Ctrl-Z Awards: Will retracting your paper ruin your career?

What happens when you discover that your published paper is wrong? Does retracting it ruin your reputation—or could owning the mistake actually make things better? In this episode, we meet the inaugural winners of the Ctrl-Z Awards, which recognize scientists for correcting or retracting their own work. Behavioral ecologist Kate Laskowski takes us inside a scientific detective story involving suspicious spider data, three retracted papers, and the fear that going public might tank her career. Then computational social scientist Alyssa Smith tells us how one small error in a figure led her to retract the paper at the center of her PhD and job talk. Along the way, we talk about data forensics, the stigma around retractions, and why self-correcting scientists are the heart of science.

Statistical topics

Data management and documentationOpen scienceReproducible workflowsResearch integrityRetractionsScientific misconductStatistical forensics

Methodologic Morals

“Science is self-correcting, which means scientists need to be self-correcting too.”“Good documentation is boring—right up until it saves you.”“If you want scientists to correct their mistakes, reward them for correcting their mistakes.”“I'd rather be considered an honest idiot than for people to wonder if I'm untrustworthy.”

References

Retraction Watch: https://retractionwatch.com/Ctrl-Z Awards: https://retractionwatch.com/ctrl-z-award/Announcement of inaugural Ctrl-Z winners: https://centerforscientificintegrity.org/2026/08/04/2026-winners-ctrl-z-award-courage-retracting-own-work/ Kate Laskowski’s blog post: https://laskowskilab.faculty.ucdavis.edu/2020/01/29/retractions/Kate Laskowski’s Data Detective Course syllabusAlyssa Smith’s site: https://asmithh.github.io/ Laskowski KL, Montiglio PO, Pruitt JN. Individual and Group Performance Suffers from Social Niche Disruption [retracted in: Am Nat. 2020 Feb;195(2):393. doi: 10.1086/708066.]. Am Nat. 2016;187(6):776-785. doi:10.1086/686220Laskowski KL, Pruitt JN. Evidence of social niche construction: persistent and repeated social interactions generate stronger personalities in a social spider [retracted in: Proc Biol Sci. 2020 Jan 29;287(1919):20200077. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0077.]. Proc Biol Sci. 2014;281(1783):20133166. Published 2014 Mar 26. doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.3166Modlmeier AP, Laskowski KL, DeMarco AE, et al. Persistent social interactions beget more pronounced personalities in a desert-dwelling social spider [retracted in: Biol Lett. 2020 Feb;1