When authoritative sources hold onto bad data: A legal scholar explains the need for government databases to retract information

Government information sources like the U.S. patent database often file bad information without labeling it or providing a way to retract it. Thinglass/iStock via Getty Images

In 2004, Hwang Woo-suk was celebrated for his breakthrough discovery creating cloned human embryos, and his work was published in the prestigious journal Science. But the discovery was too good to be true; Dr. Hwang had fabricated the data. Science publicly retracted the article and assembled a team to investigate what went wrong.

Retractions are frequently in the news. The high-profile discovery of a room-temperature superconductor was retracted on Nov. 7, 2023. A series of retractions toppled the president of Stanford University on July 19, 2023. Major early studies on COVID-19 were found to have serious data problems and retracted on June 4, 2020.