Analysis of Citations to Biomedical Articles Affected by Scientific Misconduct
Open accessAbstract
We describe the ongoing citations to biomedical articles affected by scientific misconduct, and characterize the papers that cite these affected articles. The citations to 102 articles named in official findings of scientific misconduct during the period of 1993 and 2001 were identified through the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Science database. Using a stratified random sampling strategy, we performed a content analysis of 603 of the 5,393 citing papers to identify indications of awareness that the cited articles affected by scientific misconduct had validity issues, and to examine how the citing papers referred to the affected articles. Fewer than 5% of citing papers indicated any awareness that the cited article was retracted or named in a finding of misconduct. We also tested the hypothesis that affected articles would have fewer citations than a comparison sample; this was not supported. Most articles affected by misconduct were published in basic science journals, and we found little cause for concern that such articles may have affected clinical equipoise or clinical care.
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Studies of citation counts and citation networks have been limited to showing the existence and quantity of postretraction citations; how retracted papers were cited in full-text articles was underexplored.
“Studies of citation counts and citation networks have been limited to showing the existence and quantity of postretraction citations: How retracted papers were cited in the full-text articles was underexplored.”
From Continued use of retracted papers: Temporal trends in citations and (lack of) awareness of retractions shown in citation contexts in biomedicine (2021) · cites this paper as Neale, Dailey, & Abrams, 2010
The Introduction and Study Background describe this paper’s different approach: examining how citing authors used articles affected by misconduct, alongside citation counts. But the Introduction also says an earlier study classified postretraction citations as implicitly or explicitly positive, so the source does not support the claim that prior work was limited to showing only their existence and quantity. (LLM, conf=0.83)
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Cites
3 retracted
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RetractedRetraction rates are on the rise
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How many scientific papers should be retracted?
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Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Neale AV Northrup J Dailey R Marks E Abrams J Correction and use of literature affected by scientific misconduct Science and Engineering Ethics 2007 13 5 24 17703606 PMC2796981
- Sox HC Rennie D Research misconduct, retraction, and cleansing the medical literature: Lessons from the Poehlman case Annals of Internal Medicine 2006 144 609 613 16522625
Cited by
Sorted by citations
A Comprehensive Survey of Retracted Articles from the Scholarly Literature
Grieneisen, M. L., & Zhang, M. (2012) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0044118 · Cited by 355 · see citing works
The Retraction Penalty: Evidence from the Web of Science
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Post retraction citations in context: a case study
Bar-Ilan, J., & Halevi, G. (2017) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-017-2242-0 · Cited by 191 · see citing works
The visibility of scientific misconduct: A review of the literature on retracted journal articles
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Hsiao, T.-K., & Schneider, J. (2021) · Quantitative Science Studies · doi:10.1162/qss_a_00155 · Cited by 98 · see citing works
Schneider, J., Ye, D., Hill, A. M., & Whitehorn, A. S. (2020) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-020-03631-1 · Cited by 88 · see citing works
The (lack of) Impact of Retraction on Citation Networks
Madlock-Brown, C. R., & Eichmann, D. (2015) · Science and Engineering Ethics · doi:10.1007/s11948-014-9532-1 · Cited by 89 · see citing works
Costly collaborations: The impact of scientific fraud on co‐authors' careers
Mongeon, P., & Larivière, V. (2016) · Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.23421 · Cited by 83 · see citing works
Bordignon, F. (2020) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-020-03536-z · Cited by 51 · see citing works
van der Vet, P. E., & Nijveen, H. (2016) · Research Integrity and Peer Review · doi:10.1186/s41073-016-0008-5 · Cited by 50 · see citing works
Team size and retracted citations reveal the patterns of retractions from 1981 to 2020
Sharma, K. (2021) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-021-04125-4 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
Retracted articles on stem cells are continuously cited in publications and used by ChatGPT
Zhang, X., Gu, T., Loganathan, S., Xie, Y., & Chen, J. (2025) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-025-05484-y · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Retracted
- Authors
- Neale, A. V., Dailey, R. K., & Abrams, J.
- Affiliations
- Wayne State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Neale, Anne Victoria
- Venue
- Science and Engineering Ethics
- Published
- 2009-07-14
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 251-261
- ISSN
- 1353-3452 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-5546
- PMC
- PMC4141682
- OpenAlex
- W2028909883
- Cited by
- 66
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 3.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Science and Engineering Ethics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- DigitalGeorgetown (Georgetown University Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Cancer Institute (P30CA022453)
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS044487, R01 NS44487)
- U.S. National Library of Medicine
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Academic integrity and plagiarism
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Keywords
- research misconduct, retracted article, citation patterns, research integrity, clinical equipoise, bibliometric analysis, Web of Science
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Blood Platelets, Diffusion of Innovation, Humans, Interleukin-1, Periodicals as Topic, Practice Patterns, Physicians', Platelet Count, Research Design, Retraction of Publication as Topic, Bibliometrics, Scientific Misconduct, PubMed
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