ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2012
Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 272 papers, 8 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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
272 citing papers in PubMed, 8 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Retractions of Health Economic Evaluations: A Systematic Review.PharmacoEconomics - open · 2026Pooled it
- A systematic review of ENT retractions.European archives of oto-rhino-laryngology : official journal of the European Federation of Oto-Rhino-Laryngological Societies (EUFOS) : affiliated with the German Society for Oto-Rhino-Laryngology - Head and Neck Surgery · 2025Pooled it
- Investigate the relationship between the retraction reasons and the quality of methodology in non-Cochrane retracted systematic reviews: a systematic review.Systematic reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Causes for Retraction in the Biomedical Literature: A Systematic Review of Studies of Retraction Notices.Journal of Korean medical science · 2023Pooled it
- Surveillance of clinical research integrity in medically assisted reproduction: a systematic review of retracted publications.Frontiers in public health · 2023Pooled it
- Temporal Trends, Characteristics, and Citations of Retracted Articles in Cardiovascular Medicine.JAMA network open · 2021Pooled it
- Research misconduct in health and life sciences research: A systematic review of retracted literature from Brazilian institutions.PloS one · 2019Pooled it
- Antigen-based immunotherapies do not prevent progression of recent-onset autoimmune diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Endocrine · 2016Pooled it
- Biomedical doctoral students' research practices when facing dilemmas: two vignette-based randomized control trials.Scientific reports · 2023Trial
- Trends and geographic patterns of retractions in clinical gastrointestinal literature: A retrospective analysis of the retraction watch database.Indian journal of gastroenterology : official journal of the Indian Society of Gastroenterology · 2026Article
- What Retractions Tell Us About Research Integrity in Mexican Academia.Developing world bioethics · 2026Article
- Integrity in Radiation Oncology Research: A Systematic Review of Retracted Studies, Retraction Notices, and Their Impact on the Field.Advances in radiation oncology · 2026Article
- Nekropolis: a cross-domain dataset of computer-science retractions and AI-governance lifecycle records (2018-2026).Data in brief · 2026Article
- Retraction and correction of scientific articles due to conflicts of interest: a cross‑sectional analysis of the Retraction Watch database.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Urgent, Exceptional, and Above the Rules: Author Entitlement in Biomedical Publishing.Indian journal of psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Scientific retractions: causes, processes, and implications for research integrity.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Review
- Indirect measurement of research misconduct among Iranian postgraduate students of medical sciences using the unmatched count technique.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Research integrity within systematic reviews: investigating the prevalence of studies by authors with multiple retraction histories in Cochrane reviews.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Review
- Letter to the Editor: Citations of Retracted Publications Should Be Discounted From One's Bibliometric Indicator.Journal of Korean medical science · 2026Article
- Will top-ranked scientific publications become the preserve of "rich" groups? ASM editorial policy.mBio · 2026Article
212 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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.
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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.