Retractions of scientific articles are becoming the most relevant institution for making sense of scientific misconduct. An increasing number of retracted articles, mainly attributed to misconduct, is currently providing a new empirical basis for research about scientific misconduct. This article reviews the relevant research literature from an interdisciplinary context. Furthermore, the results from these studies are contextualized sociologically by asking how scientific misconduct is made visible through retractions. This study treats retractions as an emerging institution that renders scientific misconduct visible, thus, following up on the sociology of deviance and its focus on visibility. The article shows that retractions, by highlighting individual cases of misconduct and general policies for preventing misconduct while obscuring the actors and processes through which retractions are effected, produce highly fragmented patterns of visibility. These patterns resemble the bifurcation in current justice systems.

Sanctions for plagiarism, falsification and fabrication in research are primarily symbolic. This paper investigates sanctions for scientific misconduct and their preceding investigation processes as visible and legitimate symbols. Using three different data sources (retraction notices, expert interviews, and a survey of scientists), we show that sanctions for scientific misconduct operate within a cycle of visibility, in which sanctions are highly visible, while investigation and decision-making procedures remain mostly invisible. This corresponds to high levels of acceptance of sanctions in the scientific community, but a low acceptance of the respective authorities. Such a punitiveness in turn exacerbates confidentiality concerns, so that authorities become even more secretive. We argue that punitiveness towards scientific misconduct is driven by such a cycle of invisibility.

This article draws on research traditions and insights from Criminology to elaborate on the problems associated with current practices of measuring scientific misconduct. Analyses of the number of retracted articles are shown to suffer from the fact that the distinct processes of misconduct, detection, punishment, and publication of a retraction notice, all contribute to the number of retractions and, hence, will result in biased estimates. Self-report measures, as well as analyses of retractions, are additionally affected by the absence of a consistent definition of misconduct. This problem of definition is addressed further as stemming from a lack of generally valid definitions both on the level of measuring misconduct and on the level of scientific practice itself. Because science is an innovative and ever-changing endeavor, the meaning of misbehavior is permanently shifting and frequently readdressed and renegotiated within the scientific community. Quantitative approaches (i.e., statistics) alone, thus, are hardly able to accurately portray this dynamic phenomenon. It is argued that more research on the different processes and definitions associated with misconduct and its detection and sanctions is needed. The existing quantitative approaches need to be supported by qualitative research better suited to address and uncover processes of negotiation and definition.

The present article is concerned with the symbolism of punishment, using sanctions for scientific misconduct as an exemplary case. By looking at a case not traditionally an object for criminology, it seeks to extend existing cultural theories of punishment to incorporate settings that are not defined by penal law but that nonetheless feature phenomena of deviance and punishment. The article outlines how sanctions for misconduct, much like state punishment, appeal to themes of sacred and evil, uncertainty and disorder. It argues that this appeal to the sacred is both symbolic and instrumental, in that it serves to create and legitimize a position of authority for the journals taking action against scientific misconduct, illustrating how symbolic aspects of punishment relate to aspects of power.