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Financial costs and personal consequences of research misconduct resulting in retracted publications
Open accessAbstract
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.
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“retractions themselves impose substantial financial and scientific costs (Stern et al., 2014).”
From FLAWS: A Benchmark for Error Identification and Localization in Scientific Papers (2025) · cites this paper as Stern et al., 2014
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“Damage to reputation after retracting papers for any reason also plays a crucial role in faculty recruitment and philanthropy efforts [16].”
From Genetic Insights into the Economic Toll of Cell Line Misidentification: A Comprehensive Review (2026) · cites this paper as [16]
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“Stern and colleagues discussed the general financial costs of retracted articles that were funded by the NIH and calculated that each retracted articles accounted for a mean of $392,582 ± $423,256 [16].”
From Genetic Insights into the Economic Toll of Cell Line Misidentification: A Comprehensive Review (2026) · cites this paper as [16]
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“by one estimate $392 , 582 of financial loss for each retracted article [46].”
From BioFors: A Large Biomedical Image Forensics Dataset (2021) · cites this paper as [46]
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5 retracted
Wakefield, A., Murch, S., Anthony, A., Linnell, J., Casson, D., Malik, M., Berelowitz, M., Dhillon, A., Thomson, M., Harvey, P., et al. (1998) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(97)11096-0 · Cited by 3,006
RetractedRetracted Science and the Retraction Index
Fang, F. C., & Casadevall, A. (2011) · Infection and Immunity · doi:10.1128/iai.05661-11 · Cited by 405 · cited 1×
“Impact factor exhibits a positive correlation with articles retracted for research misconduct or error (Fang and Casadevall, 2011; Fang et al., 2012).”
BackgroundSelf-citationRetractedRETRACTED: Transcription-Coupled Repair of 8-oxoGuanine
Page, F. L., Kwoh, E. E., Avrutskaya, A. V., Gentil, A., Leadon, S. A., Sarasin, A. R., & Cooper, P. K. (2000) · Cell · doi:10.1016/s0092-8674(00)80827-2 · Cited by 280 · cited 1×
“…this database that were retracted due to misconduct originating from the United States between 1992 and 2012, as well as one additional article originating from France (Le Page et al., 2000) that was retracted due to data falsification by a co-author (Steven Leadon) working in the United States.”
RetractedPage, F. L., Kwoh, E. E., Avrutskaya, A. V., Gentil, A., Leadon, S. A., Sarasin, A. R., & Cooper, P. K. (2005) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2005.11.005 · Cited by 271
RetractedGene-expression patterns predict phenotypes of immune-mediated thrombosis
Potti, A., Bild, A., Dressman, H. K., LEWIS, D. A., Nevins, J. R., & Ortel, T. L. (2005) · Blood · doi:10.1182/blood-2005-07-2669 · Cited by 51 · cited 1×
“One outlier was found to have an attributable cost of $3.6 million (Potti et al., 2006).”
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“A meta-analysis of survey data indicates that approximately 2% of scientists admit to data falsification or manipulation on at least one occasion (Fanelli, 2009), whereas less than 0.02% of published data are retracted due to fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism (Claxton, 2005; Fang et al.,…”
InfluentialMisconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications
Fang, F. C., Steen, R. G., & Casadevall, A. (2012) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1212247109 · Cited by 1,232 · cited 6×
“We examined the text of 291 articles originating from the United States and published between 1992 and 2012 that were retracted for research misconduct (Fang et al., 2012), and recorded NIH grant numbers cited in footnotes or acknowledgments.”
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“In another high-profile fraud case involving studies of the use of colloid for fluid resuscitation, there is evidence that the discredited body of work led to the use of a therapy with higher mortality and morbidity than standard care (Wise, 2013; Zarychanski et al., 2013).”
BackgroundWhy has the number of scientific retractions increased?
