Science publishing: The trouble with retractions

Governing Knowledge in the Scientific Community: Exploring the Role of Retractions in Biomedicine

“…Broadly speaking, the importance of understanding the governance of knowledge production is growing as the scientific enterprise expands in scale and scope (Wuchty, Jones, and Uzzi, 2007;Van Noorden, 2011), thus rendering informal networks of trusted peers incapable of diffusing information about false publications to the entire relevant scientific community (Crane, 1969). It also becomes increasingly salient for those who generate and use knowledge in the emerging range of knowledge-based communities whose distributed nature, limited social interactions and recent formation preclude the use of informal relationships as the key filter to identify and share information regarding false findings.…”

“…Despite the scientific community's obvious interest in governing science and maintaining its veracity, and the growing interest of other distributed knowledge producing communities, the drivers and impact of retractions are not clear (Broad and Wade, 1983;Budd et al, 1998Budd et al, , 1999Lacetera and Zirulia, 2009;David and Pozzi, 2007;Van Noorden, 2011). Indeed while mechanisms to identify and signal "defective" or false knowledge are as or more important to the knowledge economy as systems to identify defects in the manufacturing economy, these practices remain poorly understood.…”

The Inherent Drawbacks of the Pressure to Publish in Health Sciences: Good or Bad Science

“…Proof of that is the increased importance of organizations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the development of software to detect plagiarism. Although, the number of journal article retractions has grown in the last decade 19 , it is the general consensus that this may be the result of increased awareness rather than misconduct 2 . Nevertheless, several fraudulent/misconduct cases have been made publicly available.…”

Quality management for robust and reliable research

“…The need for reliability is obvious and "goes without saying"; this obviousness however can impede the implementation of specific measures to ensure reliability. In nearly thirty per cent of cases, the reason for retraction of an article is a scientific error or the inability to demonstrate the veracity of the results and that may only be the tip of the iceberg [1]. Scientists themselves are not always aware of the problem and often insufficient precautions are taken to teach the concepts and methods of validation, verification and conservation of methods, data and results.…”