Making the most of retraction

Abstract

Making the most of retractionRetractions are no longer rare, running at over 40,000 journal papers a year according to RetractionWatch, a most commendable blog that takes an interest in these things. A retracted paper is one that has been removed from the scientific record after publication because something is thought to be wrong with it. That much is clear enough; less clear is who -author, editor or publisherhas responsibility for deciding that something is amiss. Just occasionally, the author will seek a retraction, but usually the editor and publisher will work together when a problem arises and then initiate the retraction -sometimes with the author's approval, more often without, and occasionally without even the author's knowledge.If the dominant model of retraction -that the author is to blame -is at all justified, it is in those parts of the sciences where an extra squiggle in an equation or a few more dots on a plot really do make a difference. But not all academic publication is of this sort, a truth often ignored in the sciences. In the arts and humanities, none is of this sort (Heibi and Peroni, 2024); in the social sciences, little. In these other areas, academic papers ponder rather than prove. The leading journals in social work have apparently never retracted a paper (Dunleavy, 2024). To be sure, there are retractions in the non-sciences, most often it seems for plagiarism and overlap with other papers, but it is hard to be sure, as retraction notices are often vague or non-existent. Papers in these subjects are less retracted than simply disappeared.One issue on which it does not pay to ponder is retraction itself. A research group in Oxford has been issuing a warning to any author it finds has cited a retracted paper, which seems to assume that authors are at fault not just for creating the need for retraction, but also for eroding the scientific record by citing retracted papers 'as if they were still valid' (https://www.bennett. ox.ac.uk/trialstracker/retractobot/). This exercise in black and white legitimacy is organised by the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Services at Oxford University. Medicine has long had a particular interest in the scientific record, and the appalling quality of much that is added to it (see, for example, Altman, 1994;Smith, 2014). This has nothing to do with retraction. In medicine, authorship is fungible, an entitlement to recognition that need have nothing to do with writing a paper, a task that may well be contracted out to 'communication' companies, and organisations that promote the products of the pharmaceutical industry (organisations which include top medical journals and large academic publishers). In medicine, a paper may well have dozens of authors, even hundreds. This increases the paper's citation and the journal's impact factor. Author ranks are swollen by numerous honorary and courtesy authors vying for position in a Ruritanian order of authors all obligingly citing a paper they may never h...