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On Thursday (October 25), the blog Retraction Watch, which tracks problematic scientific literature, released an online database of more than 18,000 papers and conference materials that have been retracted since the 1970s.
The journal Science partnered with Retraction Watch to analyze the catalog. The upshot, Science concludes, is that although the number of retractions per year has risen in recent decades, that might reflect more policing of science.
“Retractions have increased because editorial practices are improving and journals are trying to encourage editors to take retractions seriously,” Nicholas Steneck, a research ethics expert at the University of Michigan, tells Science.
Retraction Watch (RW), founded in 2010 by journalists Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, has been amassing the database for several years, the blog says in its announcement. It is the most extensive source of retractions data in existence, ahead of PubMed. The database includes the ...
