Who has the most retractions? Introducing the Retraction Watch leaderboard
Ever since we broke the news about the issues with the now-retracted Science paper about changing people’s minds on gay marriage, we’ve been the subject of a lot of press coverage, which has in turn led a number of people to ask us: Who has the most retractions?
Well, we’ve tried to answer that in our new Retraction Watch leaderboard.
Here is the current list (click here for more detailed information about our methodology and additional notes):
- Yoshitaka Fujii (total retractions: 183)
- Joachim Boldt (89)
- Peter Chen (60)
- Diederik Stapel (54)
- Shigeaki Kato (36)
- Hendrik Schön (36)
- Hyung-In Moon (35)
- Naoki Mori (32)
- Scott Reuben (22)
- John Darsee (17)
While this post will remain the same, the always-current version will be available here and in the right-hand column of our pages.
We also like to think of retractions as more than just notches to add up, and consider what we can learn from studying them – with the ultimate goal of improving the way we do science.
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Boy, I remember back when the John Darsee case was a cause celebre, and now he’s only number 10; my how times fly… (of course there’s probably another 20 ahead of him who just haven’t been nailed yet).
What about Claudio Airoldi? He has 11 as PI + I think at least one as a collaborator (his name is on the retraction though) and now a new one recently: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040603114002226
Below the top 19 according to the always-current version
“Next up are Alirio Melendez (17), Ulrich Lichtenthaler (16), Jesus Angel Lemus (12) and Anil Potti (11.5, counting a partial retraction as a half)”,
yet Silvia Bulfone-Paus has 13 retractions
http://retractionwatch.com/2011/12/13/bulfone-paus-retraction-count-grows-to-13-with-one-in-transplantation/
That should be “below the top 10…”
Fred Walumbwa (currently on seven retractions) has a number of articles of flagged on pubpeer.
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=walumbwa&sessionid=D300E69C76C0BE80A866
One things stands out: three Japanese in the top 10.
True, but I’m not sure about the significance of that. Somehow, I think such a list should be “normalized” by the amount of research done by the country, population, etc. And one’s work is retracted when it’s published in a “notable” journal (generally) since if it was published in an unknown journal, I’ll bet no one catches them. I think this kind of list is great, but it should be viewed as just a top-10 list of individuals… I think there are plenty of problems if it’s used as a form of sampling of a larger population…
Given that the updated list also has three Germans in the top 10 (and two more in the runner-ups), this finding might not be so outstanding after all.
We live in the times of the Mighty Impact Factor, where those who publish in Nature, Science and Cell rule. How about a different ranking, who has the biggest retractions? Cumulative Retracted Impact Factor?
So you demand that the Impact Factor should not count in evaluating science but should count in evaluating retractions?
Nice article in the NYT, which it should probably be emphasized is part of a series over the past month or so (altho’ not specifically tagged as such)…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/business/beyond-publish-or-perish-scientific-papers-look-to-make-splash.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/science/michael-lacour-gay-marriage-science-study-retraction.html
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/28/science/retractions-scientific-studies.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/opinion/whats-behind-big-science-frauds.html
I’d like to see a few more articles on solutions to these problems, rather than just providing fodder for the next member of Congress’s “defund the NIH” rant.
How about looking at the impact of these retractions of articles with LIVE human clinical trials in progress? Potentially of major impact to real people with real problems!