“Try not to panic, but science can sometimes go wide of the target: in 2011, there were 38 retractions for every 100,000 papers published.  Retraction Watch, a blog founded by Ivan Oransky, executive editor of Reuters Health, and Adam Marcus, managing editor of Anesthesiology News, highlights such errors.” (What People are Saying About Retraction Watch)

Since August 2010, Retraction Watch has exposed scientific mistakes and sometimes outright fraud on a global scale.  Founders Oransky and Marcus employ the web site tagline of “tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process.”  Their blog reads like a cross between US Weekly and Nature.  Want a list of scientists with the most retractions?  Retraction Watch has you covered in the Retraction Watch Leaderboard. Retraction Watch is the blog to read to keep up with viewing the top 10 most highly cited retracted papers.

The blog also maintains a database of not just retractions, but also corrections and “expressions of concern”. With over 22,500 database entries as of February 2020, Retraction Watch is a great source for locating errors and fraud in the scientific community, with approximately 1,500 retractions per year. 

What would account for a retraction in a peer-reviewed article?  At the 2020 AAAS meeting in Seattle, Ivan Oranksy described in his presentation “Why we should be talking about reproducibility- but not forget about fraud” the possible reasons for retracting an article: fake peer review, image manipulation, faked data, publisher error, authorship issues and legal reasons. Why do retractions matter so much?  Papers that are retracted are still being cited and post peer review is on the rise.  Scientific fraud has spurred researchers to weed out the fraud.  For example, Elisabeth Bik is a leader in the field in detecting image manipulation within manuscripts. 

How does Retraction Watch manage to maintain their blog?  In December 2014, the MacArthur Foundation (yes the Genius granting foundation) awarded Retraction Watch a grant to continue their work and build their database of retractions.  In addition, The Arnold Foundation had been funding Retraction Watch since August 2015, and the Helmsley Trust since November 2015.  If you are inspired to support their work they welcome contributions. You can follow Retraction Watch on social media: twitter @retractionwatch and Facebook.

Daniel G. Kipnis, Life Sciences Librarian, Rowan University

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