INANE 2015 Las Vegas, NV Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky Co-Founders, Retraction Watch, The Center For Scientific Authors Behaving Badly…and Editors, Too: Scientific Publishing's Wild West

Is This Science Today?

Robots No Longer Considered Harmful I.P. Freely, Oliver Clothesoff, Jacques Strap, Hugh Jazz, Amanda Huginkiss Is This Science Today?

Retractions on the Rise

Common Reasons for Retractions Duplication (“self-plagiarism”) Publisher Error Authorship Issues Legal Reasons Not Reproducible

Most Retractions Due to Misconduct PNAS online October 1, 2012

Which Journals Retract? -Infection and Immunity 2011

How Long Do Retractions Take?

What Happens to Retracted Papers’ Citations? -Assn of College & Research Libraries 2011

What Happens to Retracted Papers’ Citations? Budd et al, 1999: Retracted articles received more than 2,000 post- retraction citations; less than 8% of citations acknowledged the retraction Preliminary study of the present data shows that continued citation remains a problem Of 391 citations analyzed, only 6% acknowledge the retraction

Do Journals Get the Word Out?

“Journals often fail to alert the naïve reader; 31.8% of retracted papers were not noted as retracted in any way.”

The Euphemisms “unattributed overlap”

The Euphemisms “unattributed overlap” an “approach”

The Euphemisms “unattributed overlap” an “approach” “a duplicate of a paper that has already been published”…by other authors

The Euphemisms “unattributed overlap” an “approach” “a duplicate of a paper that has already been published”…by other authors “significant originality issue”

The Euphemisms “unattributed overlap” an “approach” “a duplicate of a paper that has already been published”…by other authors “significant originality issue” “Some sentences…are directly taken from other papers, which could be viewed as a form of plagiarism”

This is Transparency? ‘important irregularities’ Well, if they’re important irregularities, why don’t you tell us what they are? ‘the authors ‘no longer stand by their results’ Are they standing somewhere else in the lab? C’mon, tell us why they can’t stand by the results anymore. ‘incorrect data were found to have been included on the study Case Report Forms’ Paging Dr. Kafka.

This is Transparency? ‘figure withdrawn due to lack of supporting data’ “Someone seems to have made this up.” ‘Retraction…is being done for legal reasons based on the advice of counsel’ We’d comment on this, but we’d probably get sued. ‘Numerous errors in the text and references… were not discovered until after publication, although neither novel ideas nor data were misappropriated’ As journalism error maven Craig Silverman would say on RegretTheError.com, “Rest is fine.”

This is Transparency?

“The authors declare that key experiments presented in the majority of these figures were recently reproduced and that the results confirmed the experimental data and the conclusions drawn from them.” EMBO Journal editor Bernd Pulverer: “We did not formally investigate this case at the journal and we have not seen this data, as it does not affect the retraction.”

Is This A Useful Retraction Notice? “This article has been withdrawn by the authors.” -Journal of Biological Chemistry

Why The Opacity?

What Should Retraction Notices Look Like?

Existing Guidelines

Proposed Checklist Hervé Maisonneuve

Proposed Checklist Hervé Maisonneuve

Proposed Checklist Hervé Maisonneuve

Our Proposed Guidelines Include the reason for retraction using clear, unambiguous language that differentiates misconduct from honest error and avoids euphemisms (e.g., for plagiarism) Include attribution for claims (e.g. “according to a university investigation” or “the authors maintain that”) Identify the affected parts of the paper (e.g., which figures were manipulated, which data were fabricated, which results were due to error, etc.) Indicate who initiated the retraction and which authors agreed to the retraction, or could not be reached All Retraction Notices Will: - more -

Be linked prominently from all versions of the abstract and the full publication Be freely available (not paywalled) Be communicated swiftly to indexes (e.g., PubMed, Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge) Be marked clearly as a retraction, rather than erratum or corrigendum Indicate the date of the retraction notice (to differentiate this date clearly from paper’s original publication date). Our Proposed Guidelines All Retraction Notices Will:

Indicate when the journal was first alerted to potential problems Be promoted to the media at least as much as the original paper Indicate whether other papers by the same group have already been retracted Only include statements about more recent replications if these have been peer-reviewed Indicate how the research was funded Our Proposed Guidelines Optimal Notices Will: - more -

Indicate current and prior author affiliation if different from the time of publication and time of retraction Without exposing whistleblowers who wish to remain anonymous, indicate the type of source that alerted the journal to the problems (e.g., anonymous, member of the scientific community, institutional official, author, etc.) Include a commitment by authors that if they republish any part of the paper, or replications of the work, they will reference the retraction notice Be sent to original reviewers upon publication Our Proposed Guidelines Optimal Notices Will:

"Nevertheless, scientific findings were confirmed in only 6 (11%) cases. Even knowing the limitations of preclinical research, this was a shocking result."

"An analysis of past studies indicates that the cumulative (total) prevalence of irreproducible preclinical research exceeds 50%, resulting in approximately US$28,000,000,000 (US$28B)/year spent on preclinical research that is not reproducible—in the United States alone."

Post-Publication Peer Review On The Rise

How To Catch Cheats

Doing The Right Thing Pays

Contact Info/Acknowledgements Thanks: The MacArthur Foundation Nancy Lapid, Reuters Health