Converted Twitter Response: Fraud versus Errors

There was a Twitter discussion emphasizing how identifying problems in papers shouldn't be thought of as an attack on science (and it is important not to undermine things that have been shown more robustly).

In particular, an estimate of the science-wide fraud rate of 5-10% was suggested (and I have converted my multi-part Twitter responses into a blog post).  I think 5-10% is in roughly the ballpark of a 2% estimate mentioned in a book called “Fraud in the Lab” (which I really liked).  That is also in the similar range of a 5% loss for businesses reported by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (which I learned about from reading "Talking to Strangers".  However, I would like to think the 2% fraud rate is more accurate.  However, this report makes it looks like fraud in other situations often goes unpunished, and there are costs to finding and correcting fraud.

However, I think intentions are important.  For example, I think the error rate is higher than the fraud rate.  I mention a couple citations with very different estimates in this blog post (where I hope the 15-25% error rate is more accurate, compared to considerably higher estimates).

In other words, if somebody is overworked, then they can make mistakes.  However, if a way is found for them to have an appropriate workload, then they can be a productive and helpful member of society.

That is different than somebody who intentionally creates misleading information (and/or coerces a subordinate to commit crimes), without hesitation or concern about the consequences.

I think it is also important that we train ourselves not to do things that we may regret in the long-run due to fear / pressure / competition in the short-term (as early as possible in your career).  That would be true for everybody, not just scientists.

For example, if you use your personal connections to get results published more quickly (with less rigorous / critical assessment), then that is bad for science (even if it can help you get grants/funding).  So, there can be a difference between “science” and “scientists.”

I also believe admitting mistakes is important (and needs to have better consequences than denying that you have done something wrong).  For example, I think how somebody reacts to a correction / retraction is important.

So, I think most scientists are fundamentally good, but changes in policies and other structures can improve to help them reach their full potential (and conduct science as fairly and objectively as possible).

Change Log:

1/16/2020 - public post

6/20/2020 - test reverting draft that is later made up public (confirm that original publication date stays the same)
7/26/2020 - add business fraud rate statistic

Comments on Other Papers (outside Disqus) and Positive Examples of Corrections/Retractions

It is easy to find all of my comments through the Disqus comment system.  However, it is more difficult to find other comments that I have made.  So, I thought it might be good to organize some of those here (and note when there are formal corrections):

Comments with Successful Follow-Up:

Kreutz et al. 2020 (Bioinformatics) - correct typo in title after PubPeer comment

Martin et al. 2019  (Nature Genetics) - formal erratum, and earlier PubPeer comment (one typo, one suggestion that Figure S12 makes absolute accuracy more clear)

Jonsson et al. 2019 (Nature) - formal correction following article comment

Weedon et al. 2019 (bioRxiv pre-print) - extra data (including my own) was added after comment

Zhang et al. 2019 (PLOS Computational Biology) - I had a comment that I believe was able to be corrected before the final version of the paper (although the paper did later have a formal correction)

Pique-Regi et al. 2019 (bioRxiv pre-print) - discussion helped fix links in pre-print

BLAST reference issue reported to NCBI (caused from a number of different papers no recognizing cross contamination, I believe e-mail was sent showing incorrect annotations for a limited number of example sequences).  It looks like problem was not permanently fixed (due to similar problems with new data from other studies).  However, through whatever mechanism, top PhiX BLAST hits that were incorrect were removed - not sure if it was the actual cause for correction, but I posted this on Biostars when it was a problem

Multiple but Primarily Minor Errors (not currently fixed):

Yizhak et al. 2019 - blog post (errors and suggestions) and PubPeer comment (at least one clear typo); I also posted an eLetter describing the 2 most clear errors; Science paper

Arguably Gives Reader Wrong Impression:

Li et al. 2021 - there are a number of things that I am understanding better by participating in the discussion process.  Also, my original intention was to add a Disqus-style comment on the journal article, but that was not provided.  So, that is why I posted a PubPeer comment.

Essentially, I think I would prefer a SNP chip (or Exome, higher coverage WGS, Amplicon-Seq, etc.) over lcWGS (especially the 0.5x to 1x presented in this paper), and I think the value of directly measured genotypes for SNP chips is being underestimated.  I agree with lcWGS imputations often being preferable to SNP chip imputations, but I think inclusion of imputed SNP chip genotypes may not be made sufficiently clear to the broader audience.

