FW: [CHMINF-L] GENERAL: "ghosts" of retracted papers

[Eugene Garfield]

Retractions are linked by the Web of Science to original reports. 23 March 2006

Eugene Garfield,
Ph.D.
Thomson ISI,
Marie McVeigh and Marion Muff
Send rapid response to journal:
Re: Retractions are linked by the Web of Science to original reports.





 In response to: Harold C. Sox, and Drummond Rennie "Research Misconduct, Retraction, and Cleansing the Medical Literature: Lessons from the Poehlman Case" Annals of Internal Medicine (18 April 2006 Volume 144 Issue 8)

Dear Editor:

The recent article about the importance of integrating retraction notices with their original reports noted their treatment in PubMed, but failed to take into account the procedures followed in the Science Citation Index (SCI) the electronic version of which is included in the Web of Science.

Ever since the SCI was launched in the sixties, published retractions have been indexed by SCI. In each case a citation link was established between the retraction, that is "correction," and the original source article. To find retractions, like all other corrections, all one had to do was conduct a cited reference search based on the author, journal and year of the retracted paper. You would then see a list of all items that cited the original work including the retractions, which like all other corrections would be coded as such. However, since 1996 the treatment of retractions was amplified by including the notation for the retraction together with the bibliographic citation for the source item. If one does a search on a subject or an author and finds a paper which has been retracted, the retraction can be seen immediately adjacent to the source entry.

Thus, the retraction entry for WS Hwang's paper on "Patient- specific embryonic stem cells derived from human SCNT blastocyst (Retraction of vol 308, pg 1777, 2005) is followed by SCIENCE 311 (5759): 335-335 JAN 20 2006.

When you conduct a cited reference search on the original paper at Hwang HS, Science, 2005, you immediately see the statement that "this article was retracted see Science 311, 335, Jan. 20, 2006"

In previous generations authors often unwittingly cited retracted research because they did not or could check citation indexes. Today there is no excuse since access to PubMed and Web of Science is widely available.

Eugene Garfield, Chairman Emeritus Marie McVeigh, Senior Manager, JCR & Bibliographic Policy Marion Muff, Bibliographic Policy Manager Institute for Scientific Information Thomson Scientific 3501 Market Street Philadelphia, PA 19104









-----Original Message-----
From: CHEMICAL INFORMATION SOURCES DISCUSSION LIST [mailto:CHMINF-L at LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU] On Behalf Of Robert Michaelson
Sent: Friday, April 07, 2006 11:56 AM
To: CHMINF-L at LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU
Subject: [CHMINF-L] GENERAL: "ghosts" of retracted papers

Please excuse duplicate posting.

The current issue of Science (7 April 2006) has two "News Focus" items
regarding retracted papers: on pages 38-43 titled "Cleaning up the paper
trail" by Jennifer Couzin and Katherine Unger, the subtitle reads "Once an
investigation is completed and the publicity dies down, what happens to
fraudulent or suspect papers? In many cases, not much."   One paragraph says
"An examination by Science of more than a dozen fraud or suspected fraud
cases spanning 20 years reveals uneven and often chaotic efforts to correct
the scientific literature. Every case has its own peculiarities. Whether
wayward authors confess to fraud; whether investigations are launched at
all, and if they are, whether their scope is broad or narrow; whether fraud
findings are clearly communicated to journals--each of these helps
determine how thorough a mop-up ensues."

A side-bar "News Focus" item on pages 40-41, "Even retracted papers endure"
by the same two authors (but in reverse order) says in part:
"Like ghosts riffling the pages of journals, retracted papers live on.
Using Thomson Scientific's ISI Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar, Science
found dozens of citations of retracted papers in fields from physics to
cancer research to plant biology.

"Seventeen of 19 retracted papers co-authored by German cancer researcher
Friedhelm Herrmann have been cited since being retracted, in some cases
nearly a decade after they were pulled. Together, two of those papers were
cited roughly 60 times. Examination of one Nature paper by former Bell Labs
physicist Jan Hendrik Schön, published in 2000 and retracted in 2003,
revealed that it's been noted in research papers 17 times since, although
the drop-off after retraction was steep: Prior to being pulled, the paper
was cited 153 times.

"It's "quite embarrassing," says Richard Smith, former editor of the
British Medical Journal, of references to retracted publications. "If
people cite fraudulent articles, then either their research is going to be
thrown off or something will be wasted," says Paul Friedman, a former dean
at the University of California, San Diego, who oversaw an investigation
into papers by radiologist Robert Slutsky in the mid-1980s.

"In some cases, citations are "negative": The paper is cited precisely
because it was retracted, and the retraction duly noted in the text. But
those familiar with postretraction citation consider that rare..."

See this issue of Science for the rest.

Bob Michaelson
Northwestern University Library
Evanston, Illinois 60208
USA
rmichael at northwestern.edu


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