The visibility of scientific misconduct: A review of the literature on retracted journal articles

Retractions of scientific articles are becoming the most relevant institution for making sense of scientific misconduct. An increasing number of retracted articles, mainly attributed to misconduct, is currently providing a new empirical basis for research about scientific misconduct. This article reviews the relevant research literature from an interdisciplinary context. Furthermore, the results from these studies are contextualized sociologically by asking how scientific misconduct is made visible through retractions. This study treats retractions as an emerging institution that renders scientific misconduct visible, thus, following up on the sociology of deviance and its focus on visibility. The article shows that retractions, by highlighting individual cases of misconduct and general policies for preventing misconduct while obscuring the actors and processes through which retractions are effected, produce highly fragmented patterns of visibility. These patterns resemble the bifurcation in current justice systems.

[1]  Vincent Larivière,et al.  Misconduct Policies, Academic Culture and Career Stage, Not Gender or Pressures to Publish, Affect Scientific Integrity , 2015, PloS one.

[2]  Philip M. Davis,et al.  The persistence of error: a study of retracted articles on the Internet and in personal libraries. , 2012, Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA.

[3]  J. Merz,et al.  Research Misconduct Policies of High Impact Biomedical Journals , 2006, Accountability in research.

[4]  R. Steen Retractions in the scientific literature: is the incidence of research fraud increasing? , 2010, Journal of Medical Ethics.

[5]  R. Steen Retractions in the scientific literature: do authors deliberately commit research fraud? , 2010, Journal of Medical Ethics.

[6]  Vincent Larivière,et al.  Costly collaborations: The impact of scientific fraud on co‐authors' careers , 2014, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[7]  Arturo Casadevall,et al.  Sources of error in the retracted scientific literature , 2014, FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

[8]  D. Parrish,et al.  Scientific misconduct and findings against graduate and medical students , 2004, Science and engineering ethics.

[9]  David Garland,et al.  THE LIMITS OF THE SOVEREIGN STATE Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society , 1996 .

[10]  M. Nylenna,et al.  Handling of scientific dishonesty in the Nordic countries , 1999, The Lancet.

[11]  Tonia Carless,et al.  A New Visibility , 2011 .

[12]  W. Stroebe,et al.  Scientific Misconduct and the Myth of Self-Correction in Science , 2012, Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[13]  Jon Wagner,et al.  Visual sociology , 2014 .

[14]  Karen L. Woolley,et al.  Publication misconduct and plagiarism retractions: a systematic, retrospective study , 2012, Current medical research and opinion.

[15]  E. Garfield,et al.  The impact of fraudulent research on the scientific literature. The Stephen E. Breuning case. , 1990, JAMA.

[16]  Renan Moritz Varnier Rodrigues de Almeida,et al.  Retractions in general and internal medicine in a high-profile scientific indexing database , 2015, Sao Paulo medical journal = Revista paulista de medicina.

[17]  Maurice Merleau-Ponty,et al.  The Visible And The Invisible , 1968 .

[18]  Andrew B Rosenkrantz,et al.  Retracted Publications Within Radiology Journals. , 2016, AJR. American journal of roentgenology.

[19]  Bridget M. Noonan,et al.  Image Manipulation as Research Misconduct , 2009, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[20]  Anne Victoria Neale,et al.  Correction and use of biomedical literature affected by scientific misconduct , 2007, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[21]  Paul S. Brookes,et al.  Internet publicity of data problems in the bioscience literature correlates with enhanced corrective action , 2014, PeerJ.

[22]  P.A. Kidwell Sorting things out: classification and its consequences [Reviews] , 2000, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

[23]  Xavier Bosch,et al.  Misconduct Policies in High-Impact Biomedical Journals , 2012, PloS one.

[24]  Caroline White,et al.  Suspected research fraud: difficulties of getting at the truth , 2005, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[25]  D. Fanelli Why Growing Retractions Are (Mostly) a Good Sign , 2013, PLoS medicine.

[26]  Helmar Bornemann-Cimenti,et al.  Perpetuation of Retracted Publications Using the Example of the Scott S. Reuben Case: Incidences, Reasons and Possible Improvements , 2016, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[27]  Emma Frow,et al.  Drawing a line: Setting guidelines for digital image processing in scientific journal articles , 2012 .

