Thousands of Highly Cited Scientists Have At Least One Retraction (nature.com) 26
More than 8,000 of the world's most-cited scientists have at least one retraction, according to a database that links retractions to top-cited papers. From a report: An analysis of the database, published in PLOS Biology on 30 January, attempts to map the scale of retractions and understand how they manifest. "Not every retraction is a sign of misconduct," says John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University in California, who led the study. "But it is important to have a bird's eye view, across all scientific fields, [of] people who are most influential in science."
Retracted papers had a higher number of self-citations than did non-retracted papers. And papers with higher co-authorship numbers were more likely to be retracted than those with fewer co-authors. [...] In the study, the authors split the most-cited scientists into two groups. The first featured the 217,097 authors who were among the top 2% most-cited in their fields over their careers. The second group comprised the 223,152 scientists who made up the top 2% for citation impact in 2023, the most recent year for which there were data. The authors found that 8,747 (4%) of the most highly cited researchers in 2023 had at least one retraction during their career, as did 7,083 (3.3%) of the researchers who were most-cited over their careers.
Retracted papers had a higher number of self-citations than did non-retracted papers. And papers with higher co-authorship numbers were more likely to be retracted than those with fewer co-authors. [...] In the study, the authors split the most-cited scientists into two groups. The first featured the 217,097 authors who were among the top 2% most-cited in their fields over their careers. The second group comprised the 223,152 scientists who made up the top 2% for citation impact in 2023, the most recent year for which there were data. The authors found that 8,747 (4%) of the most highly cited researchers in 2023 had at least one retraction during their career, as did 7,083 (3.3%) of the researchers who were most-cited over their careers.
That’s a good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
It shows that they are willing (and able) to acknowledge new facts which contradict their findings.
Re: (Score:1)
Nope. That is not why you retract a paper. You retract a paper on scientific _misconduct_.
Re: That’s a good thing (Score:2)
What about error?
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Then you write a follow-up paper that is aimed at improving approaches and known error modes.
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Indeed. There can also be political reasons. But that is essentially it. Unless the author lost their marbles and just went insane. Hence scientific misconduct is the reason in basically almost all cases.
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Discovering a flaw in your data collection which could distort the results (and thus conclusions) is not scientific misconduct. If the paper is actively cited, retraction is the most effective way for the paper to not be erroneously used to base future research, as opposed to a "correction".
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I think it would depend on how serious the error is. If it can be repaired with a follow-up paper, then there is no need for a retraction. I have seen this happen.
Re: That’s a good thing (Score:2)
I suppose most retraction falls in the category of "we realize there was a critical error".
I have seen people retracting papers before they go to print for reasons like "the machine was misconfigured and the results are just wrong" or "we identified an error in the proof that invalidates the result"
So the important thing is you read the headline (Score:3)
I expect to see a lot of these articles in the next 4 years. There is a concerted effort to undermine science for the sake of short-term gains. Sometimes extremely short-term gains at extremely high societal cost
Need scientific scrunity on social science papers (Score:2)
Self reported surveys, 30 person sample sizes, agenda based research, sentiment analysis messages, drawing group is bigoted association fallacy conclusions, ...
asking on a scale of 1 to 10 X and takong 2-10 as yes and 1 as no,
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You want to articulate that in English?
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You want to articulate that in English?
Unfortunately here on Slashdot we have much higher standards than the scientific community and retractions are not allowed. You will just have to base your future comments on that comment as it is.
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You mean the stuff that the Republican Party uses continually to defend their horribly flawed nonsense?
Interesting stat... (Score:1)
For a deeper dive into retractions, a curated collection can be found at retractionwatch.com
Posting this for any reader who's interested but didn't already know about the site.
You'd be insane (Score:2)
If you think that humans are perfect
Yeah, and? (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel that there's a concerted campaign to make scientists look "bad" at the moment, and this seems to come from that place. Of course scientists are going to retract papers occasionally, that's what you expect given new information or just valid criticism received by your peers.
It'd be more of a concern if nothing got retracted. Nobody's perfect.
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Scientists and just science in general. I've had a few Slashdot users drop some appallingly ignorant comments on the social sciences for instance. I'm at the point where I'm just done playing educator for these people, they have no interest in listening anyways.
Of course said comments only come up when they dont like what the data points to.
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I got in a shouting match with a guy at the office the other day who just wouldn't stop pushing his pseudoscience beliefs. The kind of guy who has to have the last word and won't give up until you fold.
Fuck it. I'm done playing nice. Every time you give people like that an inch they take another and eventually their views end up supported by law.
At least..... one? (Score:3)
Perverted incentives (Score:1)
That is what they do and that is why our current scientific community is mostly crap. Too many big-ego-small-skill-no-honesty assholes that claim to be scientists. Yes, I have run into them. I have caused their papers to be rejected. And while it should not, Sturgeon's law applies to scientists and scientific publications as well.
So what? (Score:3)
There is a difference between a voluntary retraction because you noticed (or had pointed out) an honestly overlooked error, and an involuntary one because you've been discovered to have been deliberately deceptive.
I'd say someone with no retractions after a large volume of published papers probably deserves some scrutiny. Maybe they're that good/lucky, maybe they just don't give a shit and they've been getting away with it.
Why retraction? (Score:2)
Because every paper does not constitute a claim that rises to the level of Theory.
- Here's what we thought
- Here's how we're going to test it
- Here's what we found
- Here's what we think now
So you publish. It's a coherent thought - please poke holes in it.
"Holy shit, you're right. There's a significant enough hole in it that we think we should pull it back!" is not just a proper response, it's a vital one. Publishing is inviting this critique. If everybody waited until the argument that is a study was perfec
Did the co-authors know they were co-authors? (Score:2)
I didn't review many papers, as I was IT support for a bunch of physicists, but occasionally I would be asked to review papers for software tools and such.
I remember one that I said that I questioned if the co-authors had all read the paper, as the lead author was a non-native English speaker and there were a huge number of simple grammatical mistakes in it. (3 or 4 of the coauthors were native English speakers who should have caught things like improper article use)
The journal editor said that I was being