A item in the Times Higher Education Supplement reports on the work of a group in the UK, which states that the number of papers retracted by authors, or by journal editors, has increased a lot. Some of the papers are fakes, others are simple mistakes in which the authors realize an error and try to take back what they said, and others have largish portions borrowed from other workers. But the investigators say that even the increase is probably not truly reflective of the number of problem papers. A great deal of the problem comes down, they say, to the ‘publish or perish’ atmosphere that pervades much of the research environment. It’s vital to get into print, so corners get get.
Retractions