Daniel BuenoCancellation of scientific articles tainted with errors, fraud or plagiarism has never been as frequent as in the past 10 years. Likewise, the process of identifying and retracting these articles has never before been accomplished as quickly. This is the conclusion of a study published last month in the journal PLoS One, written by three American researchers. The group examined 2,047 retracted articles that had been indexed in PubMed, the database containing the biomedical literature published since 1966.
From 2003 to 2012, 1,333 articles were retracted, compared to the 714 articles retracted between 1966 and 2002. This increase, say the authors, is higher than expected based solely on the worldwide growth of scientific production. What attracted their attention was how much time it took to recognize the error and subsequently remove the article.
On average, it took 32.9 months for an article to be removed. Of the 714 articles published before 2002, the retractions took 49.82 months. From 2003 to 2012, the process lasted only 23.82 months.
According to Grant Steen, a researcher from a medical communications consulting firm and principal author of the study, they could not tell whether or not the trend reflects a rise in the publication of defective articles or the increase in rigor with respect to identifying problems in manuscripts. But it is possible to infer, according to the study, that the barriers that hindered the identification of problems have been lowered. Between 1972 and 1992, 46% of the canceled articles had been written by authors who had only one retraction on their record, meaning that they did not commit a series of errors or fraud. However, between 1993 and 2012, this type of author was responsible for 63.1% of the articles removed, a sign that the system for detecting misconduct is working well.
The study notes that the reasons for canceling an article have become more sophisticated. Although the PubMed database indexes the biomedical literature published since the 1960s, the first article retracted was published in 1973 and retracted in 1977.
The first cases of fraud and plagiarism go back to 1979 and the first manuscript suspended because it contained duplicate information was published in 1990. Currently, the study notes, the discovery of one instance of misconduct committed by an author results in the revaluation of all his scientific production. Steen predicts a reduction in the number of retractions in the coming years. For this to happen, he says, scientific journals must continue to rigorously identify errors, fraud and plagiarism in scientific articles and punish the perpetrators.
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