A detailed review of all 2,047 biomedical and life-science research articles indexed by PubMed as retracted on May 3, 2012 revealed that only 21.3% of retractions were attributable to error. In contrast, 67.4% of retractions were attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4%), duplicate publication (14.2%), and plagiarism (9.8%). Incomplete, uninformative or misleading retraction announcements have led to a previous underestimation of the role of fraud in the ongoing retraction epidemic. The percentage of scientific articles retracted because of fraud has increased ∼10-fold since 1975. Retractions exhibit distinctive temporal and geographic patterns that may reveal underlying causes.

The rate of fracture nonunion is estimated to be between 5%¹ and 10%,² and the rate of nonunion may be increasing as the survival rate for patients with severe injuries improves.³ The risk of nonunion is related to the severity of injury resulting in fracture,⁴ and many randomized clinical trials⁵ have shown that variations in nonunion rates are associated with different surgical treatments. However, progression to nonunion is not fully explained by these factors alone.⁶ Determination of the probability for and potential mitigation of nonunion risk is an important clinical objective because patients with nonunion can expect more long-term pain, physical disability, mental health problems, and medical treatment costs as well as a slower return to normal work productivity.⁷ Herein, we describe the epidemiology of fracture nonunion in adults, with a focus on information available to the clinician at patient presentation. We hypothesize that the interplay between a patient’s physiologic risk factors and fracture characteristics increases the risk of fracture nonunion.⁵ We tested this hypothesis in a large payer database of patients with fracture in the United States.⁸

Background: Studies of people with schizophrenia assessed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) usually include patients with first-episode and chronic disease, yet brain abnormalities may be limited to those with chronic schizophrenia.Aims: To determine whether patients with a first episode of schizophrenia have characteristic brain abnormalities.Method: Systematic review and meta-analysis of 66 papers comparing brain volume in patients with a first psychotic episode with volume in healthy controls.Results: Atotal of 52 cross-sectional studies included 1424 patients with a first psychotic episode; 16 longitudinal studies included 465 such patients. Meta-analysis suggests that whole brain and hippocampal volume are reduced (bothP< 0.0001) and that ventricular volume is increased (P< 0.0001) in these patients relative to healthy controls.Conclusions: Average volumetric changes are close to the limit of detection by MRI methods. It remains to be determined whether schizophrenia is a neurodegenerative process that begins at about the time of symptom onset, or whether it is better characterised as a neurodevelopmental process that produces abnormal brain volumes at an early age.

The number of retracted scientific publications has risen sharply, but it is unclear whether this reflects an increase in publication of flawed articles or an increase in the rate at which flawed articles are withdrawn. We examined the interval between publication and retraction for 2,047 retracted articles indexed in PubMed. Time-to-retraction (from publication of article to publication of retraction) averaged 32.91 months. Among 714 retracted articles published in or before 2002, retraction required 49.82 months; among 1,333 retracted articles published after 2002, retraction required 23.82 months (p<0.0001). This suggests that journals are retracting papers more quickly than in the past, although recent articles requiring retraction may not have been recognized yet. To test the hypothesis that time-to-retraction is shorter for articles that receive careful scrutiny, time-to-retraction was correlated with journal impact factor (IF). Time-to-retraction was significantly shorter for high-IF journals, but only ∼1% of the variance in time-to-retraction was explained by increased scrutiny. The first article retracted for plagiarism was published in 1979 and the first for duplicate publication in 1990, showing that articles are now retracted for reasons not cited in the past. The proportional impact of authors with multiple retractions was greater in 1972–1992 than in the current era (p<0.001). From 1972–1992, 46.0% of retracted papers were written by authors with a single retraction; from 1993 to 2012, 63.1% of retracted papers were written by single-retraction authors (p<0.001). The increase in retracted articles appears to reflect changes in the behavior of both authors and institutions. Lower barriers to publication of flawed articles are seen in the increase in number and proportion of retractions by authors with a single retraction. Lower barriers to retraction are apparent in an increase in retraction for “new” offenses such as plagiarism and a decrease in the time-to-retraction of flawed work.

Background: Scientific papers are retracted for many reasons including fraud (data fabrication or falsification) or error (plagiarism, scientific mistake, ethical problems). Growing attention to fraud in the lay press suggests that the incidence of fraud is increasing.Methods: The reasons for retracting 742 English language research papers retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. Reasons for retraction were initially dichotomised as fraud or error and then analysed to determine specific reasons for retraction.Results: Error was more common than fraud (73.5% of papers were retracted for error (or an undisclosed reason) vs 26.6% retracted for fraud). Eight reasons for retraction were identified; the most common reason was scientific mistake in 234 papers (31.5%), but 134 papers (18.1%) were retracted for ambiguous reasons. Fabrication (including data plagiarism) was more common than text plagiarism. Total papers retracted per year have increased sharply over the decade (r=0.96; p<0.001), as have retractions specifically for fraud (r=0.89; p<0.001). Journals now reach farther back in time to retract, both for fraud (r=0.87; p<0.001) and for scientific mistakes (r=0.95; p<0.001). Journals often fail to alert the naïve reader; 31.8% of retracted papers were not noted as retracted in any way.Conclusions: Levels of misconduct appear to be higher than in the past. This may reflect either a real increase in the incidence of fraud or a greater effort on the part of journals to police the literature. However, research bias is rarely cited as a reason for retraction.