I also mention problems with consumer lcWGS products.

Maya et al. 2020 - if I understand the paper correctly, the study does not directly investigate COVID-19 infections (they are looking for associations near ACE2 or TMPRSS2, but in other contexts).  Please scroll to the bottom to see my comment.

Nature summary of PLOS ONE paper - image shows input (not output) of encoding and attempted recovery; unlike Nature research reports, I didn't see a Disqus comment system (but I did mention something on Twitter)

Homburger et al. 2019 - I had enough problems with my lcWGS data (which was exceptionally low coverage for my Color data) that I would not recommend it's use.  I realize that sample size is limited (just my own data).  However, I posted my concerns on a pre-print for this article.  I think this is borderline for the previous category ("Data Contradictory to Main Conclusions", more appropriate for a retraction), but I would need more data to conclude that.  I also posted a similar response on PubPeer.

I think this blog post on being able to self-identify myself can give some sense of the concerns about the very low coverage WGS reads that I received from Color.

Singer et al. 2019 - eDNA paper with multiple comments indicating concerns, and I specifically found there were extra PhiX reads in the NovaSeq samples.  As mentioned in the comment, I have an "answer" on a Biostars discussion more broadly related to PhiX (with a temporary success story about the BLAST database mentioned later in this post).

The author provided a helpful response indicating that the PhiX reads should be removed for DADA2 for downstream analysis.  However, I think we both agree that PhiX spike-ins don't have a barcode.  So, if you view that as extra cross-contamination in some samples, then this leaves the question of what else could be in the NovaSeq samples that might be harder to flag as something that needs to be removed.  Time permitting, I am still looking into this.

Minor Typos:

Antich et al. 2021 - PubPeer comment

Yang et al. 2021 - PubPeer comment

Giansanti et al. 2020 - F1000 Research comment

Kreutz et al 2020 - PubPeer comment (typo in title)

Yuan and Bar-Joseph 2019 - PubPeer comment about MSigDB citation (as GSEA)

Nobles et al. 2019 - PubPeer comment

Gambardella and di Bernardo 2019 - PubPeer comment for typo

Guo et al. 2019 - comment about typo in PLOS comment system.

Chen et al. 2019 - PubPeer comment

Qin et al. 2018 - Disqus journal comment

Chen et al. 2013 - comment about typos in PLOS comment system

Doorslaer and Burk 2010 - PubPeer comment

Other:

Börjesson et al. 2022 - PubPeer question/comment

Andrews et al. 2021 - PubPeer question (because Nature Methods doesn't have a Disqus comment system; also, public acknowledgement of misunderstanding on my part)

Antipov et al. 2020 - PubPeer comment (comments left in Word document for Supplemental Figure S2)

Robitaille et al. 2020 - PubPeer comment (question, posted there due to lack of comment system)

Gihawi et al. 2019 - Twitter comment

Older et al. 2019 - comment in PLOS comment system.

Young 2019 - comment in PLOS comment system

Choonoo et al. 2019 - comment in PLOS comment system

Paz-Zulueta et al. 2018 - PubPeer comment

Mirabello et al. 2017 - PubPeer comment

Shen-Gunther et al. 2017 - PubPeer comment

Robinson and Oshlack 2010 - PubPeer question (in the interests of fairness, I believe this reflects misunderstanding on my part)

Munoz et al. 2003 - PubPeer question (I didn't find any errors in the paper, but I wondered why data was presented in a particular way, and journal didn't have a comment system)

I also have some notes on limits to precision in genomics results available to the public (which I would probably define more as a "product" than a "paper), among this collection of posts.

Given it is harder for me to find these (compared to my Disqus comments), I will probably add more in the future (but the comments in the "other" section are not necessarily bad - I will just probably forget them if I don't save a link here).  For example, I believe increased participation in such comment systems may make them as effective as a "minor comment" (particularly if the journal doesn't go back and change the original publication after a formal correction).

