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Financial costs and personal consequences of research misconduct resulting in retracted publications.

ABSTRACT: The number of retracted scientific articles has been increasing. Most retractions are associated with research misconduct, entailing financial costs to funding sources and damage to the careers of those committing misconduct. We sought to calculate the magnitude of these effects. Data relating to retracted manuscripts and authors found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have committed misconduct were reviewed from public databases. Attributable costs of retracted manuscripts, and publication output and funding of researchers found to have committed misconduct were determined. We found that papers retracted due to misconduct accounted for approximately $58 million in direct funding by the NIH between 1992 and 2012, less than 1% of the NIH budget over this period. Each of these articles accounted for a mean of $392,582 in direct costs (SD $423,256). Researchers experienced a median 91.8% decrease in publication output and large declines in funding after censure by the ORI.

SUBMITTER: Stern AM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4132287 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Financial costs and personal consequences of research misconduct resulting in retracted publications.

Stern Andrew M AM Casadevall Arturo A Steen R Grant RG Fang Ferric C FC

eLife 20140814

The number of retracted scientific articles has been increasing. Most retractions are associated with research misconduct, entailing financial costs to funding sources and damage to the careers of those committing misconduct. We sought to calculate the magnitude of these effects. Data relating to retracted manuscripts and authors found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have committed misconduct were reviewed from public databases. Attributable costs of retracted manuscripts, and publi ...[more]

PMID: 25124673

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Project description:BackgroundMeasures to ensure research integrity have been widely discussed due to the social, economic and scientific impact of research integrity. In the past few years, financial support for health research in emerging countries has steadily increased, resulting in a growing number of scientific publications. These achievements, however, have been accompanied by a rise in retracted publications followed by concerns about the quality and reliability of such publications.ObjectiveThis systematic review aimed to investigate the profile of medical and life sciences research retractions from authors affiliated with Brazilian academic institutions. The chronological trend between publication and retraction date, reasons for the retraction, citation of the article after the retraction, study design, and the number of retracted publications by author and affiliation were assessed. Additionally, the quality, availability and accessibility of data regarding retracted papers from the publishers are described.MethodsTwo independent reviewers searched for articles that had been retracted since 2004 via PubMed, Web of Science, Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde (BVS) and Google Scholar databases. Indexed keywords from Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and Descritores em Ciências da Saúde (DeCS) in Portuguese, English or Spanish were used. Data were also collected from the Retraction Watch website (www.retractionwatch.com). This study was registered with the PROSPERO systematic review database (CRD42017071647).ResultsA final sample of 65 articles was retrieved from 55 different journals with reported impact factors ranging from 0 to 32.86, with a median value of 4.40 and a mean of 4.69. The types of documents found were erratum (1), retracted articles (3), retracted articles with a retraction notice (5), retraction notices with erratum (3), and retraction notices (45). The assessment of the Retraction Watch website added 8 articles that were not identified by the search strategy using the bibliographic databases. The retracted publications covered a wide range of study designs. Experimental studies (40) and literature reviews (15) accounted for 84.6% of the retracted articles. Within the field of health and life sciences, medical science was the field with the largest number of retractions (34), followed by biological sciences (17). Some articles were retracted for at least two distinct reasons (13). Among the retrieved articles, plagiarism was the main reason for retraction (60%). Missing data were found in 57% of the retraction notices, which was a limitation to this review. In addition, 63% of the articles were cited after their retraction.ConclusionPublications are not retracted solely for research misconduct but also for honest error. Nevertheless, considering authors affiliated with Brazilian institutions, this review concluded that most of the retracted health and life sciences publications were retracted due to research misconduct. Because the number of publications is the most valued indicator of scientific productivity for funding and career progression purposes, a systematic effort from the national research councils, funding agencies, universities and scientific journals is needed to avoid an escalating trend of research misconduct. More investigations are needed to comprehend the underlying factors of research misconduct and its increasing manifestation.

Project description:Nearly 90 % of allegations of biomedical research misconduct in the United States are dismissed by responsible institutions without any faculty assessment or auditable record. Recently, members of the U.S. Congress have complained that the penalties for those against whom findings of research misconduct are made are too light and that too few grant funds associated with research misconduct have been recovered for use by other researchers and taxpayers. Here we discuss the laws that empower federal agencies that can oversee investigations of biomedical research misconduct: the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), both located within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Research misconduct investigations pertaining to U.S. physical sciences funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) are overseen by the NSF's OIG. While OIGs may provide some improvement over the ORI in the handling of research misconduct, we have found that a much more serious flaw exists which undermines an ability to conduct performance audits of the effectiveness by which allegations of research misconduct are handled in the United States. Specifically, sufficient data do not need to be retained by U.S. research institutions funded by HHS or NSF to allow effective audit of why allegations of research misconduct are dismissed before being seen by faculty inquiry or investigative committees. U.S. federal Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS/Yellow Book), if applied to the research misconduct oversight process, would allow a determination of whether the handling of allegations of biomedical research misconduct actually functions adequately, and if not, how it might be improved. In particular, we propose that independent, external peer review under GAGAS audit standards should be instituted without delay in assessing the performance of ORI, or any other similarly tasked federal agency, in handling allegations of research misconduct.

Project description:BackgroundResearch misconduct is a global concern in biomedical science. There are no comprehensive data regarding the perception and situation of scientific misconduct among the Iranian medical faculty members. We conducted a nationwide survey to assess the research misconduct among the medical faculty members in Iran.MethodsWe used the Persian version of the research misconduct questionnaire (PRMQ) on the Google Forms platform. We sent the survey link to a systematic random sample of medical faculty members in Iran (N = 4986). Descriptive analyses were performed on the individual items of the PRMQ, with frequencies and percentages for categorical and Likert-type response items, and means and standard deviation (S.D.) for continuous variables. Chi-square analysis was conducted to test hypotheses examining differences in the frequency of responses related to factors influencing misconduct. We also defined four tenure categories (TC) based on the working years of the participants as tenured faculty members. All the analyses were performed using R 3.6.0.ResultsThe response rate was 13.8% (692 responses). Nearly 70% of the respondents agreed that their publication output would be of higher quality if there were no publication pressure. Approximately three-quarters (N =499, 72.1%) of the respondents had been aware of some instances of research misconduct during the previous year according to their understanding of misconduct. Among the participants, 18.5% perceived the effectiveness of their associated organisation's rules for reducing research misconduct to be high or very high. Pressure for tenure was identified as the item most frequently perceived with a strong behavioural influence on engaging in research misconduct (80.2%).ConclusionsThis study confirms that research misconduct needs to be actively addressed among the medical faculty members. Making policies with a focus on boosting awareness regarding the occasions of scientific misconduct and its management seems to be indispensable in the future in Iran.

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Financial costs and personal consequences of research misconduct resulting in retracted publications.

Publications

Financial costs and personal consequences of research misconduct resulting in retracted publications.

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