It seems that almost every day the results of a new scientific study appear in the media. The average reader makes the assumption that, since the study was published in a major scientific journal, the results must be true. However, that is not always the case. Many times a publicized article is retracted after a period of time.
Retraction Watch has been studying these retractions for a number of years. What they have found out is that there has been a 20 to 25 percent increase in retractions across some 10,000 medical and science journals in the past five years: 500 to 600 a year today from 400 in 2010. (The number in 2001 was 40, according to previous research.) It appears that a third of retractions are because of errors, like tainted samples or mistakes in statistics, and about two-thirds are because of misconduct or suspicions of misconduct.
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