Researching retraction: Do we need more rules or more honesty?

Should the methodological tools and review protocols required of biomedical researchers become the default for social science meta-researchers? And should these reporoducibility standards then be used to gatekeep and police "methodological expertise?" This seems to be the judgmental sub-text of the Bakker et al commentary on our paper. In this response, we make the case for critical accountability research to cultivate forms of methodological rigor that are aligned with the research questions and design. Our paper, based on a systematic topographical review of research into retraction, sought to show the limits of the existing research base. Our survey highlighted how most existing work was quantitative, rarely interview-based, and often failed to explore why journals and publishers were so slow to retract. There is too little attention to the politics, economics, and sociology of research integrity.