Nearly a decade ago, headlines highlighted a disturbing trend in science: The number of articles retracted by journals had increased 10-fold during the previous 10 years. Fraud accounted for some 60% of those retractions; one offender, anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt, had racked up almost 90 retractions after investigators concluded he had fabricated data and committed other ethical violations. Boldt may have even harmed patients by encouraging the adoption of an unproven surgical treatment. Science, it seemed, faced a mushrooming crisis.[…]
That list, formally released to the public this week as a searchable database, is now the largest and most comprehensive of its kind. It includes more than 18,000 retracted papers and conference abstracts dating back to the 1970s (and even one paper from 1756 involving Benjamin Franklin). It is not a perfect window into the world of retractions. Not all publishers, for instance, publicize or clearly label papers they have retracted, or explain why they did so. And determining which author is responsible for a paper’s fatal flaws can be difficult.
Still, the data trove has enabled Science, working with Retraction Watch, to gain unusual insight into one of scientific publishing’s most consequential but shrouded practices. Our analysis of about 10,500 retracted journal articles shows the number of retractions has continued to grow, but it also challenges some worrying perceptions that continue today. The rise of retractions seems to reflect not so much an epidemic of fraud as a community trying to police itself.
Funny thing, I put “covid” in the title search and there are 296 retracted papers, and they will only display a maximum of 50 of them…
15 retractions for Hydroxychloroquine and only one of those is from before 2020.
19 retractions for Ivermectin and only two of those are from before 2020.
Kate, thanks for this.
Most research is false (Ioannidis 2005, PLos One). Researchers who publish junk science and journal editors and peer reviewers (the same researchers who publish junk science) will never want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg – getting a publication. Sexy research claims made in a scientific publication leads to more journal readership by intelligentsia (intellectual idiots), which leads to greater rewards for journal editors. Why would they want this gravy train to change?
Retraction Watch actually lists 39,000 retractions. That sounds like a lot, but roughly 2.5 million peer-reviewed papers are published every year, plus many more conference abstracts which usually only go through an accept-or-reject process.
Retraction Watch actually lists 39,000 retractions. That sounds like a lot, but roughly 2.5 million peer-reviewed papers are published every year, plus many more conference abstracts which usually only go through an accept-or-reject process.
My response to a paper which I think is seriously flawed is simply to ignore it. Most papers have no significant lasting impact on their field of research anyway.
ClimateGate was the beginning of the end for peer review. It exposed the deceptive practices that the scientific community and publishers were aware of but the general public was not. ‘Pal review’ is just not the same thing.
A lot of stuff was discovered up to now.
There, of course is a lot to be discovered.
Another mode of energy generation and more important, energy storage, comes to mind.
There are perhaps 10’s of 1000’s of wise guys that got hooked up with universities in order to make a living.
Way, way, way too many. They are consuming millions and millions of $.
They have to publish, it’s the way they get paid. You come up with a likely bullshit, you get paid.
The political and social scientologists know where to go for free money, they are supremely good at bullshit.
If you think ’bout it, innovation usually comes from a single person, perhaps two. That kind of person is not looking for approval, the person is looking and working on an intuition, with intense passion and persistence to see where it will lead. There is a lot of opposition to those kinds of people. The jealousy in science and the university circles is at maximum, bar none. You gotta be an inside person or you are on your own.
Sometimes they will call them mad scientist.
This is the way it has always been.
To use convoluted phrase that those people operate with, Reality Distortion Field.
It’s science fiction, though it apparently works in real life if you wanna accomplish your discovery.
Tell me, just how we can improve a human beings life without individual freedom?
There is no other way.
Except the political scientologists will talk a long talk until every bloody body stops listening.