Practice of flagging a published paper as being severely flawed
Inacademic publishing, aretraction is a mechanism by which apublished paper in anacademic journal is flagged for being seriously flawed to the extent that their results and conclusions can no longer be relied upon. Retracted articles are not removed from the published literature but marked as retracted. In some cases it may be necessary to remove an article from publication, such as when the article is clearlydefamatory, violatespersonal privacy, is the subject of acourt order, or might pose a serious health risk to the general public.[1]
Although the majority of retractions in biomedical and life sciences are linked toscientific misconduct,[2] they are often cited as evidence of the self-correcting nature of science.[3] However, some scholars argue this view is misleading, describing it as a myth.[4]
A retraction may be initiated by the editors of a journal, or by the author(s) of the papers (or their institution). Retractions are typically accompanied by a retraction notice written by the editors or authors explaining the reason for the retraction. Such notices may also include a note from the authors with apologies for the previous error and/or expressions of gratitude to persons who disclosed the error to the author.[5] Retractions must not be confused withsmall corrections in published articles.
There have been numerous examples of retracted scientific publications.Retraction Watch provides updates on new retractions, and discusses general issues in relation to retractions.[6][7]
An early example of a retraction in a scholarly, peer-reviewed publication can be traced to"A Retraction, by Mr. Benjamin Wilson, F.R.S. of his former Opinion, concerning the Explication of the Leyden Experiment," published in thePhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on 24 June 1756. This is recognized as the earliest recorded retraction in scientific publishing.[8] In it,Benjamin Wilson, a British painter and scientist, formally withdrew his previous explanation of theLeyden jar experiment, a foundational study in the field of electricity. He acknowledged that subsequent discoveries, particularly those byBenjamin Franklin, had shown his original interpretation to be incorrect.[9]
A 2011 paper in theJournal of Medical Ethics attempted to quantify retraction rates inPubMed over time to determine if the rate was increasing, even while taking into account the increased number of overall publications occurring each year.[10] The author found that the rate of increase in retractions was greater than the rate of increase in publications. Moreover, the author notes the following:
"It is particularly striking that the number of papers retracted for fraud increased more than sevenfold in the 6 years between 2004 and 2009. During the same period, the number of papers retracted for a scientific mistake did not even double..." (p. 251).[10]
Although the author suggests that his findings may indeed indicate a recent increase in scientific fraud, he also acknowledges other possibilities. For example, increased rates of fraud in recent years may simply indicate that journals are doing a better job of policing the scientific literature than they have in the past. Furthermore, because retractions occur for a very small percentage of overall publications (fewer than 1 in 1,000 articles[11][12]), a few scientists who are willing to commit large amounts of fraud can highly impact retraction rates. For example, the author points out thatJan Hendrik Schön fabricated results in 15 retracted papers in the dataset he reviewed, all of which were retracted in 2002 and 2003, "so he alone was responsible for 56% of papers retracted for fraud in 2002—2003" (p 252).[10]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, academia had seen a quick increase in fast-track peer-review articles dealing with SARS-CoV-2 problems.[13] As a result, a large number of papers have been retracted[14] due to quality and/or data issues, leading many experts to consider both the quality of peer review, as well as the standards of retraction practices.[15]
Retracted studies may continue to be cited. This may happen in cases where scholars are unaware of the retraction, in particular when the retraction occurs long after the original publication.[16]
The number of journal articles being retracted had risen from about 1,600 in 2013 to 10,000 in 2023. Most of the retractions in 2023 were contributed byHindawi journals.[17] The significant number of retractions involving Chinese co-authors—over 17,000 since 2021, including 8,000 from Hindawi journals—has led China to launch a nationwide audit addressing retractions and research misconduct.[18] Retractions are alsomeasured among highly cited researchers.[19]
A low percentage of retracted papers can be due to unintentional error within the author(s) work. Rather than removing the entire article, retraction with replacement has been a new practice to help authors avoid being seen as dishonest for mistakes that were not purposefully done.[20] This method allows the author to fix their mistakes from the original paper, before submitting an edited version to take the original paper's place. The journal can then decide to retract the original paper before uploading the corrected version online, usually with a notice on the article page.