Steen, R. G., Casadevall, A., & Fang, F. C. (2013) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0068397 · Cited by 415 · cited 1×
“Whether the actual frequency of misconduct is increasing is unknown (Fanelli, 2013; Steen et al., 2013), but there is increasing interest in this subject given the occurrence of several high profile cases, the creation of websites that track retracted research, such as Retraction Watch (Oransky and…”
BackgroundSelf-citationLet's make science metrics more scientific
Lane, J. I. (2010) · Nature · doi:10.1038/464488a · Cited by 308 · cited 1×
“This problem has been noted previously (Falagas, 2006; Bourne and Fink, 2008; Lane, 2010; Polychronakos, 2012), and systems have been proposed for the disambiguation of authors with similar names (Fenner, 2011).”
Background
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- McWatt J. 2013. Measles epidemic costs health board £500,000. WalesOnline. http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/measles-epidemic-costs-health-board-4923520.
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“[21], even in cases of retracted publications due to scientific misconduct, which is not a major source of irreproducibility [13,22], “it is conceivable that some of the research resulting in a retracted article still provides useful information for other nonretracted”
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“Stern et al. (2014) estimate the amount of NIH funding involved in publications that are retracted subsequently and find that between 1992 and 2012, no more than 0.02% of the NIH budget went to studies that were later retracted.”
BackgroundInfluentialData standards can boost metabolomics research, and if there is a will, there is a way
Rocca‐Serra, P., Salek, R. M., Arita, M., Correa, E. S., Dayalan, S., Gonzalez-Beltran, A. N., Ebbels, T. M. D., Goodacre, R., Hastings, J., Haug, K., et al. (2015) · Metabolomics · doi:10.1007/s11306-015-0879-3 · Cited by 150
“2014), (Editorial 2014), (Stern et al. 2014) and news on the consequences,(1) and in general the growing concern over the rise in paper retractions,(2) governments and funding agencies are increasingly mandating reproducible research and the release(3) and long-term archival of raw data with guaranteed rights to asses…”
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“Regarding financial waste, a study examining publications retracted due to serious misconduct estimated that the direct cost to the National Institutes of Health (NIH – USA) was approximately US$425 000 per article [59].”
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“…2012; Komic et al., 2015; Lafollette, 2000; Martinson et al., 2006; Marusic et al., 2011; Okonta and Rossouw, 2014; Pryor et al., 2007; Pupovac and Fanelli, 2015; Ranstam et al., 2000; Redman et al., 2008; Sarwar and Nicolaou, 2012; Saurin, 2016; Stern et al., 2014; Tijdink et al., 2014, 2016).”
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“It has been estimated that every paper retracted due to scientific misbehavior costs almost $400,000 in funds from the US National Institutes of Health, for a total of $58 million between 1992 and 2012 (Stern et al., 2014).”
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“The cost to the retracted papers between 1992–2012 incurred approximately USD58 million (Stern et al., 2014).”
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High time for a common plagiarism detection system
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“As stated by Stern et al. (2014), indirect financial costs due to the use of retracted research as a basis for future research efforts may be even greater than the cost of the retracted research itself.”
Analysis of spin in the reporting of studies of topical treatments of photoaged skin
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“Stern et al. (2014) revealed that the research productivity of US-based faculties plummeted by “a median rate of 91.8%” in alignment with reduced funding of 70.5%.”
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“63 Considering the current advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), unidentified errors may affect funding more significantly if research is misguided by irreproducible experiments or faulty material properties.”
Panahi, S., & Soleimanpour, S. (2021) · Accountability in Research · doi:10.1080/08989621.2021.1990049 · Cited by 12
“In addition, depending on the type of scientific misconducts, these papers impose financial costs on researchers and funding agencies (Michalek et al. 2010; Stern et al. 2014).”
BackgroundA epidemia de más condutas na ciência: o fracasso do tratamento moralizador
de Oliveira, M. B. (2015) · Scientiae Studia · doi:10.1590/s1678-31662015000400007 · Cited by 12
Publication pressure and scientific misconduct: why we need more open governance
Gandevia, S. C. (2018) · Spinal Cord · doi:10.1038/s41393-018-0193-9 · Cited by 14
Why do some retracted articles continue to get cited?
Schmidt, M. A. (2024) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-024-05147-4 · Cited by 19
“Stern et al. (2014) assess funding lost due to retracted publications (RP).”
