Flickr, Robert CudmoreWhen one study is retracted, other studies in similar areas of research face a 5 to 10 percent decline in citations, causing whole fields to suffer, according to a study published this month by economists at Boston University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Our findings show that scientific misconduct and mistakes, as signaled to the scientific community through retractions, cause a relative decline in the vitality of neighboring intellectual fields," the author’s write. “These spillovers in intellectual space are significant in magnitude and persistent over time.”
In their study, the economists examined more than 1,100 retractions and categorized them into one of three causes: minor errors, plagiarism or institutional disputes; questionable findings or partially invalid results; and outright fraud or severely compromised data. The authors found that in fields where questionable findings or outright fraud led to retractions, related studies suffered the most, which the author’s speculate could be due to scientist’s wariness of building on invalid studies or concern over being associated with dubious research.
Overall, the ...