Checking / Correcting Citations of My 1st Author Papers

Silva et al. 2022 - journal comment

Xu et al. 2021 - PubPeer comment

Wojewodzic and Lavender et al. 2021 - preprint comment (hopefully, can be corrected before peer-reviewed publication)

Roudko et al. 2020 - journal comment (please scroll down, past references, to see comment)

Nayak et al. 2019 - Disqus comment (on pre-print)

Borchmann et al. 2019 - Disqus comment (on pre-print)

Youness and Gad 2019 - PubPeer comment

Muller et al. 2019 - Twitter comment

Bogema et al. 2018 - PubPeer comment

Einarsdottir et al. 2018 - PubPeer comment

Pranckeniene et al. 2018 - journal comment (please scroll down, past references, to see comment)

Debniak et al. 2018 - journal comment

Hu et al. 2016 -  PubPeer comment (probably due to confusion on Bioconductor page)

Wong and Chang 2015 - PubPeer comment

Wockner et al. 2015 - PubPeer comment (more of a true comment, than post-publication review for error)

As mentioned in a couple other posts (general and COH-specific), I am trying to correct previous errors in my papers, and I think having 4 first-author (or equivalent) papers in 2013 was probably not ideal (in terms of needing to take more time to carefully review each paper).

However, I also want to show a relatively long list of corrections / retractions (even though they still make up a subset of the total public records), with some greater emphasis on high impact papers and/or papers with a large number of authors. To be fair, I may not know the details of the individual corrections or retractions.  However, I hope this will cause future researchers to be brave and responsible and report / correct problems as soon as they discover them.  As a best case scenario, I believe that it is important for prestigious labs to lead by example (so that everybody represents themselves fairly and finds the best long-term fit).  We do not want to encourage people to hesitate reporting problems out of fear that they will lose funding and/or collaborations with peers (and/or those that do worse work but less frequently admit errors and/or oversell results will be chosen over those who present more realistic expectations).  I am very confident these are achievable goals, but I think some topics may need relatively more frequent discussions.


Other Positive Examples of Corrections:

I am trying to collect examples for high-impact papers/journals and/or consortiums.

Correction for Collins et al. 2020 (Nature paper, The Genome Aggregation Database Consortium paper)

Correction for Karczewski et al. 2020 (Nature paper, The Genome Aggregation Database Consortium paper)

Correction for Minikel et al. 2020 (Nature paper, The Genome Aggregation Database Consortium paper)

Correction for Wang et al. 2020 (Nature Communications paper, The Genome Aggregation Database Consortium paper)

Correction for Whiffin et al. 2020 (Nature Communications paper, The Genome Aggregation Database Consortium paper)

Correction for Cortés-Ciriano et al. 2020 (Nature Genetics paper)

Retraction for Cho et al. 2019 (Science / Nobel Laurete paper: I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction for Wei and Nielson 2019 (Nature Medicine paper)
--> Post-publication view indicated on Twitter in advance
--> Also includes retraction of "News & Views" article

Correction to Kelleher et al. 2019 (Nature Genetics paper)

Correction to Grishin et al. 2019 (Nature Biotechnology paper)

Publisher Correction to Exposito-Alonso et al. 2019 (Nature paper, as well as "500 Genomes Field Experiment Team" consortium paper)

Correction to Bolyen et al. 2019 - (Nature Biotechnology paper; correction for QIIME II paper)

Correction to Kruche et al. 2019 - (Nature Biotechnology paper; GA4GH Small Variant Benchmarking)

Retraction to Kaidi et al. 2019 (Nature paper; positive in the sense author resigned and admitted fabrication, rather than denying fabrication; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction to Kaidi et al. 2019 (Science paper; positive in the sense author resigned and admitted fabrication, rather than denying fabrication; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Correction to Ravichandran et al. 2019 (Genetics in Medicine paper; added conflicts of interest)

Erratum to Jiang et al. 2019 (one affiliation issue with Nature Communications paper with a lot of authors)

Correction to Ferdowsi et al. 2018 - (mixed up Figures; Scleroderma Clinical Trials Consortium Damage Index Working Group paper)

Correction to Sanders et al. 2018 - (Nature Neuroscience paper; Whole Genome Sequencing for Psychiatric Disorders (WGSPD) consortium

2 corrections to Gandolfi et al. 2018 paper on cat SNP chip array

Corrigendum to Oh et al. 2018 (99 Lives Consortium paper)

Correction to (a different) Gandolfi et al. 2018

Correction to Vijayakrishnan 2018 (PRACTICAL Consortium included on authors list)

