Why Growing Retractions Are (Mostly) a Good Sign

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Abstract

In a new Essay in the Research Integrity Series, Daniele Fanelli examines the evidence and possible reasons for the rising number of retractions.

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Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists' Bias? An Empirical Support from US States Data

Daniele Fanelli (2010)

The growing competition and “publish or perish” culture in academia might conflict with the objectivity and integrity of research, because it forces scientists to produce “publishable” results at all costs. Papers are less likely to be published and to be cited if they report “negative” results (results that fail to support the tested hypothesis). Therefore, if publication pressures increase scientific bias, the frequency of “positive” results in the literature should be higher in the more competitive and “productive” academic environments. This study verified this hypothesis by measuring the frequency of positive results in a large random sample of papers with a corresponding author based in the US. Across all disciplines, papers were more likely to support a tested hypothesis if their corresponding authors were working in states that, according to NSF data, produced more academic papers per capita. The size of this effect increased when controlling for state's per capita R&D expenditure and for study characteristics that previous research showed to correlate with the frequency of positive results, including discipline and methodology. Although the confounding effect of institutions' prestige could not be excluded (researchers in the more productive universities could be the most clever and successful in their experiments), these results support the hypothesis that competitive academic environments increase not only scientists' productivity but also their bias. The same phenomenon might be observed in other countries where academic competition and pressures to publish are high.

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Retracted Science and the Retraction Index

Ferric C. Fang, Arturo Casadevall, R P Morrison (2011)

Infection and Immunity, 79(10), 3855-3859 Articles may be retracted when their findings are no longer considered trustworthy due to scientific misconduct or error, they plagiarize previously published work, or they are found to violate ethical guidelines. Using a novel measure that we call the “retraction index,” we found that the frequency of retraction varies among journals and shows a strong correlation with the journal impact factor. Although retractions are relatively rare, the retraction process is essential for correcting the literature and maintaining trust in the scientific process.

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Retractions in the scientific literature: is the incidence of research fraud increasing?

R Steen (2011)

Scientific papers are retracted for many reasons including fraud (data fabrication or falsification) or error (plagiarism, scientific mistake, ethical problems). Growing attention to fraud in the lay press suggests that the incidence of fraud is increasing. The reasons for retracting 742 English language research papers retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. Reasons for retraction were initially dichotomised as fraud or error and then analysed to determine specific reasons for retraction. Error was more common than fraud (73.5% of papers were retracted for error (or an undisclosed reason) vs 26.6% retracted for fraud). Eight reasons for retraction were identified; the most common reason was scientific mistake in 234 papers (31.5%), but 134 papers (18.1%) were retracted for ambiguous reasons. Fabrication (including data plagiarism) was more common than text plagiarism. Total papers retracted per year have increased sharply over the decade (r=0.96; p<0.001), as have retractions specifically for fraud (r=0.89; p<0.001). Journals now reach farther back in time to retract, both for fraud (r=0.87; p<0.001) and for scientific mistakes (r=0.95; p<0.001). Journals often fail to alert the naïve reader; 31.8% of retracted papers were not noted as retracted in any way. Levels of misconduct appear to be higher than in the past. This may reflect either a real increase in the incidence of fraud or a greater effort on the part of journals to police the literature. However, research bias is rarely cited as a reason for retraction.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS Med

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS Med

Journal ID (publisher-id): PLoS

Journal ID (pmc): plosmed

Title: PLoS Medicine

Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )

ISSN (Print): 1549-1277

ISSN (Electronic): 1549-1676

Publication date Collection: December 2013

Publication date (Print): December 2013

Publication date (Electronic): 3 December 2013

Volume: 10

Issue: 12

Electronic Location Identifier: e1001563

Affiliations

[1]Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Author notes

* E-mail: dfanelli@ 123456exseed.ed.ac.uk

DF has declared that no competing interests exist.

Conceived and designed the experiments: DF. Performed the experiments: DF. Analyzed the data: DF. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DF. Wrote the first draft of the manuscript: DF. Contributed to the writing of the manuscript: DF. ICMJE criteria for authorship read and met: DF.

[¤]

Current address: École de Bibliothéconomie et des Sciences de l'Information, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Article

Publisher ID: PMEDICINE-D-13-01897

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001563

PMC ID: 3848921

PubMed ID: 24311988

SO-VID: c3b1d210-7362-4eef-b86b-70d155934e5f

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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Pages: 6

Funding

This research was supported by a COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics, publicationethics.org) Small Research Grant. The author was supported by a Leverhulme Early-Career fellowship (ECF/2010/0131). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Why Growing Retractions Are (Mostly) a Good Sign

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Most cited references 16

Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists' Bias? An Empirical Support from US States Data

Retracted Science and the Retraction Index

Retractions in the scientific literature: is the incidence of research fraud increasing?

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