Thousands of Highly Cited Scientists Have At Least One Retraction

More than 8,000 of the world's most-cited scientists have at least one retraction, according to a database that links retractions to top-cited papers. From a report: An analysis of the database, published in PLOS Biology on 30 January, attempts to map the scale of retractions and understand how they manifest. 'Not every retraction is a sign of misconduct,' says John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University in California, who led the study. 'But it is important to have a bird's eye view, across all scientific fields, [of] people who are most influential in science.'

Retracted papers had a higher number of self-citations than did non-retracted papers. And papers with higher co-authorship numbers were more likely to be retracted than those with fewer co-authors. In the study, the authors split the most-cited scientists into two groups. The first featured the 217,097 authors who were among the top 2% most-cited in their fields over their careers. The second group comprised the 223,152 scientists who made up the top 2% for citation impact in 2023, the most recent year for which there were data. The authors found that 8,747 (4%) of the most highly cited researchers in 2023 had at least one retraction during their career, as did 7,083 (3.3%) of the researchers who were most-cited over their careers.

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