To many Retraction Watch readers, the name Rolf Degen will sound very familiar – for the last few years, he’s earned quite a few “hat tips” by alerting us to retraction notices published across a wide range of fields of research, as well as research on trends in science publishing. We spoke to him about his passion for “truth, wisdom, and the scientific enterprise.”
Retraction Watch: Your name with be familiar to many readers, so can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Rolf Degen: As a freelance science writer living in Germany’s former capital Bonn, since the early 1980s I have had the pleasure to share my enthusiasm for psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology by writing articles for major German newspapers and magazines as well as several popular science books. I always found it a privilege to make a living by pursuing questions like “Who am I, how did I become that way – and why am I not Brad Pitt?” For the longest part, my engagement was driven by unbridled obsession and a naive, unswerving trust in that incorruptible voice of truth and wisdom, the scientific enterprise. That is, until Retraction Watch and related voices disseminated the sobering recognition that, all too often, the so-called incorruptible voice has a skeleton in the closet. In my case, that painful insight turned long-standing blind infatuation into a love-hate-relationship…
