How likely are academics to confess to errors in research?

Far bigger is the psychological issue of believing one's own hypothesis. It is far too easy to fall in love. One must be prepared to accept new information and turn on a dime if the facts change. Look at the mess in climate.

There is some truth in what ArtisEasy says. But I'm not sure if that is what the article is talking about. One of the thing that this article doesn't get into is the various journals' review process. a journal stakes it reputation on the quality of the papers it publishes, but I can imagine that it can be nearly impossible to check the findings of a given submision. and the sheer nuber of submissions musy make 'peer review' somewhat daunting. How do you organize the reviews? Who does them? Under what conditions? In the humanities, much can be checked simply by following the paper trail of references and notes (but even that is time consuming). For sciences reviewing a paper would be next to impossible: can any journal have the technical ressources and manpower to double check every scientific find? The underlying problem is one of trust: errors will happen, and must be corrected. But for that to happen, space must alway be allowed for tehm to happen and the corrections to appear. We can learn as much from our mistakes as from our assertions. Provided we demand honesty over perfection.

My apologies for the tyopgraphical errors!