When a Chemistry Paper was Retracted for Being Right
Retracted for violating their values
This is an excerpt from a paper currently submitted for publication at a peer reviewed journal. It has been slightly adapted to fit here.
This essay recounts events from about five years ago. It does so for two reasons: 1. it is important not to forget the history of how bad it got in academia at that time (see also The Last Four Years were the Most Repressive of My Lifetime); 2. Academia is still comprised of the same people who instigated this sort of thing, even if the national zeitgeist has shifted.
Hudlicky (2020): Retracted for violating their “values” despite getting his facts right and for expressing a common opinion.
Tomas Hudlicky was an eminent chemistry professor. In 2020, the prominent journal, Angewandte Chemie, accepted a paper he submitted, which provided a retrospective on a classic 30-year-old paper in chemistry. In that paper, he also made the following statements:
In the last two decades many groups and/or individuals have been designated with “preferential status”. This in spite of the fact that the percentage of women and minorities in academia and pharmaceutical industry has greatly increased. It follows that, in a social equilibrium, preferential treatment of one group leads to disadvantages for another. New ideologies have appeared and influenced hiring practices, promotion, funding, and recognition of certain groups. Each candidate should have an equal opportunity to secure a position, regardless of personal identification/categorization. The rise and emphasis on hiring practices that suggest or even mandate equality in terms of absolute numbers of people in specific subgroups is counter-productive if it results in discrimination against the most meritorious candidates. (page 4).
The pressure on Chinese academics to publish in “western” journals is immense and it is therefore not surprising that fraud and improper publication protocols are common. A 2013 essay in Science brought to light some of the publication practices used in China, including commercial concerns that guarantee a publication in a high-impact journal for a fee. (page 5).
The training and mentoring of new generations of professionals must be attended to by proper relationships of “masters and apprentices” without dilution of standards.
Polanyi stated two conditions under which the successful transfer of skills can occur: first, if the skill is not transferred within three generations, it is lost forever, and second, there must be “an unconditional submission of the apprentice to his/her master.” (page 5).
Regardless, this was enough to get him and his paper denounced by hundreds of academics on social media, many calling for retraction (Kramer, 2020). The intolerance and, if not exactly bloodlust, then at least thirst for punishment is all over quotes that can be found in Kramer’s (2020 report. Here are just two:
‘Do I wish we lived in a world where actually his employer would at least look and take action? I do,’ says Welton. ‘But I don’t think we yet live in that world.’ In a statement, Brock University distanced itself from Hudlický’s views, but didn’t state that any action would be taken.
‘The time for boilerplate statements is done,’ says Crudden. ‘We need to tell the community what is going to happen. This kind of behaviour has been tolerated far too long.’1
Ccapitulating to the mob, the journal retracted the paper (Kramer, 2020). Furthermore, 16 members of the editorial board of Angewandte Chemie resigned in protest, declaring: “We believe the disturbing act of Angewandte Chemie accepting and publishing an essay that promotes racist and sexist views points to a larger problem…” (Retraction Watch, 2020a). It can still be found online (Hudlicky, 2020). The journal issued this statement when it announced the retraction: “The opinions expressed in this essay do not reflect our values of fairness, trustworthiness and social awareness” (Retraction Watch, 2020).
There was not even an accusation that Hudlicky got the science or facts wrong.2
Hudlicky was Fundamentally Correct in the Claims that Got Him Denounced and His Paper Retracted
Even had Hudlicky been wrong on the merits, that should have been addressed through responses contesting his views, not through retraction. However, he was at least largely correct with respect to the issues that inspired the denunciations and retraction. The academy has been shifting left for a century and now has at least a large majority on the far left according to at least some surveys (see Jussim et al., 2023 for a review). Thus, Hudlicky correctly identified this ideological development. Second, his analysis and critique of preferential treatment and its negative consequences, and his call for equal opportunity rather than equality of outcomes foreshadowed much of the logic used by the U.S. Supreme Court when it overturned racial preferences in college admissions (Students for Fair Admissions, 2023). Third, an analysis conducted by the premier science journal, Nature, found that over 17,000 articles by Chinese authors had been retracted (Mallapaty, 2024). Thus, Hudlicky seems to have been right about that as well.
