The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: What Retractions Tell Us About Scientific Transparency

1. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
What Retractions Tell Us About
Scientific Transparency
Beta Phi Mu, Omicron Chapter
Rutgers
October 15, 2014
Ivan Oransky
Co-founder, Retraction Watch
http://retractionwatch.com
@ivanoransky

2. Is This Science Today?

3. Retractions on the Rise
http://pmretract.heroku.com/byyear

4. Most Retractions Due to Misconduct
PNAS online October 1, 2012

5. Publisher Error

6. Duplication

7. Plagiarism

8. Legal Reasons

9. Lack of IRB Approval

10. Authorship Issues

11. Fraud: Image Manipulation

12. Fraud: Faked Data

13. Not Reproducible

15. How Long Do Retractions Take?

16. How Long Do Retractions Take?

17. What Happens to Retracted Papers’
Citations?
-Assn of College & Research Libraries 2011

18. What Happens to Retracted Papers’
Citations?
Budd et al, 1999:
• Retracted articles received more than 2,000 post-retraction
citations; less than 8% of citations
acknowledged the retraction
• Preliminary study of the present data shows that
continued citation remains a problem
• Of 391 citations analyzed, only 6% acknowledge
the retraction

19. What Happens to Retracted Papers’
Citations?

20. What Happens to Retracted Papers’
Citations?
“…annual citations of an article drop by 65%
following retraction, controlling for article age
and calendar year. In the years prior to
retraction, there is no such decline, implying
that retractions are unanticipated by the
scientific community.”

21. Do Journals Get the Word Out?

22. Do Journals Get the Word Out?
“Journals often fail to alert the naïve reader;
31.8% of retracted papers were not noted as
retracted in any way.”

23. Do Journals Get the Word Out?
How the Naïve Reader is Alerted to Retractions
Where retraction noted Retracted papers, n (%)
Watermark on pdf 305 (41.1)
Journal website 248 (33.4)
Not noted anywhere 236 (31.8)
Note appended to pdf 128 (17.3)
pdf deleted from website 98 (13.2)

25. The Euphemisms
“unattributed overlap”

26. The Euphemisms
“unattributed overlap”
an “approach”

27. The Euphemisms
“unattributed overlap”
an “approach”
“a duplicate of a paper that has already been
published”…by other authors

28. The Euphemisms
“unattributed overlap”
an “approach”
“a duplicate of a paper that has already been
published”…by other authors
“significant originality issue”

29. The Euphemisms
“unattributed overlap”
an “approach”
“a duplicate of a paper that has already been
published”…by other authors
“significant originality issue”
“Some sentences…are directly taken from other
papers, which could be viewed as a form of
plagiarism”

30. The Rise of Post-Publication Peer Review

31. The Rise of Post-Publication Peer Review
-Cell 2013; 153: 1228-1238

32. hESCs in Cell

33. hESCs in Cell
“It does however have several examples of image
reuse which might be of interest to PubPeer
members and readers.”

34. hESCs in Cell

35. hESCs in Cell

36. hESCs in Cell
A number of comments about these errors in
articles and blogs have drawn connections to the
speed of the peer review process for this paper.
Given the broad interest, importance, anticipated
scrutiny of the claims of the paper and the
preeminence of the reviewers, we have no reason
to doubt the thoroughness or rigor of the review
process.

37. hESCs in Cell
The comparatively rapid turnaround for this paper
can be attributed to the fact that the reviewers
graciously agreed to prioritize attention to reviewing
this paper in a timely way. It is a misrepresentation
to equate slow peer review with thoroughness or
rigor or to use timely peer review as a justification
for sloppiness in manuscript preparation.

38. Journals Are Listening

39. Journals Are Listening

40. Journals Are Listening

41. Doing The Right Thing Pays

42. Contact Info
ivan-oransky@erols.com
http://retractionwatch.com
@ivanoransky
Thanks to Nancy Lapid, Reuters Health