview
Overview
abstract
As a result of the scandal involving Jonathan Pruitt, the Journal of Experimental Biology received a complaint from an investigative journalist that there were inconsistencies in the open access supplemental dataset that prevented respective analyses from being run the way that was described in the paper.
I coordinated the efforts to investigate these concerns and found that we had renamed parameters in main manuscript and supplemental data to increase accessibility but had neglected to update them in the statistical output tables. This was a simple mistake with a straightforward solution. In reviewing the publication, we also found a couple of minor typographical errors in reported test statistics and an analysis that broke assumed normality. Adjusting for these oversights did not change the statistical outcomes nor the main findings of the published article.
In light of the scandal with Pruitt, however, this represented an incredibly stressful circumstance. Objectively, we were originally afforded the opportunity to revise the manuscript following the Pruitt scandal and prior to publication. While we collectively combed through the manuscript and datasets for signs of manipulation or fabrication, these errors evaded our efforts. Because of these efforts, I would imagine that this publication contained fewer than the average number of errors in published works, but was systematically scrutinized as a function of Pruitt appearing as a coauthor.
The subsequent analyses and corrections have cost me much time and anxiety, but should be finalized in the coming weeks. I hope that I can put this chapter behind me for good.
