> This is exactly the kind of study that I show to my students as an example of poor scientific reasoning. 

For the record, scientific studies can be faulty, as well. But at least there are standards and oversight, unlike with the sort of anecdotal stuff we keep hearing about. People have a tendency to massage the information to get what they want. Objectivity is attainable, however, if that's what you really want.

> Previous studies suggested that error, not ethical lapses, prompted most retractions. In order to get a clearer sense of what mistakes led to scientific studies being pulled from the literature, lead author Arturo Casadevall at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and his colleagues identified more than 2,000 articles listed in Pubmed as retracted since the first identified article was retracted in 1977  ...  While about 21 percent of papers retracted were retracted due to error, more than twice that number (43 percent) were retracted due to fraud or suspected fraud. 

F. Fang et al., Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.1222247109, 2012.

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