Self-retraction is a request from an author and/or co-authors to retract their own work from being published. Self-retraction by an author is recommended due to a retraction and subsequent investigation from the journal itself potentially having a negative impact on the author's reputation, as well as indicating more integrity on the part of the author themselves.[21]
2025 - A paper claiming that the ancient village of Tall el-Hammam in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea was destroyed by a cosmic airburst was retracted because the evidence did not support the conclusions.[22]
2013 - Study on theMediterranean diet published inNew England Journal of Medicine and widely covered by media was retracted due to unreported non-random assignments. This was part of a larger effort verifying proper randomization in thousands of studies by anesthesiologistJohn Carlisle, who found problems in about 2% of those analyzed.[11]
2012 -Séralini affair - Article suggesting reported an increase intumors among rats fedgenetically modified corn and the herbicideRoundUp retracted due to criticism of experimental design. According to the editor of the journal, a "more in-depth look at the raw data revealed that no definitive conclusions can be reached with this small sample size".[23]
2025 An article written by Aidan Toner-Rodgers, a doctoral student of economics at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), intended to be published inThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, claimed thatartificial intelligence had been shown to massively improve efficiency at an unnamedmaterials science lab. Despite not having been peer-reviewed, the paper, available throughArXiv, enjoyed favourable coverage from outlets such asThe Wall Street Journal,[24]The Atlantic,[25] andNature.[26] In addition, it was praised by MIT economistsDaron Acemoglu andDavid Autor, the former of whom had been co-awarded theNobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for 2024. The economists were then contacted in January 2025 by a computer scientist with experience in material science, who had disputed the legitimacy of the data, which was followed by an internal review conducted at MIT in early February; the review concluded that the paper was fraudulent, with Toner-Rodgers being expelled from the school and the article being retracted upon by request by ArXiv.[27] A press release fromMIT's economics department issued on 16 May 2025 stated that they "[had] no confidence in the provenance, reliability or validity of the data and [had] no confidence in the veracity of the research contained in the paper," with no specific critiques outlined.[28] One commentator, Ben Shindel, speculated that the materials science company mentioned in the paper never existed due to the high amounts of data that they had purportedly provided to an economics student, in addition to pointing out several instances where thep-values seemed to be unrealistically low. Shindel further doubted Toner-Rodgers's application of a single complex method to analyze the unique qualities of vastly different materials, as well as accusing him of potential plagiarism due to one of his graphs bearing similarity to one featured in a 2020 paper on drug analysis.[29]
2024 A 2002 article published byNature, written by Catherine Verfaillie and multiple co-authors, purportedly found that adult bone marrow cells could be used as an alternative toembryonic stem cells. The paper was retracted on 17 June 2024 by the journal itself, due to two of the figures having been found to have been edited with image manipulation software. Suspicions regarding the paper had been shared since 2006, when several research groups failed to duplicate the findings presented; by 2009, two of Verfaillie's other papers had also been retracted for image manipulation. As of 2025, the article is the most cited article to have ever been retracted, with 4,482 citations having been made to the research prior to the retraction.[30][31]
2020 On 8 January 2020, Russian journals retracted more than 800 articles after a large-scale investigation conducted by theRussian Academy of Sciences (RAS) following claims of unethical publications.[34]
2018 Five articles in the field ofconsumer behavior andmarketing research, byBrian Wansink atCornell University, came under scrutiny after peers pointed out inconsistencies in the data. Wansink had written a blog post about asking a graduate student to "salvage" conclusions.Cornell University launched an investigation, which determined in 2018 that Wansink had committed academic misconduct. Wansink resigned.[39][40][41] Wansink has since had 18 of his research papers retracted as similar issues were found in other publications.[42][43][44]
2014 An article byHaruko Obokata et al. onSTAP cells, a method of inducing a cell to become a stem cell, was proven to be falsified. Originally published inNature, it was retracted later that year. It generated much controversy, and after an institutional investigation, one of the authors committed suicide.[45][46]
2011 Eight journal articles authored byDuke University cancer researcherAnil Potti and others, which describe genomic signatures of cancer prognosis and predictors of response to cancer treatment, were retracted in 2011 and 2012. The retraction notices generally state that the results of the analyses described in the articles could not be reproduced. In November 2015, theOffice of Research Integrity (ORI) found that Potti had engaged in research misconduct.[47]
2010 A 1998 paper byAndrew Wakefield proposing that the MMR vaccine might cause autism, which was responsible for theMMR vaccine controversy, was retracted because "the claims in the original paper that children were "consecutively referred" and that investigations were "approved" by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false."[48][49][50]
2009 Numerous papers written byScott Reuben from 1996 to 2009 were retracted after it was discovered he never actually conducted any of the trials he claimed to have run.
