ArticlemedRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences2026
Cost of Retracted Articles to the NIH: a Living Analysis.
Article in medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Retractions attract substantial attention and have become more frequent over time. Retractions reflect the self-correcting nature of science but also wasted resources. The Retraction Watch Database (RWD) includes over 60,000 records. We integrated RWD with NIH funding metadata (RePORTER system). As of July 2026, of the 6,081 U.S. affiliated retracted articles, 1,725 (28.4%) were linked to at least one NIH grant. With a mean attributed cost per retracted NIH-funded article of $255,087 in 2026 dollars, the attributed total cost of NIH-funded retracted research is $440 million in 2026 dollars. Grants associated with retracted papers for which the first or last author of the paper was the principal investigator were awarded $4.03 billion in 2026 dollars. NIH-funded articles take longer to be retracted (mean = 6.3 years) than other US-based articles, which may entail greater downstream implications. NIH funding of retracted authors decreased over the 3 years following retraction, particularly among authors with multiple retractions. We have developed a continuously updated dynamic dashboard (https://sandovallentisco.shinyapps.io/nih-retractions/) for the cost of retractions reflecting NIH-funded work.
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.