The ‘Error’ program, developed at the University of Bern, invites its users to engage in the ethical ‘hacking’ of scientific publications. | Illustration: zVg

“Scientific thought … corresponds to a kind of utter honesty – a kind of leaning over backwards” . This, at least, is the opinion of the prominent physicist Richard Feynman, though it’s often a chimera in the face of today’s maxim of ‘publish or perish’. Nevertheless, Malte Elson from the University of Bern and Ruben Arslan from the University of Leipzig want to do their part to uphold this sense of scholarly honesty. So in February 2024, they launched a program entitled ‘Error’. The idea is that researchers should present their articles there and invite reviewers to find any and all significant mistakes in them. Whoever submits a paper gets CHF 250. And anyone finding a mistake will be rewarded with between CHF 250 and CHF 2,000. Error’s starting budget is CHF 250,000. The American science journalist Umair Irfan finds it a positive step: “If we can invite more scrutiny on the back end here, then potentially we can get to more robust research”.