Andrew Gelman has something to say about an unnamed enemy (perhaps merely nominal), and he’s chosen the medium of poetry to express it. The venue? Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (no, I don’t read that site – I was directed to it by Retraction Watch!). Just to whet your whistle:
The paper of my enemy has been retracted
And I am pleased.
From every media outlet it has been retracted
Like a van-load of p-values that has been seized
And sits in star-laden tables in a replication archive,
My enemy’s much-prized effort sits in tables
In the kind of journal where retraction occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected articles and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life’s vanities,
Pausing to remember all that thoughtful publicity
Lavished to no avail upon one’s enemy’s article—
For behold, here is that study
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.
There’s oh so much more to go.
