ArticleJournal of clinical epidemiology2008
Falsified papers in high-impact journals were slow to retract and indistinguishable from nonfraudulent papers.
Article in Journal of clinical epidemiology, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed.
- What Can We Learn from the Retraction of Medical Articles.Medical science educator · 2025Article
- Article
- Article
- Reducing Health Misinformation in Science: A Call to Arms.The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 2022Article
- Reliability and validation of an attitude scale regarding responsible conduct in research.PloS one · 2022Article
- Retracted publications in pharmacy systematic reviews.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2022Article
- Article
- COVID-19: time to flatten the infodemic curve.Clinical and experimental medicine · 2021Review
- A scoping review of the literature featuring research ethics and research integrity cases.BMC medical ethics · 2021Article
- 10Journal of community hospital internal medicine perspectives · 2021Article
- Retraction: The "Other Face" of Research Collaboration?Science and engineering ethics · 2020Article
- Article
- COVID-19 research: pandemicForensic sciences research · 2020Article
- Scientific misconduct and accountability in teams.PloS one · 2019Article
- A Cross-Sectional Survey Study to Assess Prevalence and Attitudes Regarding Research Misconduct among Investigators in the Middle East.Journal of academic ethics · 2018Article
- The visibility of scientific misconduct: A review of the literature on retracted journal articles.Current sociology. La Sociologie contemporaine · 2017Review
- What Did I Do? Practitioner Awareness of Ethical Issues in Scientific Publishing.International journal of therapeutic massage & bodywork · 2017Article
- Science in the UK - whereto now?Biomolecular detection and quantification · 2016Article
- Misconduct Policies, Academic Culture and Career Stage, Not Gender or Pressures to Publish, Affect Scientific Integrity.PloS one · 2015Article
- Why Correcting the Literature with Errata and Retractions is Good Medical Practice?Journal of obstetrics and gynaecology of India · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveThe aim was to evaluate papers retracted due to falsification in high-impact journals. STUDY DESIGN AND
settingWe selected articles retracted due to allegations of falsification in January 1, 1980 to March 1, 2006 from journals with impact factor >10 and >30,000 annual citations. We evaluated characteristics of these papers and misconduct-involved authors and assessed whether they correlated with time to retraction. We also compared retracted articles vs. matched nonretracted articles in the same journals.
resultsFourteen eligible journals had 63 eligible retracted articles. Median time from publication to retraction was 28 months; it was 79 months for articles where a senior researcher was implicated in the misconduct vs. 22 months when junior researchers were implicated (log-rank P<0.001). For the 25 implicated authors, the median time from the first publication of a fraudulent paper to the first retraction was 34 months, again with a clear difference according to researcher rank (log-rank P=0.001). Retracted articles didn't differ from matched nonretracted papers in citations received within 12 months, number of authors, country, funding, or field, but were twofold more likely to have multinational authorship (P=0.049).
conclusionsRetractions due to falsification can take a long time, especially when senior researchers are implicated. Fraudulent articles are not obviously distinguishable from nonfraudulent ones.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.