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SciPoll 597: More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record
Is this just the tip of the iceberg?
Results
(157 Answers)
Answer Explanations
- YesSciPinion AdminI encounter many published paper that are so flawed that they should be retracted, as they do harm. Peer review is a poor gatekeeper of low quality work, in part due to proliferation of for-profit publishers who exploit Open access ideology. Anything can be publishes these days, if one is willing to pay article processing fees.
- Yesuser-402415I myself am already aware of two articles in 2023 that are "copies" from two of my articles (done by a Chinese and a South-American "scientist") ... and that are still not retracted! So if I do some multiplication ... 10000 is the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg !
- Yesuser-35707This is a big problem, but until now it has been recognized
- Yesuser-550889I believe a significant percentage of published research does not represent sound scientific research and the peer review procedure has no way of handling the bogus claims.
- Yesuser-988151From my experience as a reviewer the number of questionable papers inceases year after an year
- Nouser-477751When I read papers in my area, there seem to be lots of irreproducible data. As editor, I had a number of duplicate publications/plagiarisms that were either identified by software or by reviewers.
I am also of the opinion that, due to the huge influx of manuscripts, it is very hard to find competent reviewers. More prominent people often are overwhelmed with review requests. - Nouser-553722Don’t know if papers should be retracted but likely not published in the first place
- Yesuser-906346There is a plaque of publications emerging from questionable journals.
- Yesuser-310359The proliferation of for profit journals with minimalist quality review has enabled more bad science to be published.
- Yesuser-923999The "publish or perish" mantra of academic publishing, the high pressure on academics to maintain high teaching and research loads - it darkly amuses me that we praise "leading academics" with hundreds of publications when even a moment of thought would highlight that this kind of publishing rate simply isn't humanly possible without cheating.
- Yesuser-105750There are a lot of papers published in predatory journals, and a significant proportion of these paper deserve retraction.
- Yesuser-935064There has been a massive proliferation of vanity publications in recent years suggesting that there is money to be made by publishing regardless of the merits. Academic institutions are also to blame as they have created pressures on faculty to publish. Even prestigious journals are caught up in the hysteria. I know personally of two incidents in which my review of papers identified seriouis technical errors in study design that could not be overcome by wordsmithing, yet the journal editor overruled the recommendation to reject and accepted the papers.
- Yesuser-625125The peer review process must be reviewed and modified. The scientific career of a researcher is increasingly focused on administrative work and the search for funds. To this we have to add that the review process is free of charge and many researchers accept reviews out of fear that if they do not do so, their own articles may be rejected in the future by the editor. All of the above means that the review is not as methodical as would be desired; some articles worthy of publication do not pass the filters of the most demanding reviewers or those with less desire to thoroughly review a paper, while other articles of lower quality pass the filter of reviewers who barely have time to investigate the research paper, but accept the review process, doing uncritical work.
- Yesuser-661953Many reasons its a marsh has no bottom, incentives or monetary benefits making it a flowing stream.
- Yesuser-819356The selection of reviewers is a crucial process that requires careful consideration and transparency. Reviewers should be compensated for their work with an appropriate amount of currency. On the other hand, I find it unacceptable that publishing houses charge fees for publishing scientific papers. In contrast, the reviewers who evaluate the quality of the papers do not receive any remuneration. This creates a situation where the most important role in the scientific publication process is not adequately recognized or rewarded. How do you feel about this practice? As a result, many senior researchers are reluctant to serve as reviewers , and the task is left to inexperienced or less qualified individuals.
- Nouser-532952Possibly.
- Yesuser-475346The rise of “predatory” journals, in conjunction with the advent of generative AI adds to the problem
- Yesuser-697831I think there are many "paper mills", and many manuscript are just a copy/paste of whta has already been published. Unfortunately, the increase in the number of Journals contributes to the low quality of manuscript submitted, and this issue will only get worst in the near future.
- Yesuser-672631Regrettably there are probably many sloppy publications along some fraudulent papers as well.
