Research is human work: article retraction

Research is human work and thus subject to error. The article Do offenders avoid offending near home? A systematic review of the buffer zone hypothesis, by NSCR researcher Wim Bernasco and former NSCR intern Remco van Dijke was retracted from Crime Science at the request of the authors after they had been made aware of errors in the analysis.

Conducting relevant and rigorous scientific research and disseminating reliable findings to stakeholders are our key objectives. The errors that motivated the retraction from Crime Science have made NSCR strengthen procedures of internal peer review and improve standards of (inter-rater) reliability in all qualitative and quantitative research, and systematic reviews in particular.

NSCR endorses principles of open science. To facilitate reproducibility of research findings, we allow others maximal access to our data, methods and publications. Open science also implies providing full transparency about replication failures and errors. Nobody wants to make them, but when they can be noted and corrected, they signal that science is moving forward rather than in circles.