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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Retractions Of Scientific Studies Are Surging

By Ed Silverman
http://www.pharmalot.com/

Over the past decade, the number of medical journals that have issued retractions has climbed precipitously. Since 2001, the overall number of papers that were published in research journals increased 44 percent, but at the same time, the number of papers that were retracted climbed more than 15-fold, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing data from Thomson Reuters.

Put another way, there were just 22 retraction notices that appeared in journals 10 years ago, but 139 were published in 2006 and by last year, the number reached 339. Through July of this year, there were a total 210 retractions, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science, which maintains an index of 11,600 peer-reviewed journals.

Meanwhile, retractions related to fraud rose more than sevenfold between 2004 and 2009, exceeding a twofold rise traced to mistakes, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. After studying 742 papers that were withdrawn from 2000 to 2010, the analysis found that 73.5 percent were retracted simply for error, but 26.6 percent were retracted for fraud. Ominously, 31.8 percent of retracted papers were not noted as retracted (read the abstract).

The conclusion? Either there is more fraud or more policing? Ivan Oransky, the executive editor of Reuters Health and a co-founder of the Retraction Watch blog that began recently in response to the spate of retractions, writes us that the simple use of eyeballs and software that can detect plagiarism has made it possible to root out bad papers.

He also notes, however, that there are more journals, which explains why there are more papers, in general, being published. “So the question is whether there have been more retractions per paper published,” Oransky writes, and then points to this chart to note that were, indeed, many more.

“That’s really no surprise, given the increasing numbers of eyeballs on studies, and the introduction of plagiarism detection software. It’s unclear whether the actual amount of misconduct and legitimate error has grown; it may just be that we’re picking up on more of it,” he continues. “What makes it difficult to tell is a problem we often see at Retraction Watch: Opaque and unhelpful retraction notices saying only ‘this study was withdrawn by the authors.’ How does that make for transparent science? We think journals can do a lot better, by demanding that authors and institutions come clean about what went wrong.”

And why is there more fraud? As the Wall Street Journal notes, there is a lot to be gained - by both researchers and journal editors - to publish influential papers. “The stakes are so high,” The Lancet editor Richard Horton tells the Journal. “A single paper in Lancet and you get your chair and you get your money. It’s your passport to success.”

The entire story can be read here.