[28]  Kibeom Park,et al.  Ethical Modernization: Research Misconduct and Research Ethics Reforms in Korea Following the Hwang Affair , 2012, Science and Engineering Ethics.

[29]  Susan Feng Lu,et al.  The Retraction Penalty: Evidence from the Web of Science , 2013, Scientific Reports.

[30]  Emma Bilbrey,et al.  A Novel Rubric for Rating the Quality of Retraction Notices , 2014, Publ..

[31]  B. Druss,et al.  Retractions in the research literature: misconduct or mistakes? , 2006, The Medical journal of Australia.

[32]  Walter J. Ong,et al.  Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and , 1979 .

[33]  "This Is How It's Always Been Done": The Treatment of Academic Misconduct in Canada , 1996 .

[34]  A Simon Pickard,et al.  Retracted Publications in the Drug Literature , 2012, Pharmacotherapy.

[35]  Arturo Casadevall,et al.  Why Has the Number of Scientific Retractions Increased? , 2013, PloS one.

[36]  John M. Braxton The Influence of Graduate Department Quality on the Sanctioning of Scientific Misconduct , 1991 .

[37]  J. Chibnall,et al.  Understanding Research Misconduct: A Comparative Analysis of 120 Cases of Professional Wrongdoing , 2013, Accountability in research.

[38]  John M. Budd,et al.  The Persistence of Fraud in the Literature: The Darsee Case , 1992, J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci..

[39]  Alan A Schreier,et al.  Research Records and the Resolution of Misconduct Allegations at Research Universities , 2007, Accountability in research.

[40]  Anne Hudson Jones Can authorship policies help prevent scientific misconduct? What role for scientific societies? , 2003, Science and engineering ethics.

[41]  M Sievert,et al.  Phenomena of retraction: reasons for retraction and citations to the publications. , 1998, JAMA.

[42]  R. Lind Evaluating research misconduct policies at major research universities: a pilot study. , 2005, Accountability in research.

[43]  M. LaFollette The politics of research misconduct: congressional oversight, universities, and science. , 1994, The Journal of higher education.

[44]  Paige P. Schneider,et al.  Training the Research Integrity Officers (RIO): The Federally Funded "RIO Boot Camps" Backward Design to Train for the Future , 2010 .

[45]  K. Ren Fighting against Academic Corruption: A Critique of Recent Policy Developments in China , 2012 .

[46]  Sandra L. Titus,et al.  Mentoring and Research Misconduct: An Analysis of Research Mentoring in Closed ORI Cases , 2008, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[47]  M Sievert,et al.  Effects of article retraction on citation and practice in medicine. , 1999, Bulletin of the Medical Library Association.

[48]  Bridget M. Noonan,et al.  Expressions of concern and their uses , 2008, Learn. Publ..

[49]  A. R. Price Research Misconduct and Its Federal Regulation: The Origin and History of the Office of Research Integrity—With Personal Views by ORI's Former Associate Director for Investigative Oversight , 2013, Accountability in research.

[50]  K. Breen,et al.  Misconduct in medical research: whose responsibility? , 2003, Internal medicine journal.

[51]  E. Wager,et al.  Why and how do journals retract articles? An analysis of Medline retractions 1988–2008 , 2011, Journal of Medical Ethics.

[52]  Jong Yong Abdiel Foo,et al.  A Retrospective Analysis of the Trend of Retracted Publications in the Field of Biomedical and Life Sciences , 2011, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[53]  R. D'amico Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison , 1978, Telos.

[54]  K M Korpela,et al.  How long does it take for the scientific literature to purge itself of fraudulent material?: the Breuning case revisited , 2010, Current medical research and opinion.

[55]  Robert M. Hamer,et al.  A Case-Control Comparison of Retracted and Non-Retracted Clinical Trials: Can Retraction Be Predicted? , 2014, Publ..

[56]  N. Steneck,et al.  Research universities and scientific misconduct -- history, policies, and the future. , 1994, The Journal of higher education.

[57]  A. Casadevall,et al.  Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[58]  M. C. Atlas,et al.  Retraction policies of high-impact biomedical journals. , 2004, Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA.