Furthermore, having trained grad students for almost 40 years now, there absolutely is an apprentice-like quality to the relationship. I personally prefer graduate students who will thoughtfully critique our work together than to “unconditionally submit.” But perhaps it is different in fields that require more technical expertise than in psychology. Regardless, as an opinion, the idea that this would constitute a basis for retraction is absurd.
From here to the references, the material does not appear in the submitted article:
So let’s briefly recap. Hudlicky was at least mostly right in the statements that got his paper retracted. It was retracted because it offended their “values.” How can you reach any conclusion other than that they held values so twisted that those values not only prevented them from seeing the truth, but led them to believe the truth was evil?
These type of people are still all over academia. It probably is worse now, because the momentum has been for it to get worse for a long time and also because DEI statements functioned (intentionally or not) to screen for progressive/woke values.
The zeitgeist has changed, at least in the U.S., but the academic grassroots support for this sort of nonsense remains firmly entrenched.
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References
Committee on Publication Ethics (n.d.). Retraction guidelines. Retrieved from: https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines.
Hudlicky, T. (1990). Organic synthesis—Where now? Angewandte Chemie, International Edition, 29, 1320-1367.
Hudlicky, T. (2020). “Organic synthesis—Where now?” is thirty years old. A reflection on the current state of affairs. Retrieved from: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yE_j7xoefegDWLwbdeFr2Sgqyl9Wnmt2/view
Jussim, L., Honeycutt, N., Paresky, P., Careem, A., Finkelstein, D., & Finkelstein, J. (2023). The radicalization of the American academy. The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, 343-366.
Kramer, K. (2020). Angewandte essay calling diversity in chemistry harmful decried as ‘abhorrent’ and ‘egregious.’ Chemistry World. Retrieved from: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/angewandte-essay-calling-diversity-in-chemistry-harmful-decried-as-abhorrent-and-egregious/4011926.article
Mallapaty, S. (2024). China conducts first nationwide review of retractions and research misconduct. Nature, 626(8000), 700-701.
Retraction Watch (June 8, 2020). Controversial essay at German chemistry journal leads to suspensions, mass resignations. https://retractionwatch.com/2020/06/08/controversial-essay-at-german-chemistry-journal-leads-to-suspensions/
Students for Fair Admissions vs. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023). Retrieved from: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/600/20-1199/
Footnote
Thirst for punishment. Welton and Crudden, who are quoted, are chemistry professors in the UK and Canada respectively.
Not even an accusation that Hudlicky got his facts wrong. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, n.d.) has produced principles for retraction that focus entirely on data fraud, rampant data error, double publication, and plagiarism. Although no journals are bound by them unless they choose to be, my view is that they constitute the only principled scientific reasons for retracting an article. Thus, one can usually determine quite easily, in the real world, whether an article was retracted justifiably or as a form of suppression – were data fraud or errors identified? If so, this is not a case of suppression. If not, it usually will be a case of suppression (although there may also be rare cases when other bona fide ethical violations are identified, such as plagiarism). Note that neither “political opposition,” “moral revulsion or panics,” nor “thousands of offended academics call for retraction” are among its standards.
An academic researcher as well, but not in the sciences, in Australia, and thankfully recently (mostly) retired. I'm sad to say I fell for all this stuff hook, line, and sinker and was one of the people pushing it, even though I wasn't as hardcore as some of my other social justice-minded colleagues. I didn't realise how far off the human rights track we had gone since the 1980s. I'm now in a position where I can push back slightly through my comments to younger researchers on some of the more ridiculous ideologically driven things they write in their research papers and dissertations, I alert them to the irrelevance and illogical things they are writing in the midst of otherwise perfectly well thought out research. Other than that, the only thing that's going to reform academia in the Western world is governmental change, with accompanying policy changes, and intergenerational change - my generation are mostly goners, unfortunately.
I read the complete article by Hudlicky, and to be honest, it shouldn't have been accepted; it was more a ranting in disconnected topics than a proper opinion article in chemistry.
Having said that, the Hudlicky affair opened my eyes regarding the DEI problem and the lack of awareness of many colleages.