What is PubPeer capable of?

Many scientific studies are flawed. Often, the reason is poor methodology. Sometimes, it is outright fraud. The conventional means of correction — a letter to the journal concerned — can take months. But there is now an alternative. PubPeer is a website that lets people comment anonymously on research papers and so, in theory, helps purge the scientific literature of erroneous findings more speedily.

When Dan Shapiro was looking for a game that could educate his 4-year-old twins about computers without keeping them glued to a digital screen, he turned to turtles. His Kickstarter-backed game, Robot Turtles, features no actual electronic reptiles — instead, preschool-age players issue commands to their parents to move cardboard-cutout turtles across a game board. The play style mimics the basics of computer programming, in which software code is written line by line.