A study conducted in the field of ophthalmology confirms a trend observed in all scientific journals
The retraction of articles by editors of scientific journals - the signal that a previously published article has significant enough flaws to be deemed invalid - has risen sharply over the past decade, peaking in 2023 with over 10,000 articles retracted. The field of ophthalmology is no exception, as demonstrated by a study published in the journal Heliyon.
Yosra Er-reguyeg, doctoral student in medicine and master’s student in biomedical sciences at Université Laval, Frédéric MouriauxUniversité Laval, Frédéric Mouriaux , associate professor in ophthalmology at the Faculty of Medicine and researcher at the Centre de recherche du CHU de Québec - Université Laval, and Christophe Boudry, from CHU de Rennes, have demonstrated this by using the PubMed database to find all articles retracted between 1966 and 2023 in the field of ophthalmology.
During this period, 544,472 articles were published in this field. Of these, 151 articles, published in 91 journals, were retracted. The reasons given by publishers for retracting these articles are manifold. Falsification of data topped the list with 38% of cases. This was followed by honest errors too large to be corrected by the publication of an erratum (23%), disputes between authors over the signature of the article (9%), plagiarism (7%) and duplication of publication (7%).
Analyses carried out by the research team show that the number of articles retracted annually remained below 5 until 2011. The annual average then climbed to 6.6 between 2011 and 2019, before jumping to 23 for the period 2020-2022.
"The retractions made during these three years alone account for 45% of the total," observes Yosra Er-reguyeg. We don’t know whether the upward trend we’ve seen is due to more fraud and errors on the part of scientists, whether there was a slackening of the peer review process during the COVID-19 pandemic, or whether publishers and the scientific community are better at detecting problematic articles."
It takes time to track down problem articles. Just over half (52%) of all retractions occur more than two years after the article was published. In 9% of cases, articles "live" for at least 10 years before being retracted.
Good scientific publishing practice dictates that retracted articles remain in databases and on publishers’ websites, but they must be very visibly identified as having been retracted. "We have found that 21% of retracted articles are not properly labeled to this effect on scientific journal websites," points out Yosra Er-reguyeg.
"The consequence is that these articles circulate for a long time, are cited in other publications, propagate errors in the scientific community and in society, and can lead to clinical decisions that risk damaging the quality of care provided to patients," Professor Mouriaux points out.
"The consequence is that these articles circulate for a long time, are cited in other publications, propagate errors in the scientific community and in society, and can lead to clinical decisions that may adversely affect the quality of care provided to patients. "
-- Frédéric Mouriaux Retracting an article is not a problem in itself, he continues. "In fact, it’s a solution to various problems, the most common of which are scientific fraud and good-faith errors. Tightening up the peer review process would help prevent some of the good-faith errors, but dishonesty is hard to stop. "
The articles retracted each year represent barely 0.2% of all articles published annually, but they are nevertheless a thorn in the side of science. If nothing else, retraction remains the best tool for stopping the damage that can be caused by scientific articles containing erroneous information. Unfortunately, publishers are not as enthusiastic about this act of contrition.
All retracted articles must be clearly labelled as such on the publisher’s website and in bibliographic databases," insists Professor Mouriaux. It’s essential that this is done rigorously to prevent these articles from contaminating the knowledge on which science is built. "