Korte, S. M., & van der Heyden, M. A. G. (2016) · Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology · doi:10.1097/fjc.0000000000000443 · Cited by 11
BioFors: A Large Biomedical Image Forensics Dataset
Sabir, E., Nandi, S., AbdAlmageed, W., & Natarajan, P. (2021) · 2021 IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) · doi:10.1109/iccv48922.2021.01078 · Cited by 12
“tractions [5] and by one estimate $392, 582 of financial loss for each retracted article [46].”
BackgroundFanelli, D., & Moher, D. (2019) · doi:10.1101/734137 · Cited by 10
“05% of the NIH budget, a figure that was deemed low in the authors’ own assessment [10].”
BackgroundOversight: Community vulnerabilities in the blind spot of research ethics
Cragoe, N. G. (2017) · Research Ethics · doi:10.1177/1747016117739936 · Cited by 10
Redrawing the frontiers in the age of post-publication review
Galbraith, D. W. (2015) · Frontiers in Genetics · doi:10.3389/fgene.2015.00198 · Cited by 12
“Papers retracted due to misconduct from 1992 to 2012 accounted for approximately $58 million in NIH funding, or less than 1% of the NIH budget (Stern et al., 2014).”
BackgroundStavale, R., Pupovac, V., Ferreira, G. I., & Guilhem, D. (2022) · Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics · doi:10.3389/frma.2022.991836 · Cited by 9
Simon, C. M., Beerman, R. W., Ariansen, J. L., Kessler, D., Sanchez, A. M., King, K., Sarzotti‐Kelsoe, M., Samsa, G. P., Bradley, A., Torres, L., et al. (2019) · Accountability in Research · doi:10.1080/08989621.2019.1621755 · Cited by 9
“In addition, the average cost of the research lost to the community when a publication is retracted is $400,000 (Stern et al. 2014).”
BackgroundThe Legal Consequences of Research Misconduct: False Investigators and Grant Proposals
Fong, E. A., Wilhite, A. W., Hickman, C., & Lee, Y. (2020) · The Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics · doi:10.1177/1073110520935347 · Cited by 9
Research integrity guidelines and safeguards in Brazil
Armond, A. C. V., & Kakuk, P. (2021) · Accountability in Research · doi:10.1080/08989621.2021.1979969 · Cited by 9
“In addition to the impact on public trust and misinformation, research misconduct and detrimental practices might entail economic, reputational, and personal costs (Stern et al. 2014; National Academies of Sciences and Medicine 2017).”
BackgroundLa Oficina de Integridad Científica en España. Una tarea pendiente
Candal‐Pedreira, C., Álvarez‐Dardet, C., Ruano‐Raviña, A., & Pérez‐Ríos, M. (2022) · Gaceta Sanitaria · doi:10.1016/j.gaceta.2022.02.005 · Cited by 9
Khan, K. S., Fawzy, M. M., CHIEN, P. F. W., Geary, M. P., Bueno‐Cavanillas, A., Núñez‐Núñez, M., Zamora, J., Bedaiwy, M. A., Serour, G. I., D’Hooghe, T., et al. (2025) · International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics · doi:10.1002/ijgo.16118 · Cited by 10
Wang, P., & Su, J. (2022) · Journal of Information Science · doi:10.1177/01655515221074329 · Cited by 9
“Stern et al. [18] examined 149 papers retracted due to misconduct (1992–2012) that received approximately $58 million in direct funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH), a mean of $392,582 (SD $423,256) in indirect costs per retracted article.”
BackgroundArticle retraction rates in selected MeSH term categories in PubMed published between 2010 and 2020
Alexander, R. L., Peterson, C., Yang, S., & NUGENT, K. M. (2023) · Accountability in Research · doi:10.1080/08989621.2023.2272246 · Cited by 10
“While outside of the scope of this study, misleading or fraudulent information can have serious negative impacts both on the academic fields relying on this research (Avenell et al. 2019; Stern et al. 2014) and on public trust in science.”