Correction to Matejcic et al. 2018 (another PRACTICAL Consortium paper)

Correction to Went et al. 2018 (another PRACTICAL Consortium paper)

Correction to Schumacher et al. 2018 (Nature Genetics paper, several consortium listed as authors)

Correction to Mancuso et al. 2018 (another PRACTICAL Consortium paper)

Correction to Armenia et al. 2018 (affiliation correction, Nature genetics paper, Stand Up To Cancer, SU2C, Consortium paper)

Withdraw of Werling 2018 Review (I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Correction to Sud et al. 2017 (another PRACTICAL Consortium paper)

Retraction and Replacement of Favini et al. 2017 (JAMA paper ; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Corrigendum to McHenry et al. 2017 (Nature Neuroscience paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

2 Erratums to Teng et al. 2016 (Genome Biology paper; I found from this Tweet, describing error identified and corrected by another scientist from post-publication review; one Erratum is really a subset of the other)

Correction to Nik-Zainal et al. 2016 (Nature paper; typo not fixed in on-line article)

Erratum to Aberdein et al. 2016 (another 99 Lives Consortium paper)

2 corrections to Vinik 2016 (NEJM paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Jia et al. 2016 (Nature Chemistry paper + Nobel Laurate Author; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Colla et al. 2016 (JAMA paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Erratum to Kocher et al. 2015 (Genome Biology paper)

Retraction of Zhang et al. 2015 (Nature paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

2 Retractions (?) to Akakin et al. 2015 (Journal of Neurosurgery paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Addendum to Koh et al. 2015 (Nature Methods paper; figures were reversed, creating mirror images)

Retraction and Replacement for Hollon et al. 2014 (JAMA Psychiatry paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction to Kitambi et al. 2014 (Cell paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Correction to Huang et al. 2014 (Nature paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction and Replacement of Li et al. 2014 (The Lancet; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction and Replacement of Siempos et al. 2014 (The Lancet Respiratory Medicine paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Correction to Xu et al. 2014 (eLife paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Lortez et al. 2014 (Science paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of De la Herrán-Arita et al. 2014 (Science Translational Medicine paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction for Dixson et al. 2014 (PNAS paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Garcia-Serrano and Frankignoul 2014 (Nature Geoscience paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Amara et al. 2013 (JEM paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Maisonneuve et al 2013 (Cell paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Yi et al. 2013 (Cell paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Nandakumar et al. 2013 (PNAS paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Venters and Pugh 2013 (Nature paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch, describing 6th Nature retraction in 2014)

Retraction of Maisonneuve et al 2011 (PNAS paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Frede et al. 2011 (Blood paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction to Olszewski et al. 2010 (Nature paper; mentioned in this Retraction Watch article)

Correction to Werren et al. 2010 (Science paper; correction not actually indexed in PubMed?)

Retraction of Bill et al. 2010 (Cell paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction to Wang et al. 2009 (Nature paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Litovchick and Szostak 2008 (PNAS paper + Nobel Laurate Author; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Retraction of Okada et al. 2006 (Science paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

Withdraw of Ruel et al. 1999 (17 years post publication; JBC paper; I learned about from Retraction Watch)

I think this last category is really important (even though it is still no where near complete - it is just some representative examples that I know about).

Change Log:

