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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
(156 Answers)
Answer Explanations 61
Yes
user-826281
This is no surprise.
Yes
user-83601
In 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.
Yes
user-217984
To provide right information to the right person at right time is important that can be provided with quality and original research
Yes
user-818409
There are many papers where the calculations are not shown. Thus, proper peer review is not possible.
Yes
user-856524
There are a lot of malpractices within the research community. The rate of retraction is due to increase due some of these malpractices
Yes
user-722295
We 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.
Yes
user-830315
The quality of overall research is not assessed equally in all countries and some journals do publish unverified papers
No
user-96641
I am sure many papers have small mistakes, but I doubt many have such that call far retraction
Yes
user-654647
Yes mani such articles are there in literature
Yes
user-485219
Unscrupulous publishing and AI will increase the ease of low quality publications
Yes
user-257382
I believe a lot of paperwork were published without robust methodological approaches and some hase even fabricated data.
Yes
user-870604
There is a lot of plagiarism in most of the publications. The lack originality and therefore data presented not valid.
Yes
user-439235
Well, 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.
Yes
user-471505
Scientific 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.
Yes
user-125695
Lots of pressure on academics to produce papers. Therefore, errors slip in.
Yes
user-13405
Retractions 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.
Yes
sab2x
Since 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.
Yes
user-149708
Because 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.
No
user-515387
Too 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
Yes
user-19585
I have noticed that there is poor review of manuscripts lately, this maybe due to lack of compensation of reviewers by journals.
Yes
user-112907
If 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.
Yes
user-615007
I think scientific publications are now agenda driven rather than facts driven
No
user-669412
This is a complicated question. I have published several critical analyses of this topic and welcome further discussion.
Yes
user-142393
I 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.
Yes
user-256590
The publishing system and peer review are out of control
Yes
user-484050
With increase number of publication there is obviously an increase of retractation even without misconduct
Yes
user-741891
academic cheating (fraud, stolen ideas, mill papers,....) is increasing a lot
Yes
user-906051
Just what I experience in my research field - probably because of the pressure on research staff to publish and publishers to make money.
Yes
user-807100
The compulsion to publish is an incentive that pushes professionals to submit substandard papers for publication.
No
user-960566
I 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.
Yes
user-330818
Too many persons are exploiting AI, chatbox tools, other technologies to take short cuts in productivity of research manuscripts.
Yes
user-786071
Many 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.
Yes
user-676638
Yes, 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.
Yes
user-165065
Advent of bogus journals and conferences.
No
user-21303
I think authors will learning from thier mistakes and then they will try to avoid causes of paper retraction.
Yes
user-252928
Normally 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
Yes
user-607892
I 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.
Yes
user-492588
Yes. According to evidence, many plagiarized papers, for example, go unnoticed. There is a range of ethical misconduct that should be noticed but go undetected.
Yes
user-927380
I see a lot of research that is repetitive and add nothing to science ,,,
Yes
user-871152
There are incredible results that I see in the literature which seems impossible
Yes
user-37487
Research 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.
Yes
user-778496
My experience reading and reviewing articles in the past many years, suggests this is true.
Yes
user-672631
Regrettably there are probably many sloppy publications along some fraudulent papers as well.
Yes
user-697831
I 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.
Yes
user-661953
Many reasons its a marsh has no bottom, incentives or monetary benefits making it a flowing stream.
Yes
user-819356
The 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.
Yes
user-625125
The 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.
Yes
user-475346
The rise of “predatory” journals, in conjunction with the advent of generative AI adds to the problem
Yes
user-935064
There 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.
Yes
user-105750
There are a lot of papers published in predatory journals, and a significant proportion of these paper deserve retraction.
No
user-532952
Possibly.
No
user-553722
Don’t know if papers should be retracted but likely not published in the first place
Yes
user-402415
I 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 !
Yes
user-923999
The "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.
Yes
user-310359
The proliferation of for profit journals with minimalist quality review has enabled more bad science to be published.
Yes
user-906346
There is a plaque of publications emerging from questionable journals.
Yes
user-657321
I 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.
No
user-477751
When 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.
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.
Yes
user-988151
From my experience as a reviewer the number of questionable papers inceases year after an year
Yes
user-35707
This is a big problem, but until now it has been recognized
Yes
user-550889
I 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.
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