B – Do authors deliberately commit research fraud?

Steen RG. Retractions in the scientific literature: do authors deliberately commit research fraud? Journal of Medical Ethics 2011;37:113-117
(doi: 10.1136/jme.2010.038125)

A study was undertaken to test the “deliberate fraud” hypothesis that some authors deliberately commit research fraud. It is based on the presumption that authors producing fraudulent papers specifically target journals with a high impact factor, have other fraudulent publications, delay retracting the paper and collaborate with co-authors who also have other retractions for fraud. All 788 English language papers retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. The results suggest that papers retracted because of data fabrication or falsification represent a deliberate effort to deceive.