Comment on A college student had to retract her paper. The move was ‘the starting point for a better study’ by Maarten van Kampen

Rishika Porandla published a paper based on research she did in high school. In high school, she had studied the biodegradability of polyvinyl chloride and discovered a new process to break down the plastic. From the outset, Porandla’s project for the class seemed like “a slam dunk,” Andrea DiGiorgio, the course’s instructor, told Retraction Watch. “I thought it might have been a calibration error in the Princeton experiment, not the one I did back in high school. “The paper represented years of work in high school [and] countless hours in the lab.