Ever wondered which retracted papers had the biggest impact on their fields?
We’ve compiled a list of the 10 most highly cited retracted papers. Note that many papers — including the #1 most cited paper — received more citations after they were retracted, which research has shown is an ongoing problem.
Readers will see some familiar entries, such as the infamous Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield that originally suggested a link between autism and childhood vaccines. There’s also Olivier Voinnet, a well-known biologist who had a rocky 2015, issuing multiple corrections and retractions.
Nearly half of the list comes from papers retracted in 2015, including a BMC Evolutionary Biology retraction after an author refused to make his software available to countries that are friendly to immigrants.
As always, we will update the list as more information comes to light.
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Error in the posted link:
“received more retractions after they were retracted” is likely “received more citations after they were retracted”
Fixed, thanks.
At Google scholar, the fraudulent Wakefield paper even beats this number one with 2231 vs 2217 citations. Many of those, presumably, criticising it.
It would be nice to have the number of cites per year as well.
I’m really curious as to why retracted papers posted on this website are so heavily biased to the medical and biological sciences. Are there truly more dishonest people in these disciplines versus, say, earth sciences, chemistry or physics, or mathematics?
While retraction rates vary slightly by field — see http://www.nature.com/articles/srep03146 — the fact is that most papers are the life sciences, so it is to be expected that most retractions appear in those areas.
@Len, there is so much more money in a Medical discovery. I would speculate that this does not create an excess of honesty.