More than 10000 scientific papers retracted in 2023.

Over 10000 in a single year is a new record. Finding fraud in these papers can be difficult, and a time consuming process. But I am glad it is being done. The merits of scientific research depends on its extremely strict criteria and rigour.

As for the details.

• Most of these (8000) were from the UK based Hindawi.
• Most of these niche, special issues, which tend to often be overlooked by guest editors. And thus low quality papers can thrive in these areas.
• Retraction rates are not spread evenly. With Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan Egypt and a bunch of others being massively overrepresented in Sham paper production.
• Common issues include plagiarism, citation fraud, tortured phrases.

There are likely far more to come. As integrity specialists point out that there are likely hundreds of thousands of papers that need to be retracted. Paper mills, are an issue. Even if no one reads the studies, they can be included in aggregates, and thus spill over into the mainstream narrative that way.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03974-8

That said, none of this changes the fact that the majority of scientific papers are still valid and are by far the greatest evidence around. If the scientific literature didn't hold up, I would not be able to type this message to you on this gaming PC.

What's the denominator?

@mattbbpl: I think it is about 1.8 million papers a year with 5 or more references. And over 5 million a year in total.

As you can probably imagine. The redacted papers are still a vast minority. But the increased redactions, likely indicate improvements in the vetting process of existing papers. Which is a good thing and worthy of being celebrated.

Science is an ever improving process. Not just in the data and evidence we gather, not just in the technology being used. But also the process and methodology itself.

@Maroxad: oh yeah, that's not bad at all.

I had to look up "tortured phrases". I wonder if any of these papers used AI to get around things.

@DEVILinIRON: Probable.

From what I can gather, of some of the studies that were retracted, they were quite incoherrent.

@DEVILinIRON: "I had to look up "tortured phrases". I wonder if any of these papers used AI to get around things."

I'm wondering if AI is responsible for flagging articles for citations that are being mistaken for plagiarism.

Curious what the motivation is for making sham research papers. Off top of my head I know gaining access to them can cost a lot of money, so if say an abstract seems intriguing then to gain access to them you find out afterwards you'd been hoodwinked I can see such a fraud happening easily.

I'd be curious what accountability exists for those pushing fraudulent studies, but I'd assume such people poofed into thin air with that money gone.

Man, there was a video I know I watched about the perpetuation bad scientific study material but think I found what I saw a long while back.

Like, it should be okay to be wrong, after all scientific research is a process about refining our understandings to observation and challenging it, or replicating it, all that. But I remember this guy talked about how it's hard to publish studies that attempt to replicate that show no statistical significance or if they refute a previous study the journal carried they might not publish the study challenging it.

@lamprey263: What is also worth noting is that some answers are more wrong than others.

You are going to get significantly worse results if you follow the "findings" of a homeopath than you would a proper Medical Doctor. Even if the medical doctor might be working on some incorrect conclusions.

I'd argue it's counter-espionage on part of special interest groups. I know that sounds a little tinfoil hat, but there it is.

Run an oil and gas corporation? Make a fake research paper that speaks ill of gas and oil, then disprove it or cite it as a bad article and say "Oh they're out to get us!".

The far-right, conservatives, and ultra-rich have made an art out of making themselves look like victims or constantly under attack.

Russia in particular tried to demonize western COVID vaccines in an attempt to promote their own vaccine.

And yeah, corporations have been caught trying to bribe whoever they can. To promote false narratives. We saw this most notably with Smoking, but the same also applies to climate change. Holistic Agriculture is another example.

Thankfully that one didn't get very far. But still far enough that a lot of people have been duped into it. Still guest editors are important.