[59]  W P Whitely,et al.  The scientific community's response to evidence of fraudulent publication. The Robert Slutsky case. , 1994, JAMA.

[60]  D. Resnik,et al.  Research integrity in China: problems and prospects. , 2010, Developing world bioethics.

[61]  Norman Kaplan,et al.  The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations , 1974 .

[62]  D. Parrish,et al.  Scientific misconduct and correcting the scientific literature. , 1999, Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

[63]  M. Pfeifer,et al.  The continued use of retracted, invalid scientific literature. , 1990, JAMA.

[64]  C. Adebamowo,et al.  Factors Associated with Research Wrongdoing in Nigeria , 2012, Journal of empirical research on human research ethics : JERHRE.

[65]  E. Wager Coping with scientific misconduct , 2011, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[66]  Minghua Zhang,et al.  A Comprehensive Survey of Retracted Articles from the Scholarly Literature , 2012, PloS one.

[67]  David B Resnik,et al.  Research Misconduct Policies of Social Science Journals and Impact Factor , 2010, Accountability in research.

[68]  M. Broome,et al.  Scientific misconduct from the perspective of research coordinators: a national survey , 2007, Journal of Medical Ethics.

[69]  E. Megargee Human Deviance, Social Problems, and Social Control. , 1967 .

[70]  Rita Faria PhD student Scientific misconduct: how organizational culture plays its part , 2015 .

[71]  D. Barnes,et al.  Consensus and contention regarding redundant publications in clinical research: cross-sectional survey of editors and authors , 2003, Journal of medical ethics.

[72]  Minghua Zhang,et al.  The impact of misconduct on the published medical and non-medical literature, and the news media , 2013, Scientometrics.

[73]  Anne Victoria Neale,et al.  Analysis of Citations to Biomedical Articles Affected by Scientific Misconduct , 2010, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[74]  E. Wager,et al.  Science journal editors’ views on publication ethics: results of an international survey , 2009, Journal of Medical Ethics.

[75]  D. Resnik Ethical Virtues in Scientific Research , 2012, Accountability in research.

[76]  Andrey Rzhetsky,et al.  How many scientific papers should be retracted? , 2007, EMBO reports.

[77]  Sara R Jordan,et al.  Research integrity in greater China: surveying regulations, perceptions and knowledge of research integrity from a Hong Kong perspective. , 2013, Developing world bioethics.

[78]  T. Brennan,et al.  Due process in investigations of research misconduct. , 2003, The New England journal of medicine.

[79]  Axel Groenemeyer Institutionen der Normativität , 2008 .

[80]  P. Greene,et al.  Policies for responding to allegations of fraud in research , 1985, Minerva.

[81]  Mark S. Davis,et al.  Causal Factors Implicated in Research Misconduct: Evidence from ORI Case Files , 2007, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[82]  C. Pascal,et al.  The history and future of the office of research integrity: Scientific misconduct and beyond , 1999, Science and engineering ethics.

[83]  H. Yarandi,et al.  Empirical developments in retraction , 2008, Journal of Medical Ethics.

[84]  R. Agha,et al.  Fraud in scientific research – birth of the Concordat to uphold research integrity in the United Kingdom , 2014, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

[85]  B. Williams-Jones,et al.  Research Integrity/Misconduct Policies of Canadian Universities , 2011 .

[86]  Sandra L. Titus,et al.  Assessing the Preparedness of Research Integrity Officers (RIOs) to Appropriately Handle Possible Research Misconduct Cases , 2012, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[87]  Fiona Murray,et al.  Governing Knowledge in the Scientific Community: Exploring the Role of Retractions in Biomedicine , 2011 .

[88]  R. Steen Misinformation in the medical literature: What role do error and fraud play? , 2011, Journal of Medical Ethics.

[89]  Kath Wright,et al.  Reporting of article retractions in bibliographic databases and online journals. , 2011, Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA.

[90]  Emily L. Poworoznek Linking of errata: Current practices in online physical sciences journals , 2003, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[91]  John P A Ioannidis,et al.  Falsified papers in high-impact journals were slow to retract and indistinguishable from nonfraudulent papers. , 2008, Journal of clinical epidemiology.

[92]  Tianwei He Retraction of global scientific publications from 2001 to 2010 , 2012, Scientometrics.