- Yesuser-778496My experience reading and reviewing articles in the past many years, suggests this is true.
- Yesuser-37487Research institutions require successful researchers, who are sometimes defined by the number of papers per year. This may lead to "publish more papers"."Bogus" research papers can be a part of that, but also . But another aspect to be considered is the quality of research ("publish good and trustable results"). I have come accross many published papers that I reviewed. It really surprised me that they were published no matter the poor results and a "do not publish" reccomendation (poorly performed experiments) with a strong observation regarding the experimental aspects.
- Yesuser-871152There are incredible results that I see in the literature which seems impossible
- Yesuser-927380I see a lot of research that is repetitive and add nothing to science ,,,
- Yesuser-492588Yes. According to evidence, many plagiarized papers, for example, go unnoticed. There is a range of ethical misconduct that should be noticed but go undetected.
- Yesuser-607892I think there is a need to rigorously vet the manuscripts and uphold standards at the institutional review board's (IRB) level to ensure that scientific rigor as stated in the ethical approval is adhered to as much as possible. I believe the oversight from the IRBs is lacking beyond providing ethical approval to commence the study. Efforts should be geared towards ensuring the monitoring and evaluation of approved academic endeavours. This way, the quest to publish papers at all costs may be addressed.
- Yesuser-252928Normally I review many works in my specialty and I see a lot of intention to impose a certain treatment without any scientific basis just to promote a certain place, there is a lot of this
- Nouser-21303I think authors will learning from thier mistakes and then they will try to avoid causes of paper retraction.
- Yesuser-165065Advent of bogus journals and conferences.
- Yesuser-676638Yes, I do doubt that there are many papers eligible for retraction and waiting to be discovered! In biological science particulalry, reproducibility is more difficult to be acieved than other sciences, owing to the dynamic nature of the living organisms. Scientists and Ph.D. students are under undue pressure to publish in 'glamorous' journals. Concepts of replicability (reproducibility), instrument calibration, including appropraite controls in experiments etc., are not taught properly to the M.Sc. and Ph.D. students. Fixing these issues may help improve the situation.
- Yesuser-786071Many more research papers are just cooked up data but written well with AI tools and published. Many parameters are outsourced not done by the scientists or researchers in their lab. There is no credibility of data. Don't know whether its actually done by the outsourced firm or data is simply created .They need retraction.
- Yesuser-330818Too many persons are exploiting AI, chatbox tools, other technologies to take short cuts in productivity of research manuscripts.
- Nouser-960566I don't think researchers set out to falsify data or indulge in other kinds of egregious misconduct. Further the idea that any single paper can be the authoritative, final word on a subject no longer holds good in today's context. But I do think that works by influential authors need to undergo much more scrutiny than is often the case currently.
- Yesuser-807100The compulsion to publish is an incentive that pushes professionals to submit substandard papers for publication.
- Yesuser-906051Just what I experience in my research field - probably because of the pressure on research staff to publish and publishers to make money.
- Yesuser-741891academic cheating (fraud, stolen ideas, mill papers,....) is increasing a lot
- Yesuser-484050With increase number of publication there is obviously an increase of retractation even without misconduct
- Yesuser-256590The publishing system and peer review are out of control
- Yesuser-142393I think the peer review process is intrinsically faulty. My colleague reviewed one paper with poor design and misleading results and after many communications, rejected it. The authors resubmitted it to a higher-level journal and it was published and now these findings are in public domain.
- Nouser-669412This is a complicated question. I have published several critical analyses of this topic and welcome further discussion.
- Yesuser-615007I think scientific publications are now agenda driven rather than facts driven
- Yesuser-112907If you see the advancement of predatory journals and publishers you could foresee an increase trend for bad/worst publishing practices and, by consequence, may expect a huge number of papers that may be retracted.
- Yesuser-19585I have noticed that there is poor review of manuscripts lately, this maybe due to lack of compensation of reviewers by journals.
