FLICKR, ROBERT CUDMORE
Retractions of scientific papers have increased 10-fold over the first decade of the 21st Century. New research published online last Monday (July 8) in PLOS ONE reveals that the time-to-retraction has dropped significantly from an average of 49.82 months prior to 2002 to just 23.82 months in the years since, “although recent articles requiring retraction may not have been recognized yet,” according to the authors.
“The finding that journals are retracting papers more quickly than in the past is very good news, as it shows how the scientific system of self-correction is improving,” Daniele Fanelli, an evolutionary biologist who studies scientific misconduct, told Retraction Watch.
Previously, two of the paper’s authors, Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Ferric Fang, ...
