昨天BioArt推送了一篇题为《诺奖得主Science论文遭撤稿——涉及多位华人科学家丨特别关注》的文章，瞬间小编遭受了众多严厉的批评和一些上不得台面的辱骂，一时间成了“卖国贼”和“美国人”，并且是专门来黑华人科学家的，BioArt也成了“垃圾号”和“专门黑华人的号”，真实始料未及啊。本来没准备发文回应，然而今早看到了朋友发来的关于该撤稿事件详细经过的文章，几番挣扎之下还是觉得有必要出来走两步。
首先，小编不是“卖国贼”，拿到这个title是需要一定的级别的；另外，小编还没出过国门，做美国人自然是不可能了。再者，说道专黑华人，那更是无中生有了。众所周知，BioArt平台的成立，其目的就是传播国内或者世界范围内华人科学家的优秀成果，还报道杰出华人在生命科学领域拿到的奖励和荣誉，崇敬和赞叹都还来不及，谈何去黑？
多说无益，回到正题。昨天报道的文后评论大家抨击的最多的就是所谓的“遭撤稿”用的严重失实，认为是作者主动要求撤稿，哪里就“遭”了。本来小编后来也觉得好像有那么一些欠妥，也在评论后面做了一些回应。然而，今天小编看到整个撤稿事件的原委之后，觉得“遭撤稿”这三个字用的似乎问题也不大。为何？不是在狡辩吧。还真不是，列位看官请看Retraction Watch网站公布的全文（Science retracts paper after Nobel laureate’s lab can’t replicate results，详细内容可点击文末的“阅读原文”）。该文中清楚写到，Science杂志的主编 Jeremy Berg提到，“Finally, about a month ago, Science decided that the journal itself, rather than a subset of co-authors, would retract the paper”。
事情是怎么一回事呢？
大致经过是这样的，今年一月份， 诺奖得主Bruce Beutler教授给Science杂志主编 Jeremy Berg写邮件提到他们实验室近期对2014年那篇Science论文“MAVS, cGAS, and endogenous retroviruses in T-independent B cell responses”进行了重复，然后发现实验结果并没有论文报道中的那么显著，然后渐渐丧失了对原始结论的信心，然后Bruce Beutler和论文的几位作者请求对这篇论文进行撤稿处理，然而有两位作者不同意。从Berg提供的整个撤稿过程来看，为了解决这一问题，Science杂志还等待了Beutler实验室进行的另一次复制尝试，然而最终的结果也是没有结论，并且持不同意见的作者仍然反对撤回该论文。就这样，最终是Science杂志而不是部分作者，最终决定撤回这篇论文。
附相关英文原文：
In January, Bruce Beutler, an immunologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, emailed Science editor-in-chief Jeremy Berg to report that attempts to replicate the findings in “MAVS, cGAS, and endogenous retroviruses in T-independent B cell responses” had weakened his confidence in original results. The paper had found that virus-like elements in the human genome play an important role in the immune system’s response to pathogens.
Although Beutler and several co-authors requested retraction right off the bat, the journal discovered that two co-authors disagreed, which Berg told us drew out the retraction process. In an attempt to resolve the situation, the journal waited for Beutler’s lab to perform another replication attempt. Those findings were inconclusive and the dissenting authors continued to push back against retraction.
Finally, about a month ago, Science decided that the journal itself, rather than a subset of co-authors, would retract the paper.
关于此事，Jeremy Berg提出了很重要的两点：第一，这次撤稿和过去众多撤稿事件有所不同，核心问题不是论文本身对与错而是结论有多么strong的问题（The question is more nuanced than with many retractions. It’s not a question about whether the result is “right” or “wrong’ but about how robust it is.）；第二，如果我们早知道达成结论的时间要这么长，我们可能会表达关切（If we had known that it was going to take as long as it did to reach a conclusion, we might have issued an expression of concern）。
西南医学中心也给出一则声明，并对于论文两位作者Zeng和Shi是否在还学校不予评论。
附西南医学中心的声明：
Dr. Beutler is fully committed to the integrity and transparency needed for the proper conduct of scientific work. He has therefore informed Science that certain experiments performed in his laboratory have failed to reproduce. Specifically, deficiency of MAVS and/or cGAS does not cause a robust decrease in type II T-independent B cell responses. Dr. Beutler and his collaborators identified the problem with reproducibility, made multiple attempts to reproduce the data, and based on their results concluded retraction was the appropriate step. No outside labs were involved.
最后，再次声明一下，昨天的报道在遣词造句上由于习惯性使然，或许让不少人觉得小编是在刻意针对谁（大约80%的原创评论文章里面都会用到“值得一提的是”），实际上绝非如此。最后感谢大家理性地对BioArt提出的建议和批评（理性的批评而不是辱骂和人身攻击），我们有则改之无则加勉，谢谢！如果昨天的报道给当事人带来不变，BioArt编辑部再次表示深深地歉意！
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