2006 Retraction ofPatient-specific embryonic stem cells derived from human SCNT blastocysts, written byHwang Woo-Suk. Fabrications in the field of stem cell research led to 'indictment on embezzlement and bioethics law violations linked to faked stem cell research'.
2003 Numerous articles with questionable data from physicistJan Hendrik Schön were retracted from many journals, including bothScience andNature.
2002 Retraction of announced discovery of elements 116 and 118. SeeLivermorium,Victor Ninov.
1991Thereza Imanishi-Kari, who worked withDavid Baltimore, published a 1986 article in the journalCell on immunology, which showed unexpected results on how the immune system rearranges its genes to produce antibodies against antigens it encounters for the first time. Margot O'Toole, a postdoctoral researcher for Imanishi-Kari, claimed that she could not reproduce Imanishi-Kari's results and alleged that Imanishi-Kari had fabricated the data. After a major investigation, the paper was retracted when theNational Institutes of Health concluded that data in the 1986 Imanishi-Kari article had been falsified. Five years later, in 1996, an expert panel appointed by the federal government found no evidence of scientific fraud and cleared Imanishi-Kari of misconduct, although the paper was not reinstated.[52]
1982John Darsee. Fabricated results in the Cardiac Research Laboratory ofEugene Braunwald at Harvard in the early 1980s. Initially thought to be brilliant by his boss. He was caught out by fellow researchers in the same laboratory.
2019 An article byWendy Rogers (Macquarie University, Australia) and colleagues onBMJ Open called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers onorgan transplantation, amid fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners.[53] Rogers said the journals, researchers and clinicians who used these studies were complicit in these methods oforgan trafficking. According to the study, the transplant research community has failed to live up to the ethical standards for using organs from death row inmates that are still being published.[54] In 2019,PLOS ONE also retracted 21 articles related to this incident.[55][56]
2017 The journalLiver International retracted a Chinese study ofliver transplantation because 564 livers grafted in the course of the research over 4 years could not be traced. The experts pointed out that it was implausible a hospital could have so many freely donated livers for transplantation, given the small number of donors in China at the time.[57]
2020 On 22 May 2020, during theCOVID-19 pandemic, an article was published inThe Lancet which claimed to find evidence, based on a database of96032 COVID-19 patients, thathydroxychloroquine andchloroquine increase the chance of patients dying in hospital as well as the chance ofventricular arrhythmia.[58] Medical researchers and newspapers expressed suspicions about the validity of the data, provided bySurgisphere, which is founded by one of the authors of the study.[59] The article was formally retracted by 4 June 2020, on request by the lead author Mandeep Mehra.[60][58]
2016 On 4 March 2016, an article inPLOS ONE about the functioning of the human hand[61] was retracted due to outrage onsocial media over a reference to "Creator" inside the paper (#CreatorGate).[62]
1896Jose Rizal was said to have issued a letter of retraction regarding his novels and other published articles against the Roman Catholic Church, seeJosé Rizal: Retraction controversy.
^Wu, Qiushi; Lu, Kangjie (26 April 2021)."Retraction of paper"(PDF). Retrieved2 May 2021.
^Mats Heimdahl; Loren Terveen (27 April 2021)."Response Linux Foundation". Letter to Linux Foundation Leadership.University of Minnesota, Department of Computer Science & Engineering. Retrieved2 May 2021.
^The Editors of The Lancet (2010). "Retraction—Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children".The Lancet.375 (9713): 445.doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60175-4.PMID20137807.S2CID26364726.
