Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications
Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesPublished 1 October 2012Open access
Ferric C. Fang, R. Grant Steen, Arturo Casadevall
Citations1,222
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score3.41
SNIP2.38
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TL;DR
A detailed review of all 2,047 biomedical and life-science research articles indexed by PubMed as retracted on May 3, 2012 revealed that only 21.3% of retractions were attributable to error, compared with 67.4% attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud, duplicate publication, and plagiarism.
Abstract
A detailed review of all 2,047 biomedical and life-science research articles indexed by PubMed as retracted on May 3, 2012 revealed that only 21.3% of retractions were attributable to error. In contrast, 67.4% of retractions were attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4%), duplicate publication (14.2%), and plagiarism (9.8%). Incomplete, uninformative or misleading retraction announcements have led to a previous underestimation of the role of fraud in the ongoing retraction epidemic. The percentage of scientific articles retracted because of fraud has increased ∼10-fold since 1975. Retractions exhibit distinctive temporal and geographic patterns that may reveal underlying causes.
Keywords
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