[ExI] Tenfold increase in PubMed scientific research papers retracted for fraud

[BillK]

Tenfold increase in scientific research papers retracted for fraud
Study of 2,047 papers on PubMed finds that two-thirds of retracted
papers were down to scientific misconduct, not error
    Alok Jha, science correspondent
    The Guardian, Monday 1 October 2012 20.15 BST	

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/oct/01/tenfold-increase-science-paper-retracted-fraud>
Quote:
The proportion of scientific research that is retracted due to fraud
has increased tenfold since 1975, according to the most comprehensive
analysis yet of how research papers go wrong.

The study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that more than two-thirds of the
biomedical and life sciences papers that have been retracted from the
scientific record are due to misconduct by researchers, rather than
error.
The results add weight to recent concerns that scientific misconduct
is on the rise and that fraud increasingly affects fields that
underpin many areas of public concern, such as medicine and
healthcare.

Casadevall said the pressures to commit fraud came from many sources -
not least the competition for scarce funding for research. In
addition, the disproportionate rewards given to scientists who publish
in high-impact journals mean that some may succumb to the temptation
of making their results seem more impressive than they actually are.
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So new research papers (especially in biomedical science) should be
viewed with some caution, until the results are corroborated by
independent researchers.


BillK