8/26/2019 - public post date
8/27/2019 - add sentence about increased comment participating being more like formal comment (in some situations)
8/29/2019 - minor changes
8/29/2019 - added examples tagged with "doing the right thing" in Retraction Watch.  Thank you very much to Dave Fernig!
8/30/2019 - changed tense of previous entry of change log (from future tense to past tense)
9/2/2019 - add another positive example of comments improving pre-print
9/5/2019 - fix typo; minor changes
9/17/2019 - all 2019 correction, which I remembered from this tweet
9/18/2019 - fix typo; add multiple other citations
9/20/2019 - add PLOS Genetics correction as successful example
9/30/2019 - add recent Nature / Nature Medicine corrections
10/8/2019 - add Nature Medicine CCR5 official retraction and Nature Biotechnology / Nature Genetics corrections
10/18/2019 - add another PLOS ONE comment, PhiX example, and started list of incorrect citations for my 1st author papers
10/24/2019 - add PubPeer comment and eDNA paper
10/25/2019 - add PubPeer comment
10/28/2019 - add more PubPeer / citation comments
10/30/2019 - add Twitter comment
11/8/2019 - add a couple more corrections
11/10/2019 - revise sentences about being "brave"
11/11/2019 - add another PubPeer comment
12/2/2019 - add lcWGS concern + PLOS "filleted" typo
12/10/2019 - add positive example for formal Nature correction
12/24/2019 - add another PubPeer comment
12/30/2019 - add another PubPeer comment
1/2/2020 - add PubPeer question + Science retraction
1/14/2019 - add another PubPeer comment
1/29/2020 - add another Disqus comment
4/24/2020 - add comment for citation of one of my papers
5/15/2020 - minor changes
6/4/2020 - add PubPeer entry for article with typo in title
6/9/2020 - add COVID-19 paper that I believe uses confusing wording
6/15/2020 - add F1000 Research comment
6/25/2020 - minor formatting changes

7/30/2020 - MetaviralSPAdes comment

7/30/2020 - add TMM question

11/6/2020 - move eDNA category

11/11/2020 - add Bioinformatics typo correction

12/11/2020 - add PLOS ONE comment

2/2/2021 - add a couple more positive correction notes + BMC Medical Genomics figure label issue

2/3/2021 - add additional corrections for consortium papers published in Nature journals on 5/27/2020

3/13/2021 - add MSigDB citation as GSEA

4/8/2021 - minor changes

4/10/2021 - add lcWGS PubPeer comment

4/14/2021 - add another example of successful post-publication review

7/28/2021 - add Nature Methods multiplet PubPeer question

8/6/2021 - add note to acknowledge my misunderstanding for Nature Methods multiplet PubPeer question

10/30/2021 - try to better explain PhiX issue temporarily fixed by NCBI; also, move a subset of examples to my Google Scholar page (since the RNA-MuTect Science paper eLetter indicating a need for corrections was automatically recognized, but I needed to manually fix some things - this made me realize I may be able to use Google Scholar to help emphasize some post-publication review)

3/15/2022 - add MethReg comment

6/2/2022 - additional COHCAP corrigendum citation references

10/4/2022 - TC-hunter PubPeer question/comment

Personal Experiences with Comments and Corrections on Peer-Reviewed Papers

So far, I have at least 5 publications with examples of comments and/or corrections:

• Coding fRNA Comment (Georgia Tech project, Published While at Princeton).
• It is important to remember that anything you publish has a certain level of permanence (and you can be contacted about a publication 10+ years later).
• On the positive site, I think it is worth mentioning that your own desire to work towards helping people and being the best possible scientist is important: for example, peer review can help if you do everything you can before submission, but I recently provided more public data and re-analysis that I think improves the overall message for this paper (from my own initiative; for example, please see this GitHub page, with PDFs for text and comment figures).
• So, I truly believe peer review can help, but I think personal responsibility and transparency are at least as important.
• Corrigendum for 2-Word Typo in BAC Review (UMDNJ, Post-Princeton, Pre-COHBIC).
• More important than the correction, I think it should be emphasized that 6 months of working in a lab (especially without ever doing the experimental protocol emphasized) is not enough time to justify writing a review.
• As 1st and corresponding author, I have issued two comments (and a corrigendum) for the COHCAP paper describing a method for analysis of DNA methylation data (City of Hope Bioinformatics Core).
• There was also a third comment that NAR decided not to publish (regarding an error with the machine used in GEO, which is described in more detail on my Google Sites page and briefly mentioned in the related blog post).
• As a 2nd equal contribution author, there was a correction regarding the 2nd table, as well as 2 comments related to imprecise use of the term "silhouette plot" (City of Hope Bioinformatics Core)  
• [initiated and completed corrections to middle-author papers and deposited datasets] (City of Hope Integrative Genomics Core, Post-Michigan).
• You can see one example in this PubPeer comment (which is provided because the references were not provided with the correct methods in the formal correction).

I trimmed down the details above because I think the formatting on my Google Sites page is a little better, and I listed specifics for the details of the City of Hope papers in a separate post.  So, given that only two other papers were pre-COH, I thought it may be better to shift this post more towards the higher-level discussion.

