ArticleQuality & quantity2022
Biased, wrong and counterfeited evidences published during the COVID-19 pandemic, a systematic review of retracted COVID-19 papers.
Article in Quality & quantity, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 2 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
9 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Retractions of Health Economic Evaluations: A Systematic Review.PharmacoEconomics - open · 2026Pooled it
- Prognostic Factors of COVID-19: An Umbrella Review Endorsed by the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology.Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics · 2023Pooled it
- Systematic reviews and the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy; past, present and future. A systematic reappraisal.The Journal of antimicrobial chemotherapy · 2025Article
- The importance of rigor in pharmacy research: Challenges and solutions.Research in social & administrative pharmacy : RSAP · 2025Article
- The stroke meta-metric, Defect-Free Care, was maintained year-over-year within the Florida stroke registry during the COVID-19 pandemic.Journal of stroke and cerebrovascular diseases : the official journal of National Stroke Association · 2025Article
- Misleading Citations and Publication Bias in COVID-19 in Ophthalmology.Journal of evidence-based medicine · 2024Article
- Imitation versus serendipity in ranking dynamics.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Designing, refining and reflecting on 3 years of daily evidence surveillance for Australia's living national COVID-19 guidelines.Cochrane evidence synthesis and methods · 2024Article
- Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In 2020 COVID-19 led to an unprecedented stream of papers being submitted to journals. Scientists and physicians all around the globe were in need for information about this new disease. In this climate, many articles were accepted after extremely fast peer-reviews to provide the scientific community with the latest discoveries and knowledge. Unfortunately, this also led to articles retraction due to authors' misconduct or errors in methodology and/or conclusions. The aim of this study is to investigate the number and characteristics of retracted papers, and to explore the main causes that led to retraction. We conducted a systematic review on retracted articles, using PubMed as data source. Our inclusion criteria were the following: English-language retracted articles that reported original data, results, opinions or hypotheses on COVID-19 and Sars-CoV-2. Twenty-seven retracted articles were identified, mainly reporting observational studies and opinion pieces. Many articles published during the first year of the pandemic have been retracted, mainly due to the authors' scientific misconduct. Duplications, plagiarism, frauds and absence of consent, were the main reasons for retractions. In modern medicine, researchers are required to publish frequently, and, especially during situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, when articles were rapidly published, gaps in peer-reviews system and in the path to scientific publication arose.
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.