The Trouble With Retractions

From the article:

Perhaps surprisingly, scientists and editors broadly welcome the trend. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that we’re detecting more fraud, and that systems are more responsive to misconduct. It’s become more acceptable for journals to step in,” says Nicholas Steneck, a research ethicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. But as retractions become more commonplace, stresses that have always existed in the system are starting to show more vividly.

…

Other frustrations include opaque retraction notices that don’t explain why a paper has been withdrawn, a tendency for authors to keep citing retracted papers long after they’ve been red-flagged (see ‘Withdrawn papers live on’) and the fact that many scientists hear ‘retraction’ and immediately think ‘misconduct’ — a stigma that may keep researchers from coming forward to admit honest errors.

From ‘Withdrawn papers live on’:

In theory, retracting a paper is tantamount to withdrawing it from the scientific literature, so that it will never again mislead anyone. But when John Budd, at the School of Education at the University of Missouri in Columbia, examined 235 articles retracted during 1966–96, he found that they were cited in total more than 2,000 times after their withdrawal, with fewer than 8% of the citations acknowledging the retraction. And the rates haven’t improved much in the age of electronic publication: in a preliminary analysis of 1,112 retracted papers during 1997–2009, Budd finds them cited just as often, with the retraction mentioned in only about 4% of the citations. Other studies suggest that the situation is even worse for corrections, which are more numerous and often add important updates to a paper.

([via](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific-journal-retractions-prompts-calls-for-reform.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1334958458-PxivQM3BpvGZR636Xup/Qw&pagewanted=all) [via](http://www.metafilter.com/115894/Publish-or-Perish#4342892))