Adam's talk to the ORI Conference on Research Integrity, March 15, 2012, Washington, DC http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/tab2.aspx?EventID=972393

1. Inside Publishing
Misconduct: Fraud,
Plagiarism and Other
Editorial Misadventures

2. Adam Marcus
Managing Editor
Anesthesiology News
amarcus@mcmahonmed.com

3. Co-founder, with Ivan Oransky, MD, of
Retraction Watch: retractionwatch.com
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4. Slide courtesy of Steven L. Shafer, MD
Professor of Anesthesiology, Columbia University
Adjunct Professor of Anesthesia, Stanford University
Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, UCSF
Editor-in-Chief, Anesthesia & Analgesia 4

5. What is Fraud?
• Plagiarism
• Data Fabrication
• Misappropriation
of funds
• Forgery
• Ethics violations
• All of the above
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6. Scott Reuben

7. Data Fabrication
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8. Joachim Boldt

9. Naoki Mori

10. What’s Yours is Mine
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11. Yoshitaka Fujii, MD — a new record?
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12. Retractions on the Rise
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-The Wall Street

13. Retractions on the Rise
-Neil Saunders
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14. Retractions on the Rise
-Nature
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15. Why Do Journals Retract?
-Journal of Medical Ethics 2010
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16. Why Do Journals Retract?
• Error is more common than fraud
• 73.5% of papers were retracted for error
(or an undisclosed reason) vs 26.6% for
fraud
• Most common reason for retraction: a
scientific mistake (234 papers; 31.5%)
• Fabrication (including data plagiarism)
more common than text plagiarism
• Multiple reasons for retraction cited for
67 papers (9.0%), but 134 papers
(18.1%) were retracted for ambiguous
reasons -Journal of Medical Ethics 2010
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17. What Happens to Retracted
Papers?
Budd et al, 1999:
• Retracted articles received more than 2,000
post-retraction citations; less than 8% of
citations acknowledged the retraction
• Preliminary study of the present data shows
that continued citation remains a problem
• Of 391 citations analyzed, only 6%
acknowledge the retraction
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18. 18

19. Furman et al. 2012 Research Policy:
“Our findings suggest that attention is a key predictor
of retraction – retracted articles arise most frequently
among highly-cited articles. The retraction system is
expeditious in uncovering knowledge that is ever
determined to be false (the mean time to retraction is
less than two years) and democratic (retraction is not
systematically affected by author prominence). Lastly,
retraction causes an immediate, severe, and long-
lived decline in future citations.”
* 65% decrease in citations
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20. IS IT ALL ACADEMIC?
Steen G. J Med Ethics. 2011 Dec
Retractions in the medical literature: how can
patients be protected from risk?
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21. “Retracted clinical trials treated
more patients (p=0.0002) and
inspired secondary studies that
put more patients at risk
(p=0.0019) than did other kinds
of medical research.
Conclusions: If the goal is to
minimize risk to patients, the
appropriate focus is on clinical
trials. Clinical trials form the
foundation of evidence-based
medicine; hence, the integrity of
clinical trials must be protected.”
Steen G. J Med Ethics. 2011 Dec 21

22. WHAT’S A JOURNAL TO DO?
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23. 100% Manuscript Screening
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24. Detection Software
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25. This is Transparency?
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26. The Way Forward
• Use systems to detect image manipulation
and plagiarism
• Require authors to disclose prior retractions
and investigations
• Trust anonymous whistleblowers more
• Demand more of institutions
• Move more quickly to correct and retract
• Make retraction notices clearer -
and -
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27. The Way Forward
• Make them freely available
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