Scientific Misconduct: Falsification, Fabrication, and Misappropriation of Credit
Vaux, D. L. (2016) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-981-287-098-8_26 · Cited by 8
Retractions in academic publishing: insights from highly ranked global universities
Khan, R., Joshi, A., Kaur, K., Sinhababu, A., & Chakravarty, R. (2024) · Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication · doi:10.1108/gkmc-01-2024-0037 · Cited by 9
Reckoning with Retractions in Research Funding Reviews: The Case of China
Xu, S. B., & Hu, G. (2025) · Publications · doi:10.3390/publications13030041 · Cited by 9
“Given the tremendous waste of research funding due to breaches of research integrity (Gao & Zhan, 2024; Stern et al., 2014; L. Tang et al., 2023), penalizing researchers with a retraction record of funded publications can serve as a deterrent against future offenses, sending a clear message that…”
The Impact of False Investigators on Grant Funding
Fong, E. A., & Wilhite, A. W. (2021) · Research Policy · doi:10.1016/j.respol.2021.104366 · Cited by 7
A Narrative on The Fabrication of Results in Science
Freitas, J., Esteves, D., & Neiva, H. P. (2021) · Current Science · doi:10.18520/cs/v121/i2/205-209 · Cited by 6
Schumm, W. R., Crawford, D. W., Lockett, L., bin Ateeq, A., & AlRashed, A. (2023) · Publications · doi:10.3390/publications11010014 · Cited by 11
“The number of articles retracted on account of scientific misconduct has increased in recent decades, even in medicine [1–4]; some academics have had dozens of their articles retracted [5–11], in spite of the grave consequences caused by scientific conduct being exposed [12].”
BackgroundOff-Label Use vs Off-Label Marketing
Norman, G. A. V. (2023) · JACC Basic to Translational Science · doi:10.1016/j.jacbts.2022.12.012 · Cited by 9
Long, B., Laux, S., Lemon, B., Guarente, A., Davis, M., Casadevall, A., Fang, F. C., Shi, M., & Resnik, D. B. (2023) · Accountability in Research · doi:10.1080/08989621.2023.2287046 · Cited by 8
“…ORI does not refer to its administrative actions as “punishments,” they usually have a detrimental impact on the respondent’s ability to secure grant funding and publish and thus have a punitive effect (Galbraith 2017; Mello and Brennan 2003; Redman 2013; Shamoo and Resnik 2022; Stern et al. 2014).”
Self-citationCHIEN, P. F. W., Elsuity, M. A., Rashwan, M., Núñez‐Núñez, M., Khan, K. S., Zamora, J., Bueno‐Cavanillas, A., & Fawzy, M. M. (2024) · International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics · doi:10.1002/ijgo.15488 · Cited by 7
Ética en la publicación científica biomédica. Revisión de las publicaciones retractadas en España
Cuenca, G. M., Oliván, J. A. S., & Avilés, R. A. (2019) · El Profesional de la Informacion · doi:10.3145/epi.2019.mar.22 · Cited by 8
Using Statistics from Binary Variables to Detect Data Anomalies, Even Possibly Fraudulent Research
Schumm, W. R., Crawford, D. W., & Lockett, L. (2019) · Psychology Research and Applications · doi:10.22606/pra.2019.14004 · Cited by 7
Lendvai, G. F., & Sasvári, P. (2026) · Journal of Information Science · doi:10.1177/01655515251362383 · Cited by 6
“We also included the analysis of funding data given the incredibly high, unrewarded financial loss suffered by the funder [47].”
Metadata
- Authors
- Stern, A. M., Casadevall, A., Steen, R. G., & Fang, F. C.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Albert Einstein College of Medicine (US)
- MediCC!, Medical Communications Consultants, LLC, Chapel Hill, United States
- University of Washington (US)
- Corresponding author
- Fang, Ferric C
- Venue
- eLife
- Publisher
- eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
- Published
- 2014-08-14
- Volume
- 3
- Pages
- e02956-e02956
- ISSN
- 2050-084X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4132287
- OpenAlex
- W1999131703
- Cited by
- 189
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 37.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- eLife (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Academic integrity and plagiarism
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Keywords
- research misconduct, retracted article, financial costs, research funding, Office of Research Integrity, publication output, career outcomes, NIH funding, research integrity
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Retraction of Publication as Topic, United States, Scientific Misconduct, Databases, Factual, United States Office of Research Integrity, Biomedical Research
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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