Retraction is a compulsory literary genre: it is only written by one who has no other choice, and it does not pursue fame. Except for a few media cases, retractions go unnoticed by the public. What makes for hot news?

Discourse about pseudoscience usually accompanies dialogue about science. Despite attempts to separate the two domains, people still rely on pseudoscientific remedies.

The social and behavioral sciences share many characteristics with the «hard» or «natural» sciences, including a commitment to the systematic analysis of empirical data, whether quantitative or qualitative. Yet the subject matter of social science is sometimes elusive, involving many abstract entities like values and cultures, and its methods do not always involve measurement or experimentation.