- Nouser-515387Too many papers are actually fractions of larger paper, which have been submitted separately to increase the output. This makes difficult to assess research quality and to retrieve relevant information
- Yesuser-149708Because this is human nature. As of 2022, over 5.14 million academic articles are published per year. If only 1% are "bogus" research papers, that's at least 51 400 putative "bogus". And 1% dishonesty is quite low considering other domains.
- Yessab2xSince it is unlikely that every paper that deserves to be retracted is caught, there are doubtlessly some percentage that are missed. In particular, universities seem to have very slow, ponderous processes for investigating research work in question, so very likely to be publications that will eventually need to be retracted.
- Yesuser-13405Retractions are only made when poor science is challenged. I am not sure a lot of science and peer-reviewed work is read, let alone challenged.
- Yesuser-125695Lots of pressure on academics to produce papers. Therefore, errors slip in.
- Yesuser-471505Scientific papers may be retracted for reasons ranging from honest errors to fraudulent data. While many errors are caught through peer review before publication, some are only discovered after publication.
- Yesuser-439235Well, as I started my scientific journey more than a decade ago, for almost two decades, it has been kind of impossible to replicate results published in major scientific journals, by renown scientists, begs the question of legitimacy and scientific conduct.
- Yesuser-870604There is a lot of plagiarism in most of the publications. The lack originality and therefore data presented not valid.
- Yesuser-257382I believe a lot of paperwork were published without robust methodological approaches and some hase even fabricated data.
- Yesuser-485219Unscrupulous publishing and AI will increase the ease of low quality publications
- Yesuser-654647Yes mani such articles are there in literature
- Nouser-96641I am sure many papers have small mistakes, but I doubt many have such that call far retraction
- Yesuser-830315The quality of overall research is not assessed equally in all countries and some journals do publish unverified papers
- Yesuser-722295We live in an era the massification of science filled with a "productivity metrics" with social media mentality, this creates a clear incentive to bad players and poor behaviour. To be honest, I feel extremely demotivated when I see smart people deviating from basic and audacious science towards management and metrics.
- Yesuser-856524There are a lot of malpractices within the research community. The rate of retraction is due to increase due some of these malpractices
- Yesuser-818409There are many papers where the calculations are not shown. Thus, proper peer review is not possible.
- Yesuser-217984To provide right information to the right person at right time is important that can be provided with quality and original research
- Yesuser-83601In my opinion, most research papers have some methodological flaws, and the results rarely support the conclusions. In a minority of cases, the results are doctored or just outright fabricated.
- Yesuser-826281This is no surprise.
- Yesuser-158216I believe that many articles may have less severe flaws that go undetected and thus are not retracted. This includes "small" infraction such as picking data, not conducting proper controls, etc.
user-819356
02/14/2024 10:16user-380301
02/14/2024 12:32I concur with the sentiment expressed in a previous statement regarding the detrimental effects of the "publish or perish" culture in academia. It's evident that the emphasis on sheer publication quantity often overshadows the importance of quality research and its real-world impact. We often find ourselves lauding "leading scientists" with an overwhelming number of publications, disregarding the implausibility of such prolific output without resorting to shortcuts or sacrificing rigor. It's worth noting that many Nobel Prize laureates have had their groundbreaking research published in journals with relatively low impact factors. This underscores the flawed obsession with high-impact publications, particularly those in prestigious journals like those under the CNS (Cell, Nature, Science) umbrella. Furthermore, there's a concerning pattern where senior legends, despite their invaluable experience and insights, may be resistant to embracing novel discoveries that challenge their established viewpoints. This resistance can stifle scientific progress and innovation, hindering the advancement of knowledge in various fields. In essence, we must reevaluate the metrics by which we measure academic success and prioritize the quality and significance of research findings over sheer quantity. Additionally, fostering an environment that encourages openness to new ideas and dissenting perspectives is crucial for advancing scientific inquiry and achieving meaningful breakthroughs.
user-676638
02/14/2024 21:41