inside publishing misconduct: fraud, plagiarism and other editorial misadventures

Inside Publishing Misconduct: Fraud,

Plagiarism and Other Editorial Misadventures

Adam Marcus Managing Editor

Anesthesiology Newsamarcus@mcmahonmed.com

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Co-founder, with Ivan Oransky, MD, of

Retraction Watch: retractionwatch.com

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Slide courtesy of Steven L. Shafer, MDProfessor of Anesthesiology, Columbia University

Adjunct Professor of Anesthesia, Stanford UniversityAdjunct Professor of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, UCSF

Editor-in-Chief, Anesthesia & Analgesia

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What is Fraud?

• Plagiarism• Data Fabrication• Misappropriation

of funds• Forgery• Ethics violations• All of the above

Scott Reuben

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Data Fabrication

Joachim Boldt

Naoki Mori

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What’s Yours is Mine

Yoshitaka Fujii, MD — a new record?

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Retractions on the Rise

-The Wall Street Journal

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Retractions on the Rise

-Neil Saunders

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Retractions on the Rise

-Nature

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Why Do Journals Retract?

-Journal of Medical Ethics 2010

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Why Do Journals Retract?

• Error is more common than fraud• 73.5% of papers were retracted for error

(or an undisclosed reason) vs 26.6% for fraud

• Most common reason for retraction: a scientific mistake (234 papers; 31.5%)

• Fabrication (including data plagiarism) more common than text plagiarism

• Multiple reasons for retraction cited for 67 papers (9.0%), but 134 papers (18.1%) were retracted for ambiguous reasons -Journal of Medical Ethics 2010

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What Happens to Retracted Papers?

Budd et al, 1999: • Retracted articles received more than 2,000

post-retraction citations; less than 8% of citations acknowledged the retraction

• Preliminary study of the present data shows that continued citation remains a problem

• Of 391 citations analyzed, only 6% acknowledge the retraction

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Furman et al. 2012 Research Policy:

“Our findings suggest that attention is a key predictor of retraction – retracted articles arise most frequently among highly-cited articles. The retraction system is expeditious in uncovering knowledge that is ever determined to be false (the mean time to retraction is less than two years) and democratic (retraction is not systematically affected by author prominence). Lastly, retraction causes an immediate, severe, and long-lived decline in future citations.”

* 65% decrease in citations

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IS IT ALL ACADEMIC?

Steen G. J Med Ethics. 2011 Dec

Retractions in the medical literature: how can patients be protected from risk?

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“Retracted clinical trials treated more patients (p=0.0002) and inspired secondary studies that put more patients at risk (p=0.0019) than did other kinds of medical research. Conclusions: If the goal is to minimize risk to patients, the appropriate focus is on clinical trials. Clinical trials form the foundation of evidence-based medicine; hence, the integrity of clinical trials must be protected.”

Steen G. J Med Ethics. 2011 Dec

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WHAT’S A JOURNAL TO DO?

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100% Manuscript Screening

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Detection Software

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This is Transparency?

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The Way Forward• Use systems to detect image manipulation

and plagiarism

• Require authors to disclose prior retractions and investigations

• Trust anonymous whistleblowers more

• Demand more of institutions

• Move more quickly to correct and retract

• Make retraction notices clearer - and -

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The Way Forward• Make them freely available