Comment on Pruitt & Krauel 2010 by JEB EiC

Pruitt and Krauel (2010) is one of several papers by the lead author that have been intensively discussed and challenged since early 2020, and one of few published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology (JEB). Following concerns raised regarding this paper, a group including some in‐house editors (not affiliated with the original authors) formally investigated it. The results of their investigation are now published as a commentary in JEB (Postma, et al., 2021). Both authors of the original paper were given the opportunity to respond to the commentary, and this offer was taken up by co‐author Krauel (2021). Our aim was to make the results of our inspection transparent and citable, to facilitate discussion in the public domain, and to ensure the integrity of the scientific record.

Postma et al.'s (2021) analysis strongly suggests problems with the methods and data of Pruitt and Krauel (2010): lots of raw data are missing, and those present show patterns defying a reasonable explanation. Krauel (2021) points out that the missing data make it difficult if not impossible to ascertain whether the underlying data are indeed problematic. There are, therefore, strong reasons for concern regarding the results and conclusions reported in Pruitt and Krauel (2010), which overall support retraction of the paper.

Pruitt and Krauel (2010) was published at a time when JEB and other journals were beginning to encourage data submission in public repositories (e.g. Dryad) after acceptance. However, at JEB data submission was not mandatory when Pruitt and Krauel (2010) went to production. Therefore, the raw data underlying the results and conclusions of their paper are not in the public domain, and we have not been able to obtain them from the lead author despite several attempts. I additionally note herein that the underlying data of another (unrelated) paper by the main author published in JEB during that time (Pruitt et al., 2010) are also not publicly available to this day. Hence, this other paper cannot be investigated by our editors.

The Journal of Evolutionary Biology is committed to open science practices and transparency. We now offer Open Research Badges (https://www.cos.io/initiatives/badges), and we mandate raw data deposition in the public domain for all papers published in JEB, such that publication in our society journal is conditional on underlying data being uploaded to an appropriate repository.

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Author notes