Nicolas Guéguen has a distinction, albeit even if it’s one he probably wishes he didn’t have: The retraction of his paper on whether high heels make women more attractive was the 20,000th retraction in our database.
That’s right: Earlier this month, the Retraction Watch database — retractionwatchdatabase.org — logged its 20,000th retraction. As our readers may recall, we first announced plans for the database in late 2014 thanks to a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and officially launched it a year ago with a feature package in Science.
At some 1,400 retractions per year, we were bound to reach this milestone at some point. But it’s worth noting that there were fewer than 40 retractions in 2000, meaning that the pace has accelerated, in turn meaning more work for our own indefatigable researcher, Alison Abritis, who has made sure — with help at the start by dozens of librarians, grad students and others — that we could keep up.
The database is by far the most comprehensive of its kind, and we’re thrilled that it has already become useful to the research community. In just a year, at least a dozen studies have cited the database, and we have provided the complete dataset to dozens of researchers who are now poring over the data for their own work. (We’d suggest that some studies done in the past using Web of Science or PubMed be repeated, given our more thorough dataset.) We’ve partnered with Zotero to alert its users of retractions of papers in their databases or cited in their documents.
All of these efforts, however, require resources. Alison finds, reviews, categorizes and enters each retraction by hand. So even though Adam and I take no salary, we continue to need your help. The future of the database depends on maintaining sufficient financial support. We’re therefore asking you to consider a tax-deductible financial contribution to our parent non-profit organization, The Center For Scientific Integrity.
Thanks for considering a donation. Contribute — including by a sustaining monthly donation — by PayPal here, Crowdrise here, or by check made out to The Center For Scientific Integrity, 121 W. 36th St., Suite 209, New York, NY 10018.
Gratefully yours,
Ivan Oransky