We all have other factors that will contribute to the total amount of time on a project (such as allocating some time for personal life), and I would usually expect work responsibilities to increase over time.  For example, if you are scrambling to complete your work as a graduate student, you may want to be cautious about setting goals for jobs that would have an even greater amount of responsibility.

Some people may be afraid of pointing out similar issues in previous papers.  While possibly somewhat counter-intuitive, I think this can help build trust in the associated papers / researchers: if researchers are not transparent in their actions and overall experience with a set of results, that can contribute to public distrust (and development of bad habits that can become worse over time).  Plus, if research is an on-going process of small steps towards an eventual solution, readers should expect each paper to acknowledge some limitations and/or unsolved problems (and a fair representation of results should help in identifying the most important areas for future research).

One relatively well-known example of the impossibility of being 100% accurate in all predictions is that Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling had a PNAS paper proposing a triple-helix structure for DNA.  There was even a Retraction Watch blog post that brought up the issue of whether this paper should be retracted.  I don't believe anyone currently cites that paper with the believe that DNA has a triple-helix (rather than a double-helix) structure.  However, taking time to correct and address mistakes needs to be taken into consideration for project management, and my point is that I am trying to encourage more self-regulation of corrections (since there are papers in relatively high impact journals whose main conclusion is wrong and they haven't been retracted or corrected).

While it harder to pass judgments on other people's work, I hope that I can be a good example for other people to identify issues with their own previous work.  For example, one counter-argument to the claim that most scientific arguments are wrong is the Jager and Leek 2014 paper where Figure 4 shows a science-wide FDR closer to 15%.  In one sense, this is good (15% is certainly better than 50% or 95%), but I think the correction / retraction rate is probably noticeably less than 15% (so, I think more scientists need to be correcting previous papers).  From my own record (of 1st author or equivalent papers), my correction rate is currently a little higher than that Jager and Leek estimate (3/8, or 37.5%) but my retraction rate is currently lower (0%).  I am not saying I will never have a retraction (or additional corrections).  In fact, I think there probably will be at least a couple additional corrections (among my total publication record).  However, that is my own personal estimate, and I would like to contribute to having discussions to try and reduce this correction rate for future studies.

I believe being open to discussion can cause you to temporarily lean towards agreement, as you try to see things from the other person's perspective (even if you eventually become more confident in your earlier claim).  So, even if a reviewer/editor considers a paper acceptable to publish or a grant is OK to fund (within a relatively short period of review process), the post-publication review is a very important (and I think making funded grants and/or grant submissions public and available for comment may also have value).

I also think that having less formal discussions (on Biostars, blogs, pre-prints, etc.) can help the peer-reviewed version of an article to be more accurate (if people actively comment in a location that is easy to check, reviewers take public comments into consideration, and/or journals use public comments to select reviewers that will provide the most fair assessment).  For multiple platforms, the Disqus comment system provides a centralized way to look for commentary for at least one peer-reviewed and at least one pre-print system.  While not linked directly from the paper, PubPeer also provides an independent commentary on journal articles.  I also have some examples of comments on both those mediums on this blog post.

While not the primary purpose, I think Twitter can also be useful for peer view.  For example, consider the contribution of a Twitter discussion to this Disqus comment.  Likewise, I found out about this article about the limits to peer review from Twitter.

I also have a set of blog posts summarizing experiences that describe the need for correction / qualification of results provided to the public for genomic products (although I think catching errors in papers, or better yet pre-prints, is really the preferable solution).  While maybe having something like the Disqus system for individual results (kind of like ClinVar, GET-Evidence, SNPedia, etc.) may have some advantages, people can currently give feedback in mediums like PatientsLikeMe (where I have described my experiences here) and the FDA MedWatch.

Update Log:

2/2019 - I would like to thank John Storey's tweet to reminding me of Jeff's SWFDR publication (in a draft, prior to the public post)
7/26/2019 - public post date
8/1/2019 - remove middle author link after realizing that there will be additional middle author corrections; add COHCAP corrigendum link; add PubPeer link based upon this tweet.
8/3/2019 - add Twitter links
8/6/2019 - switch link to updated genomics summary
1/16/2020 - add link to Disqus / PubPeer comment list
4/4/2020 - minor changes
7/11/2020 - minor changes

3/20/2022 - add Oncotarget RNA-Seq comment