[93]  F. Al-Shamali,et al.  Author Biographies. , 2015, Journal of social work in disability & rehabilitation.

[94]  Elizabeth Wager,et al.  Fate of Articles That Warranted Retraction Due to Ethical Concerns: A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study , 2014, PloS one.

[95]  A. Casadevall,et al.  Retracted Science and the Retraction Index , 2011, Infection and Immunity.

[96]  Pamela Royle,et al.  Should systematic reviews include searches for published errata? , 2004, Health information and libraries journal.

[97]  Arturo Casadevall,et al.  Financial costs and personal consequences of research misconduct resulting in retracted publications , 2014, eLife.

[98]  K. Amos The ethics of scholarly publishing: exploring differences in plagiarism and duplicate publication across nations. , 2014, Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA.

[99]  N. Steneck Confronting misconduct in science in the 1980s and 1990s: What has and has not been accomplished? , 1999, Science and engineering ethics.

[100]  L. Lins,et al.  Scientific Integrity in Brazil , 2014, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry.

[101]  Alison Abritis An Assessment of Retractions as a Measure of Scientific Misconduct and Impact on Public Health Risks , 2015 .

[102]  Solmaz Filiz Karabag,et al.  Retraction, Dishonesty and Plagiarism: Analysis of a Crucial Issue for Academic Publishing, and the Inadequate Responses from Leading Journals in Economics and Management Disciplines , 2012 .

[103]  L. Claxton,et al.  Scientific authorship. Part 2. History, recurring issues, practices, and guidelines. , 2005, Mutation research.

[104]  Thiemo Breyer Social Visibility and Perceptual Normativity , 2015 .

[105]  Laure Huot,et al.  Visibility of retractions: a cross-sectional one-year study , 2013, BMC Research Notes.

[106]  Charisse R. Madlock-Brown,et al.  The (lack of) Impact of Retraction on Citation Networks , 2015, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[107]  S. Reynolds ORI findings of scientific misconduct in clinical trials and publicly funded research, 1992–2002 , 2004, Clinical trials.

[108]  Laure Huot,et al.  What time-lag for a retraction search on PubMed? , 2013, BMC Research Notes.

[109]  J. Dignan,et al.  The Penal System: An Introduction , 1992 .

[110]  P. Friedman,et al.  Correcting the literature following fraudulent publication. , 1990, JAMA.

[111]  Raul Rodriguez-Esteban,et al.  Retraction rates are on the rise , 2008, EMBO reports.

[112]  Elizabeth Wager,et al.  Retraction policies of top scientific journals ranked by impact factor. , 2015, Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA.

[113]  S. Levine Rev. Marshall McLuhan, "Understanding Media: The Extension of Man" , 1964 .

[114]  Ryken Grattet Societal Reactions to Deviance , 2011 .

[115]  Andrea Mubi Brighenti,et al.  Visibility A Category for the Social Sciences , 2007 .

[116]  Lisa M. Rasmussen The Case of Vipul Bhrigu and the Federal Definition of Research Misconduct , 2014, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[117]  M. Foucault,et al.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. , 1978 .

[118]  Peter Williams,et al.  Exploring Why and How Journal Editors Retract Articles: Findings From a Qualitative Study , 2011, Science and Engineering Ethics.

[119]  M. Pfeifer,et al.  The characteristics of medical retraction notices. , 1992, Bulletin of the Medical Library Association.

[120]  Hillary Hart,et al.  The University and the Responsible Conduct of Research: Who is Responsible for What? , 2011, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[121]  Armen Yuri Gasparyan,et al.  Self-correction in biomedical publications and the scientific impact , 2014, Croatian medical journal.

[122]  G. Hoover,et al.  Whose Line Is It? Plagiarism in Economics , 2004 .

[123]  S. Kleinert COPE's retraction guidelines , 2009, The Lancet.

[124]  David B. Resnik,et al.  The effectiveness of the erratum in avoiding error propagation in physics , 1995 .

[125]  M. Broome,et al.  Research Coordinators' Experiences With Scientific Misconduct and Research Integrity , 2010, Nursing research.

[126]  David B Resnik,et al.  Research Misconduct Policies of Scientific Journals , 2009, Accountability in research.